The village of Cañaris in northern Peru held a consulta rejecting a proposed open-pit copper mine—but the Canadian firm that holds the contract rejects the vote as illegitimate.
Peru’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of an indigenous rainforest community seeking to bar a road that illegal miners and timber cutters want to build through their territory.
Charges were dropped against 10 campesino opponents of a hydro-electric project on Maya lands in Guatemala, but other leaders remain in prison and face death threats.
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.
An employee of the controversial Yanacocha gold mine in Peru’s Cajamarca region was arrested for the slaying of a local campesino leader who opposed the mine’s expansion.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), a body of the Organization of American States (OAS), issued a statement Sept. 5 urging Venezuelan authorities “to conduct a thorough investigation” into assertions made by representatives of the… Read moreOAS rights body presses for truth in Yanomami massacre claims
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.
Authorities in Peru admitted that wastewater laced with heavy metals from a major zinc mine has spilled into the Río Huallaga, a major tributary of the Amazon.
Authorities in Venezuela pledge to investigate breaking reports that illegal gold miners in southern Amazonas state carried out a “massacre” of an isolated Yanomami indigenous community. Witnesses of the aftermath described finding “burnt bodies and bones” at the community of Irotatheri,… Read moreVenezuela: Yanomami massacred by outlaw miners
Workers arrested at South Africa's Marikana mine have been charged with the murder of 34 of their colleagues shot by police, under an apartheid-era "common purpose" law.
The comunarios (communal peasants) of Marka La Joya, on the morning of Aug. 21 initiated an occupation of the installations of the Inti Raymi Mining Company at La Titina, outside the Altiplano city of Oruro, in protest of the pollution of… Read moreBolivia: Aymara communities occupy Oruro mine
