Brazil News

High quality cacao in Amazonia

Cacao (Theobroma cacao) is native to the Amazon rainforest and has been cultivated and consumed throughout the Americas since before Columbus. Cacao can be broadly segregated into to contrasting types…

Coffee and cacao in the Pan Amazon

Coffee and cacao have much in common. Both are descended from understory trees adapted to the low-light conditions of the forest floor. Each have multiple cultivated varieties that differ with…

Biofuels in the Pan Amazon

The spikes in commodity prices in the first decade of the twenty-first century coincided with a global boom in biofuels. The interest in biofuels was motivated allegedly by a concern…
Indigenous forest guardians Laércio Guajajara and Paulo Paulino Guajajara.

End of impunity for Indigenous killings in sight for Brazil’s Guajajara

Indigenous forest guardian Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed in November 2019 in the Brazilian Amazon. Mongabay’s Karla Mendes, who interviewed Paulo nine months before his death, returned to the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in August 2023 to talk with his family and the other guardian who survived the attack, Laércio Guajajara, and shine a light on a case that still hasn’t gone to trial after four years.
Indigenous forest guardians Laércio Guajajara and Paulo Paulino Guajajara.