Eight South American countries met in Brazil for a summit to combat deforestation in the Amazon basin. The summit’s failure to agree on a pact protecting Amazon forests points to the global failure of forging concrete agreements to combat climate change.
An overview of the recent mass protests in Chile triggered by the increase in subway fares, symbolic of the growing inequality in Chilean society.
Resistance by Indigenous groups in Colombia; Indigenous Guatemalans resist Canadian mining company; teachers in Mexico protest “educational reform” law
Despite overwhelming evidence against the mine owners, a judge ruled that no one was responsible for the mine collapse in Chile that trapped 33 miners three years ago.
What began as local protests against an increase in public transportation costs has grown into massive protests in dozens of Brazilian cities with hundreds of thousands in the streets of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the largest demonstrations since protests against military rule in the 1980s.
The close Venezuelan elections of recent years have likely represented the tensions inherent in Chavismo itself. While Hugo Chavez did do things to benefit many of the poorest Venezuelans, he also maintained a relationship with the business community.
Two years after the devastating earthquake, Haiti’s disaster continues:
More than half a million Haitians live in displacement camps, primarily in tents and plastic tarps. Vast numbers, particularly women, live in great insecurity. Only a little over 10,000 new homes have been constructed; barely several thousand old homes restored.
Cholera has infected 500,000, killing close to 7,000. [=>]
From the November-December 2011 issue of News & Letters:
Bolivia’s two roads
Indigenous protestors from the Bolivian Amazon won a victory when they forced President Evo Morales’ government to cancel a road-building project through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS), a supposedly protected region in eastern Bolivia. The victory [=>]
The presidential election in Peru is more important for who was not elected, Keiko Fujimori, than for who was, Ollanta Humala. Fujimori, daughter of the former president who now sits in jail, was narrowly defeated. She had surrounded herself with her father’s advisers, bent on returning Peru to a repressive, rightist regime.
The Indigenous of the [=>]
From the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:
Chilean miners’ rescue evokes many views
It is Oct. 13 and I am visually and sonically inundated with blow-by-blow descriptions of the Chilean miner rescue operation. TV, radio and newspapers have whipped themselves into a frenzy reporting the rescue of 33 miners from a collapsed mine in Chile. [=>]
