Peru sent elite troops to raid outlaw gold-mining operations in the Tambopata Nature Reserve—but they are massively outnumbered by perhaps 10,000 illegal miners in the area.
Amid moves toward peace in Colombia, the goad of the war—the country's lucrative cocaine trade—clearly remains robust, as record-breaking hauls are reported.
Colombia’s constitutional court overturned a 2012 government decree that allowed mining in nine areas of the country, together making up 20% of the national territory.
Peru's president-elect Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has unveiled a platform that calls for privatizing and "individualizing" communal lands to facilitate mineral and agribusiness development.
Campesinos launched a strike across Colombia, with some 100,000 blocking highways and effectively shutting down at least half of the country's 32 departments.
As Venezuela lurches deeper into political crisis, President Maduro launches a new phase in his controversial "Operation Liberate the People" security program.
On Argentina's Revolution Day, townspeople in Jáchal held a "patriotic march" to oppose the local operations of Barrick Gold—only to be surrounded and arrested by the police.
Peru's President Ollanta Humala declared a state of emergency in the rainforest region of Madre de Dios following reports of mercury poisoning by outlaw gold-mining operations.
Police arrested 65 protesters, many in kayaks, who shut down Australia's biggest coal export terminal as part of a global direct action campaign against fossil fuels.
Afro-Colombian protesters blocking the Pan-American Highway in southern Cauca region to protest illegal mining on their lands were violently dispersed by the riot police.
Thousands converged on Guatemala City on Earth Day, the culmination of a cross-country march by peasants and popular organizations to demand local rights over access to water.
De Beers operates a diamond mine on lands of northern Ontario's suicide-striken Cree community of Attawapiskat—where it pays a pittance in royalties despite record profits.
