Latin America News

Raid rescues 18 workers from Minas Gerais farm holding good practice seals. Starbucks denies buying beans there in recent years, though its certifier approved the farm.

Five candidates lead the polls for Brazil’s presidency, with a vote 7 October. Mongabay offers some of what’s known, and what’s not, about their environmental positions.

LUCANAS PROVINCE, Peru — At an altitude of 13,450 feet, the icy wind pounds whatever lies in its path. After 23 years of living in the Pampa Galeras - Barbara…

The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, followed new deforestation from gold mining in Peru, new fish species deep in Chile’s sea, mining on Ecuador’s beaches, and hundreds…

Brazil’s Paiter-Suruí indigenous group has suspended indefinitely its previously highly successful forest conservation and carbon storage and offset project due to an invasion by illegal diamond miners.

Some ruralist politicians, up for election next month, own or associate with firms guilty of crimes; push attacks on the environment and indigenous groups; sell goods to U.S. / EU.

Some people say that the best way to forget something is through distance, and that is one of the arguments being repeated by the experts consulted for this story. It…

The most popular stories last week from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, followed farmed salmon escapes in Chile, a new biosphere reserve in Ecuador, and high-tech forest monitoring in Peru. Patagonia’s…

There are various competing land uses of the Amazon rainforest. The region in southern Colombia that until less than two years ago was the stronghold of the FARC guerrilla group…

The greatest natural history repository in South America, Brazil’s National Museum was consumed by fire last Sunday — much was destroyed, but not all.

Carmelo Márquez always has a reason to fight. Every day, he fights tirelessly to defend his rights and the rights of his territory: Montes de María, a subregion comprised of…

Life is not easy for seeds. Avoiding ending up as food for animals and finding the right time and spot to germinate are two common problems. Until recently, scientists studying…

A massive fire ravaged Brazil’s National Museum (Museu Nacional) in Rio de Janeiro on the night of Sept. 2. The losses to the country’s oldest scientific institution and its approximately…

The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, this past week followed high-volume fishing in the Galapagos, oil drilling in Colombian cloud forests, mercury levels in the Peruvian Amazon,…

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon continues to trend higher, reports Imazon, a Brazilian NGO that independently tracks developments in Earth's largest rainforest. Data from Imazon's monthly deforestation tracking system indicates…

Brazil is a leading global consumer of chemical pesticides – many banned in the EU and U.S. This not only puts farmworkers at risk, but consumers of Brazilian food the world round.

The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, this past week investigated how land trafficking is destroying Lima’s fragile hill ecosystems; government inaction and oil spills in Venezuela; open…

On August 7, Juan Manuel Santos ceased to be the president of Colombia and handed over the office to Iván Duque, who was the right-wing candidate for the Democratic Center…

The Brazilian government used a drone to help confirm the presence of an uncontacted indigenous group deep in the Amazon rainforest. FUNAI, Brazil's indigenous affairs agency, undertook an expedition to…

Amazonian rivers don’t often drive the creation of new species, but do help maintain distinct populations, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances last month. Amazonian rivers…