Every year, Latin America climbs in global geopolitical rankings because of the steady increase in its declared reserves of strategic resources. This is a true disaster, since it reinforces the dependence of the region on the exploitation and exportation of its natural resources.
Little over a year ago, Javier Sicilia was simply a journalist, poet, teacher and father; he would finish 2011 as one of TIME magazine’s “People of the Year”. […]
After the Mexican government set the scene to sit down and have a “dialogue” with the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), and after President Felipe Calderón supposedly engaged with its members, now we learn that his government has files on the movement’s leaders, including Javier Sicilia. This information is part of an extensive file that includes profiles with public and private data of the activists.
Environmental engineer Reinhard Seifert has been persecuted, threatened and arrested, but he continues researching the effects of mining on Cajamarca’s water resources as the Peruvian government currently weighs its decision on the future of the Conga gold mine. If approved, the project would give Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp. the ability to construct one of the world’s largest gold mines on fragile, high-altitude wetlands.
Why the War on Drugs in Guatemala is (and will continue to be) a war against communities.
With 35 students, the first secondary school specifically for transvestites and other members of sexual minorities who face discrimination in mainstream schools opened in March in the Argentine capital. Francisco Quiñones, the head of the new school, explained that the idea was “to create an inclusive school, free of discrimination, that takes into account and values the different trans identities, where they can manage to finish secondary school. Public schools, which are governed by rules that cater to heterosexuals, drive these people away.”
For seventeen years, a group of women in La Patrona, Veracruz, has been handing out food and water to Central American migrants riding cargo trains north in search of work. Most are hoping to make it to the US to find work but first they must make it through Mexico, where they risk being robbed, beaten, kidnapped, murdered. The passage through La Patrona is one of the few bright spots on their trip.
Clodoveo Rodriguez has lived his 78 years in his native community of San Rafael Las Flores, Santa Rosa. Since late 2011, his home has literally been fenced-in by the neighboring Escobal silver mine, a joint venture by Tahoe Resources and Goldcorp. Despite pressure from the Canadian mining companies to sell, he refuses to leave his land.
Thousands of Indigenous protestors carrying a giant rainbow flag arrived in Ecuador’s capital of Quito on March 22 (World Water Day) after a two-week Plurinational March for Life, Water, and Dignity of the Peoples. The march was in opposition to government plans to commence with large-scale mining, as well as to defend Ecuador’s new progressive 2008 constitution against neoliberal attacks and to pressure for the passage of water and agrarian revolution laws.
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