Ecuador’s trans-Andean pipeline burst, fouling small farms near the Pacific coast, while Peru declared a state of emergency in the Amazon’s Pastaza Basin over oil contamination.
Protesters crashed the opening of the Expominas trade fair at the Quito Exhibition Center, where Ecuador's government sought to win new investors for the mineral and oil sectors.
Whether the gains of Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution will survive his passing depends on how genuinely it is based on popular power, not just that of a charismatic leader.
With Chinese investment, Nicaragua is moving ahead with a new inter-oceanic canal plan—in a race with Panama, which is expanding its own canal for a new era of global trade.
Mexican drug cartels that use cattle ranching to launder narco-profits as well as Chinese-backed illegal timber gangs are eating into Guatemala's vast Maya Biosphere Reserve.
Campesinos in Peru’s Cajamarca region pledge to block operations of Newmont Mining company that they say are preparatory to the controversial Conga gold mine project.
Campesinos in Peru’s northern Piura region pledge to resist announced plans by Chinese mining company Zijin to move ahead with the long-contested Río Blanco copper project.
A court in Honduras convicted seven men in the 2016 murder of indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres. Until her assassination Cáceres had been leading a campaign against the Agua Zarca dam, a joint project by Honduran company Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA) and Chinese-owned Sinohydro. The dam was being built on the Rio Gualcarque without prior consultation with the Lenca indigenous community that depends on the river for their food and water. Cáceres, who won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015, had received numerous threats for her activism against the dam before she was killed by gunmen at her home in the town of La Esperanza. Two of those convicted are former DESA managers. (Photo by UN Environment/ONU Brasil via Wikimedia Commons)
Faced with declining production and economic chaos, Venezuela is again opening its oil-fields to private companies—reversing much of the progress in asserting state control of the hydrocarbons industry that was made under Hugo Chávez. Just after a series of new contracts with private firms was announced, President Nicolás Maduro flew to Beijing for a meeting with Xi Jinping. The two leaders announced further deals to open Venezuela's Orinoco Belt to Chinese companies. This comes a decade after Exxon withdrew from the Orinoco Belt, unable to come to terms with the Chávez government. (Photo via OilPrice.com)
Human Rights Watch released a report charging that Ecuador's former president Rafael Correa abused the criminal justice system to target indigenous leaders and environmentalists who protested mining and oil exploitation in the Amazon. The report details use of criminal prosecution to silence ecological opposition, and the closure of one environmental organization by presidential order. The report credits new President Lenin Moreno with making positive change, opening a dialogue with environmentalists and indigenous leaders. But abusive prosecutions initiated by his predecessor remain in motion. (Photo: HRW)
