25 January 2020 marked two years since the worst environmental crime in the history of Brazil: the collapse of a giant mining dam operated by Vale S.A., located in Córrego do Feijao, near Brumadinho, Minas Gerais State. The thousands of people affected have still not received adequate reparations for the impacts they suffered. The Brazilian Movement of Peoples Affected by Dams (MAB)…
Capire is an initiative coordinated by the World March of Women, together with women members of La Vía Campesina, Friends of the Earth International and organisations that are part of the project “Strengthening Popular Feminism.” “There are so many things that women are organising, resisting and building in the territories which must be recognised and expressed as part of feminism.…
The year 2020 saw the highest recorded murders of social leaders and defenders of territories and peoples’ rights in Colombia, since the signing of the Peace Accords in 2016, according to data from the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (INDEPAZ). On 28 December 2020, peasant and social leader Omar Moreno Ibagué was murdered in Nariño department and his…
One month after the murder of João Alberto Silveira Freitas by the security guards hired by Carrefour supermarkets in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Patrícia Gonçalves, member of the Board of Directors of Friends of the Earth Brazil and activist in the Front in Defense of Quilombola Territories in Rio Grande do Sul, analyzes the measures taken by the company and the…
At the last minute, the State Attorney General's Office of Ecuador informed the Union of People Affected by Texaco (UDAPT) that it had begun the appeal process of the arbitration award in favor of Chevron in The Hague. In November, UDAPT warned in a statement that the arbitration award issued ordered the Ecuadorian State "to violate judicial autonomy and interfere…
The Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC-LVC) denounced the "arbitrary detention" by the Attorney General's Office of Colombia of three well-known leaders of the National Agricultural Coordination (CNA) on December 15. They are Adelso Gallo, a recognized peasant and social leader from the central-eastern region of Colombia, a member of the National Board of the CNA, detained in the…
In early November, Elsa Nury Martínez, Chair of the National Agricultural Union Federation in Colombia (FENSUAGRO) and member of the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organisations (CLOC-Via Campesina), received death threats against her and her family. These threats came from the ‘Black Eagles’ narco-paramilitary group (Águilas Negras - Bloque Capital), who singled out the peasant leader as a military target…
With 78% of votes, the Chilean people have opted to change the current Constitution, which has been in force since 1980 under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. The same percentage of people supported doing this through a Constituent Convention (instead of a mixed convention), whose candidates will be elected on 11 April 2021. From that moment on, the convention will have almost…
After the coup d´Etat against Evo Morales' re-election in November 2019, there were high hopes that these presidential elections in October 2020 would reinstate democracy in Bolivia. 48 hours before the vote, the Argentinian delegation that traveled to Bolivia to act as international observers denounced the illegal detention of lawmaker Federico Fagioli and the generalised violence they received from officials…
On 22 September, the Continental Day for Democracy and against Neoliberalism (La Jornada Continental), will hold an online discussion entitled “Popular dialogues: unity, democracy and life for our peoples”. Taking place at 4pm in Central America (12am midnight CET), the discussion will be broadcasted live on their Facebook page in Spanish, English and Portuguese. “It will be a moment to…
