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.
Maxima Acuña, a campesina from Peru's Cajamarca region, was awarded a 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize for her struggle to defend her family lands from Newmont Mining.
Far-right Keiko Fujimori is headed for the second round in a Peruvian presidential race so marked by controversies and irregularities that The Economist calls it a "dangerous farce."
