Rights groups warn that the Afro-descendant Quilombo Pontes community in Brazil’s lawless Maranhão state is being “systematically threatened” by gunmen in the pay of local ranchers.
Venezuelan authorities pledge to investigate breaking reports that outlaw miners comitted a “massacre” of an isolated Yanomami indigenous community on the Brazilian border.
Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered the release of Amazon rancher Regivaldo Galvão, convicted in the 2005 killing of US nun and rainforest activist Dorothy Stang.
After a new Shining Path attack left five soldiers dead in Peru’s jungle, anti-terrorism prosecutor Julio Galindo said the guerillas control illegal gold-mining operations.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, ruling in Sarayaku v. Ecuador, found in favor of a Kichwa community’s right to consultation prior to industrial projects on their land.
Gualberto Cusi, a magistrate on Bolivia’s Constitutional Tribunal, has been asked to resign after accusing the executive of pressuring the court to approve a rainforest road project.
A Brazilian court suspended construction of the controversial Belo Monte dam project on the Amazon’s Xingu River, finding that indigenous people had not been properly consulted.
Ecuador will use the pipeline that links Peru’s northern Amazon oil zone to the Pacific coast to transport crude under a deal the comes despite renewed border tensions.
Brazil’s government reaffirmed a court decision calling for return of usurped lands to the Xavante indigenous people. When Xavante protested at the Rio+20 summit, local ranchers blocked roads and burned bridges.
For two weeks the jungle construction site of the planned Belo Monte dam in Brazil’s Pará state has been under occupation by some 200 members of the Xikrin, Arara and other indigenous peoples, many armed with spears.
At the People’s Summit being held on the sidelines of the Rio +20 meeting, leaders from Bolivia’s eastern lowlands denounced President Evo Morales for violating the rights of indigenous peoples in the region.
Indigenous leaders loyal to Evo Morales voted to remove Adolfo Chávez as president of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian Oriente (CIDOB)—as CIDOB’s march in protest of a jungle highway advances on La Paz.
