The Munduruku indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon charge that the government is militarizing their lands to quell opposition to mega-scale hydroelectric projects.
Cícero Guedes dos Santos, a leader of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) who led an occupation of unused property in Rio de Janeiro state, was shot dead by unknown gunmen.
Brazilian police launched "Operation Saturation" to crush the Sao Paolo criminal network known as the First Capital Command (PCC), flooding the favelas with paramilitary troops.
A Munduruku indigenous man was killed in a gunfight with Brazilian federal police at a remote Amazonian settlement, in a conflict over outlaw gold-mining in the area.
Work on Brazil’s controversial $13 billion Belo Monte hydro-dam has been at a halt since workers torched buildings at three work sites in a wage dispute.
A Guarani-Kaiowa tribe in Mato Grosso do Sul say their eviction from ancestral lands following a court order obtained by a rancher will mean their “collective death.”
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights urged Venezuelan authorities “to conduct a thorough investigation” into claims of a massacre at a remote Yanomami setlement.
Venezuelan officials investigating the reported massacre of an isolated Yanomami community say they found no evidence of the attack—a claim dismissed by indigenous advocates.
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.
A Brazilian judge ruled that permits for more than 120 proposed hydro-electric dams in the Upper Paraguay River Basin cannot be issued without impact assessments.
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.
