Latin America

This is a new Place page. Send suggestions for content to pmmckerc@ucsc.edu. See also Colonialism, as well as Deforestation. Latin American and Latino Studies at UCSC, as well as Human Rights, Globalization, and Third World Development

News/Articles

Bertal Cáceres (Lenca) was a Honduran environmental activist, indigenous leader, and co-founder and coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). She won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015, for "a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam" at the Río Gualcarque. She was assassinated in her home by armed intruders, after years of threats against her life. A former soldier with the US-trained special forces units of the Honduran military asserted that Caceres' name was on their hitlist months before her assassination. As of February 2017, three of the eight arrested people were linked to the US-trained elite military troops of which two had been trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA, the former School of the Americas (SOA).

Why Latin American Environmentalists Are an Endangered Species: Murders over land disputes have been on the rise worldwide, but the problem is especially severe in Latin America. 8/16.

Young environmentalists in Mexico have permanently suspended the development of a 69-hectare project in Cancún that would have cleared a large chunk of a mangrove forest. 11/15

116 Environmental Defenders Were Murdered Last Year, Mostly in Latin America. 4/15 See Activism.

Community activists from Cajamarca, Peru protest Denver-based Newmont Mining Corporation this week, deliver a petition bearing 150,000 signatures protesting the company’s practices in the region, and demanded that it live up to its own goals for human rights and sustainability. 5/15.

The Impacts of Sea Level Rise on Indigenous Communities in Panama 9/14.

US setting up camps to house children fleeing drug gangs in Latin America 6/14. Sonia Nazario first introduced the world to Enrique through a series of Pulitzer Prize winning articles for the Los Angeles Times and then in the acclaimed 2006 book “Enrique’s Journey.” "I saw migrants inflicted with horrible cruelty, and also amazing acts of kindness. In South-Central Mexico, when people in tiny towns along the tracks heard the whistle of the train, I watched them rush out of their homes with bundles of food in their arms. They would wave, smile and shout out to migrants perched on top of the trains. They threw bread, tortillas, whatever fruit was in season—bananas, pineapples, or oranges. If they didn’t have even that, they lined up next to the tracks, and sent out a prayer to the migrants atop the train."Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit providing legal assistance to undocumented children. author video interview (6/14). UCSC's Dana Frank: audio interview on wave of child immigrants from Latin America 6/25/14.

Dengue Surges In Latin America: As officials in Brazil frantically mount a last-minute campaign to combat the recent outbreak of dengue fever in the country before the beginning of the World Cup, new data has been released documenting the shocking resurgence of the disease. 5/14

An American Cowboy Fights for the Amazon and Its People 5/14.

Global Witness report documents surge of killing of green activists, particularly in South America. See also Human Rights 4/14.

NAFTA effect on worker safety in Mexico. Overall effect (video) 12/13 20th anniversary report (which could have lessons for current TPP). NAFTA sparked Zapatista uprising in Mexico. see Labor.

Goldman "Green Nobel Prize" winner: unfazed by powerful political opponents and a pervasive culture of violence, Nohra Padilla organized Colombia’s marginalized waste pickers to make recycling a legitimate part of waste management. 4/13.

Peru Declares Oil Contamination Emergency In Remote Amazon Region 3/13.

Mexico: Environmentalist Who Challenged Drug Gangs Murdered in Ambush Despite Police Escort 11/12 In the latest violence out of Mexico, an environmental activist who took a stand against drug gangs has been murdered along with her 10-year-old son in the southern state of Guerrero. Juventina Villa was under police protection after receiving death threats when she withdrew to make a phone call and was ambushed by at least 30 attackers. Her seven-year-old daughter survived. Villa had challenged efforts by drug gangs to destroy forests in order to plant their crops. More than 20 members of her extended family, including her husband and two children, had already been murdered.

Colorado River Pact Signed Between The U.S. And Mexico 11/12

Mexico's Newest Export To U.S. May Be Water (desal plants) 10/11.

Mystery Disease In Central America Kills Thousands dehydration and chemicals suspected. 2/12.

SAO PAULO -- Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff used a line-item veto Friday to send back parts of a congressional bill that loosened the nation's benchmark law protecting the Amazon rainforest – a veto the government said would prevent increased deforestation. Environmentalists were not satisfied because they had called for a veto of the entire bill, known as the Forest Code, saying any weakening of the law would put the world's largest rainforest at risk. Government officials said the partial veto went far enough to keep Brazil on track in its efforts to quell the destruction of the Amazon and other biomes.

"It's the code of those who believe it's possible to produce food and preserve the environment," Agriculture Minister Jorge Ribeiro Mendes told reporters. Mendes and other officials said the government made 12 vetos and 32 other alterations to the bill, including a requirement for large landowners to reforest land they had illegally cleared, with less stringent requirements the smaller the area involved. Rousseff long indicated she wanted a bill that was less rigorous for smaller, poor farmers and ranchers in the Amazon and elsewhere. "The big (farmers) have vast extensions of land and have the means to recover all the areas of permanent preservation," Teixeira said. The bill now goes back to Congress, and legislators have 30 days to override Rousseff's changes with a simple majority, which is considered unlikely. The Amazon rainforest is considered one of the world's most important natural defenses against global warming because of its capacity to absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide. More. 5/12

Cuban organic (and urban) agriculture. See also Urban Agriculture.

Eco-Heroes

Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza are fighting for justice after what has been called one of the most catastrophic environmental disasters in history. They leading an unprecedented community-driven legal battle against a global oil giant. According to the plaintiffs, beginning in 1964 and through 1990, Texaco dumped nearly 17 million gallons of crude oil and 20 billion gallons of drilling wastewater directly into the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Goldman "Green Nobel Prize" winner: unfazed by powerful political opponents and a pervasive culture of violence, Nohra Padilla organized Colombia’s marginalized waste pickers to make recycling a legitimate part of waste management. 4/13.

Mexico: Environmentalist Who Challenged Drug Gangs Murdered in Ambush Despite Police Escort 11/12 In the latest violence out of Mexico, an environmental activist who took a stand against drug gangs has been murdered along with her 10-year-old son in the southern state of Guerrero. Juventina Villa was under police protection after receiving death threats when she withdrew to make a phone call and was ambushed by at least 30 attackers. Her seven-year-old daughter survived. Villa had challenged efforts by drug gangs to destroy forests in order to plant their crops. More than 20 members of her extended family, including her husband and two children, had already been murdered.

UCSC's own Terry Freitas, UCSC grad student killed trying to stop Indigenous people from being harmed by oil company.

Chico Mendes was killed protecting the Brazilian Rain Forest. Sadly, activists there are still in danger. Recently two Mexican eco-journalists were also killed audio text. A new report (6.12) from international NGO Global Witness suggests that, in the past decade, 711 individuals have been killed while defending land and forest rights. 106 of these deaths allegedly came in 2011, with the number killed almost doubling over the past three years. According to the report, these deaths include "those killed in targeted attacks and violent clashes as a result of protests, investigating or taking grievances against mining operations, logging operations, intensive agriculture including ranching, tree plantations, hydropower dams, urban development and poaching."

Enrique Peñalosa, mentioned in Majora Carter's TEDtalk, "Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, was responsible for numerous radical improvements to the city and its citizens. He promoted a city model giving priority to children and public spaces and restricting private car use, building hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks, bicycle paths, pedestrian streets, greenways, and parks...Peñalosa also led efforts to improve Bogotá’s marginal neighborhoods through citizen involvement; planted more than 100,000 trees; created a new, highly successful bus-based transit system; and turned a deteriorated downtown avenue into a dynamic pedestrian public space. He helped transform the city’s attitude from one of negative hopelessness to one of pride and hope, developing a model for urban improvement based on the equal rights of all people to transportation, education, and public spaces. video.

Living under the constant threat of assassination, Francisco Pineda courageously led a citizens' movement that stopped a gold mine from destroying El Salvador's dwindling water resources and the livelihoods of rural communities throughout the country. Learn more at goldmanprize.org.

Rosa Hilda Ramos turned personal tragedy into a positive outcome for people and the planet (environmental justice).

Books

US setting up camps to house children fleeing drug gangs in Latin America 6/14. Sonia Nazario first introduced the world to Enrique through a series of Pulitzer Prize winning articles for the Los Angeles Times and then in the acclaimed 2006 book “Enrique’s Journey.” "I saw migrants inflicted with horrible cruelty, and also amazing acts of kindness. In South-Central Mexico, when people in tiny towns along the tracks heard the whistle of the train, I watched them rush out of their homes with bundles of food in their arms. They would wave, smile and shout out to migrants perched on top of the trains. They threw bread, tortillas, whatever fruit was in season—bananas, pineapples, or oranges. If they didn’t have even that, they lined up next to the tracks, and sent out a prayer to the migrants atop the train."Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit providing legal assistance to undocumented children. See Migration.

Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World by Alan Weisman is about Columbia.

Cochabamba!: Water Rebellion in Bolivia by Oscar Olivera. see Water.

Juan González's Harvest of Empire takes an unflinching look at the role that U.S. economic and military interests played in triggering an unprecedented wave of migration that is transforming our nation’s cultural and economic landscape. It's now the basis of a new documentary. Democracy Now segment.

The Greening of Cuba: A National Experiment in Organic Farming by Peter Rosset, Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange (Go Slugs!)

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (in Spanish: Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina) is a book written by Uruguayan journalist, writer and poet Eduardo Galeano, and published in 1971. video interview. Dynamic map.

Video

TEDtalks

Tasso Azevedo has helped reduce the rate of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest by 75 percent — and inspired similar efforts around the world. 1/15.

My Village, My Lobster tells the harrowing story of an industry and a Guatemalan community in crisis.

Living under the constant threat of assassination, Francisco Pineda courageously led a citizens' movement that stopped a gold mine from destroying El Salvador's dwindling water resources and the livelihoods of rural communities throughout the country. Learn more at Link.

Director Lucy Walker spent months filming the stories of garbage pickers working at Rio de Janeiro's Jardim Gramacho, one of the world's largest landfills, for her 2011 Academy Award-nominated documentary, Waste Land. (trailer)After her Waste Land experience, Lucy set out to learn what happens to Los Angeles' garbage. slideshow and video) 7/11

Yasuni about oil and Ecuadorian rainforest.

Migrant construction labor TEDtalk video

UCSC alum Cary Joji Fukunaga has created a Sundance award winning film about migration, Sin Nombre. Interview

Images

David Bacon's (who has spoken at Plenary) Photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US: Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006). See also Transnational Working Communities project

The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border by David Bacon (University of California, 2004).

Bacon's latest book, (2013) The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration by David Bacon is the story of the growing resistance of Mexican communities to the poverty that forces people to migrate to the United States (NAFTA is key, see also Ana Lopez 2013 plenary). audio)

Belo Monte Dam Threatens Brazilian Amazon (PHOTOS)

UCSC Resources

Latin American and Latino Studies

Caffeine culture: Anthropology student traces coffee’s route from farm to cup When Katie Slocum, an anthropology major at UC Santa Cruz, got her first espresso fix at Verve, she had no idea that a year later she would be following the company to a Honduran mountaintop on a journey through the coffee supply chain. 6/15

Flora Lu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Since 1992, Flora has been conducting research with the Huaorani Indians of the Ecuadorian Amazon, a predominantly subsistence-based population of hunter-gatherer-horticulturalists, especially effects of extraction (oil , logging).

Dana Frank one of top academic experts on Honduras, and has written on women in banana labor unions. audio interview on wave of child imrants from Latin America 6/25/14.

Global Exchange resources.

Dawn Gable holds a double BA in Environmental Studies and Biology from UCSC. She spent 2+ years living and working as a field ornithologist in Venezuela where she became acquainted with the Bolivarian Revolution and the Chavez program as well as with Venezuelan culture. The coup attempt of April 11, 2002 that mobilized the Chavez supporting majority, catalyzed her involvement in the movement as well. Dawn is the founder of the International Bolivarian Circle: Cyber-Solidarity, the co-creator and co-manager of the Bolivarian Circles official website. She has been instrumental in organizing internships with Venezuela NGOs for US university students and cooperates with Global Exchange Venezuela programs and is a member of the Santa Cruz Cuba Study Group.

UC Santa Cruz Global Brigades is one of the many university chapters of Global Brigades, Inc in North America and Europe where volunteering students are dedicated to the research, design, and construction of socially responsible, environmentally sustainable solutions towards problems in the developing world. Ultimately, extended relationships between brigades and communities will result in not only the implementation of a variety of projects, but also the accumulation of a vast wealth of knowledge from which future students and communities can learn. Works in Latin America.

Rise Up Development Collective (RUDC) is a nonprofit organization focused on development in the Wli Todzi community, in the Volta Region in Ghana. We raise funds to sustainably construct, stock, and staff a much needed health clinic for the people of Wli Todzi.

CAN offers internships and a trip to Costa Rica in September to study coffee production.

CAN confronts some of the world’s most pressing problems in sustainability and conservation. The Network’s three programs work with partners in the United States, Mexico, and Central America. Through our initiatives, college students, farmers, researchers, and consumers support community members’ efforts to become economically viable, while at the same time protecting and improving their local environment. Programs include:

• CAN will be hosting an Info Session for our Summer Sustainable Development Field Course happening in Agua Buena, Costa Rica from July 15 - 28! ... of the Sustainable Living Center in the Village. This will be a great opportunity for students to come learn more about what this course offers and the logistics of participating, to meet with some of the lead instructors and organizers of the course, ask questions, and meet other prospective participants! Our application deadline for the course is May 15th, so anyone who's thinking of participating is strongly encouraged to attend this info session so they can submit their applications on time! For questions, please contact Arielle at fieldstudy@canunite.org.

• Alternative Coffee Trade: Order coffee through CAN’s Fairtrade Direct™ project and support Latin American coffee-growing communities.

• Action Education: Through our education initiative we raise awareness and create tools for change around global trade and sustainable agriculture. We use field-study opportunities, farmer-to-farmer exchanges, research, organizational internships, and an annual shortcourse to inspire action for social and environmental justice.

• Participatory Research CAN researchers immerse themselves in the communities they work with and study the agroecology of the local communities. They learn how the farming and social systems work on site. Through collaborative relationships, farmer groups engage in the development of the research questions. This way the findings become directly useful to community members. Alternative Spring Break.