When feeling threatened, the Indigenous Achuar people of Peru perform a ritual war dance. Back in February, this dance came to light. Men and women gathered in the community of…
CUESTA DEL TERNERO, ARGENTINA – On a brisk spring day in September 2021, an Indigenous Mapuche community known as Lof Quemquemtrew announced it had reclaimed a piece of ancestral territory…
RINCON VITINA, Colombia — In this small Indigenous reserve, or resguardo, in the Colombian department of Guainía, people tend to their cassava, plantain and pineapple crops, raise ornamental fish, and…
In-person Indigenous plea leads to key Swiss gold refiners promising to stop import of gold illegally mined inside Brazilian Amazon Indigenous reserves — a pledge, if fulfilled, that may be a game changer. (Video)
On May 11 this year, dozens of activists with Greenpeace Netherland blocked a ship carrying 60,000 metric tons of soy from Brazil to the Netherlands. Among the protesters was Alberto…
SANTIAGO ATITLÁN, Mexico – Lucio Jimenez Ocampo is always surrounded by coffee. In the yard of his house in Santiago Atitlán nestled in the Oaxaca state’s Sierra Norte highlands, there…
It was over twenty years ago when locals in Bolivia’s northern plains told archaeologist Heiko Prümers, with the German Archaeological Institute in Bonn, about mysterious mounds of earth in the…
The route connecting the provinces of Loja and Zamora Chinchipe in Ecuador is a series of roads surrounded by green, leafy and picturesque mountains. Near the city of Zamora, signs…
Tropical forests harbor around two-thirds of the world’s biodiversity. The Neotropics—comprising Central America, the Caribbean and South America—are home to a third of the world’s known bird species, the highest…
*UPDATE: On March 30, 2021, a press release announced that the Collegiate Court of Circuit in Work and Administration Matters had reversed the decision to suspend activity on Sections 1,…
CASILLAS, Guatemala — Evelin Cante got involved in the protest camp right from the start. Her village isn’t far from the Escobal silver mine in southern Guatemala, and she was…
CANELOS, Ecuador — An almost invisible trail snakes through thick buzzing forest leading to a chakra, an ancestral food garden in the Kichwa Cuya community located in Ecuador’s largest province,…
The planetwide cocaine supply chain — its production, trafficking and consumption — causes deforestation and pollution, and impacts biodiversity, as do other criminal activities associated with illegal drugs.
QUITO — Its a sad moment for any Indigenous community when spiritual leaders, those who hold the knowledge of sacred ceremonies and traditions, pass away from this world. But Sabino…
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala – An Indigenous community engaged in a decades-long struggle for land rights in Guatemala is bringing its battle to an international court this week in a case…
Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous affairs snubbed new evidence of uncontacted Indigenous groups found by two expeditions in the Amazon last year, heightening concerns about political interference in the government…
QUITO, Ecuador — Indigenous communities across Ecuador celebrated over the weekend after a historic ruling by the country’s highest court declaring that Indigenous communities have more autonomy over their territory and…
Botanist Álvaro Pérez didn’t expect to discover a new species of magnolia while hiking through Ecuador’s Canandé Reserve. He said it was the enormous, unique fruit that tipped him off.…
Northern Guatemala is covered in more than 3,000 square miles of rainforest. Some parts of it have been burned down by cattle ranchers and drug traffickers. Other parts remain pristine,…
France is taking new steps to ensure that products imported from Brazil aren’t contributing to deforestation in vulnerable forests and savannahs. The French government published a new risk analysis platform…
At the very southern tip of Colombia, Indigenous communities practice a sustainable food system that involves artisanal fishing and rotating crop structures within cycles of flooding periods. This has allowed…
One of the most poisonous animals on earth, the golden dart frog carries enough toxins in its body to kill 10 people. If it enters the blood stream, the toxin…
A one-minute audio clip made the rounds on Venezuelan Twitter last year, in which a state official being interviewed on a radio show tells citizens that, because of ongoing national…
TLALPAN, Mexico — Mexico City is, by some counts, one of the largest cities in the world. Its 9 million citizens occupy 1,485 square kilometers (573 square miles) of sprawling…
Like many rural families in Central America, Martín García and his sons devoted part of every growing season to slashing and burning a new strip of their land, knowing that…
Cattle ranching has been destroying the Rama-Kriol territory in southeast Nicaragua for decades. And while many researchers have called attention to the devastating forest loss taking place there, few have…
The United Nations’ Human Rights Committee has found that the Paraguayan government failed to regulate the use of harmful chemicals near an Indigenous community, resulting in severe health issues and…
There is a sacred hill in Nicaragua known as Kiwakumbaih, where the ancestors of the Indigenous Mayangna people would go to hold important annual events. To this day, it continues…
The fragility of Latin American forests has been demonstrated by a pioneering study published in the journal Science Advances, which reveals an alarming finding: half of the region's forests would…
The climate in the Amazon has been changing over the last few decades. The average temperature in the basin rose about 1º Celsius (1.8° Fahrenheit) between 1979 and 2018, with…
