Full Coverage: Latin America & Caribbean

29.09.2006 This year's Right Livelihood Awards demonstrate how individual courage, even in the face of powerful interests and repression, can bring about remarkable changes. Meet the winners.
From: Right Livelihood Awards

29.09.2006 from Red Pepper:
Perversely, an agreement designed to ameliorate climate change now adds to the burden local people face in the form of the new carbon market.

29.09.2006 Federal forces will only exacerbate the situation in Oaxaca, where a teacher's strike has led to weeks of civil unrest, according to an international human rights organization.

29.09.2006 For trans-national mining conglomerates, like GlamisGold, it’s a business that pays: The worldwide demand for silver and gold is as keen as seldom before. In search of new gold veins they expand to Central America.

28.09.2006 On September 16, over one million people raised their hands in a vote to recognize center-left leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as the “legitimate president” of Mexico... This act of civil resistance ushered in a new stage in an electoral conflict that has developed into an all-out battle for the country's future.

28.09.2006 Ce qui se passe actuellement en Bolivie est sans précédent dans l’histoire moderne : un gouvernement indigène a pris le pouvoir et tente - avec une certaine dose de succès jusqu’à maintenant - de mettre en place des politiques s’inspirant d’anciennes pratiques et valeurs indigènes.

28.09.2006 Many of Brazil's Landless Rural Workers' Movement are beginning to build a better world for their families, but seemingly around each corner lies a new problem to overcome--most stemming from the omnipresence of multinational corporations.

27.09.2006 TORONTO, Sep 27 (IPS) - Boreal forests provide 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services like reducing atmospheric carbon and water filtration, but which have gone unacknowledged by governments and industry, experts say.

27.09.2006 Here in Brazil, the country is on the eve of the first round of elections at the state and national level. It is the fifth time since the end of the military dictatorship that Brazilians will vote for a president, state governors and representatives. The social movements struggled hard for this right to vote­has it made a difference for the Brazilian people?

27.09.2006 The campesinos of Brazil's Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST, for the Portuguese initials) dreamed for years of reclaiming their land, believing that it would solve all their problems... However, the reality would prove much more difficult, for surprises they had never imagined lay ahead.

27.09.2006 "Jaguars, mexican gray wolves, peninsular bighorn sheep, and other endangered species need to cross their borderland habitat often, and this wall will crush their ability to survive," a conservation group has warned.
From: Center for Biological Diversity

25.09.2006 "The United States under George W. Bush is weaker and more cut off from Latin America than it has ever been. For the first time since World War II, the United States is no longer the most important factor in the continent's politics," says professor Raúl Zibechi.

22.09.2006 Two former warring rivals have set aside their differences to work through the political system to promote a common vision of peace and development.
From: Minority Rights Group International

21.09.2006 Interview with Father Antonio Bonanomi, a 72-year-old Italian Catholic missionary, who has lived in Colombia since 1979, and is a harsh critic of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.

21.09.2006 Romualdo Juan Gutierrez Cortez was pulled over as he was driving to his school in the rural Mixteca region. Police took him to Oaxaca de Juarez, the state capital, where he was held for days on false charges.

21.09.2006 COMBAYO, Sep 20 (IPS) - The conflict that brought operations at Yanacocha, Latin America's largest gold mine, to a halt just a month after President Alan Garcia took office in Peru was merely the latest illustration of the tensions between mining companies and local communities in the northern province of Cajamarca.

20.09.2006 Que mundo é esse em que a juventude, eterna e inseparável cúmplice da vida, resolve escolher a morte em tenra idade? Que planeta construímos para as novas gerações se os jovens não querem mais viver e escolhem a morte quando têm toda uma vida pela frente?

18.09.2006 SINGAPORE, Sep 18 (IPS) - The 184 member nations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) formally approved Monday, a proposal to raise slightly the voting shares of China and three other developing countries in the biggest reforms in the Fund's six-decade history -- but critics say the changes are cosmetic.

16.09.2006 Argentina's spectacular December 2001 financial crisis and default have received much attention and media coverage, with many interpretations being offered for its causes and consequences.

15.09.2006 In the near future thousand welders and fitters will travel from Finland and other European countries to Uruguay to work at the construction site of Botnia’s pulp mill. The supply of Uruguayan labour needed for the high quality welding and fitting work demanded by a pulp process, is far too small, Marko Janhonen, the project’s communication and PR vice president, argues.