With the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is warning us today that if we fail to build alternatives to the current system governed by voracious, ruthless and extractive capitalism, it will rob our descendants of the future.
The final rulings of the Supreme Court calendar year favored indigenous causes diametrically opposed to those of incumbent candidate Donald Trump, reaffirming treaty rights and proving the power of recent grassroots mobilizations.
After six days of fighting for his life in an intensive care unit in a Amazonas state hospital, a 15-year-old Yanomami teenage boy died in April 9 from complications caused by the coronavirus. The boy’s death sounded the alarm for Brazil’s Indigenous peoples who now face the fear of the virus alongside the stress of increasing criminal activities and government policies.
With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in Latin America, indigenous peoples and communities face the challenges that this disease brings. Faced with government neglect, the absence of social investment in their regions and the lack of access to regional or national hospitals, indigenous people have a serious disadvantage, but our own ancestral knowledge provides forms of protection.
The fires that started August 16 are still raging in the Amazonian jungle. Although they no longer make international headlines, they have destroyed more than 12 million hectares.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s willingness to open Indigenous reserves to mining, agriculture and infrastructure has triggered a rise in invasions of indigenous lands by armed gangs of land grabbers, causing constant fear in indigenous communities.
In March, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro visited U.S President Donald Trump to discuss deepening relations between their countries. In their joint statement, the two presidents agreed to “catalyze investment in the Amazon region”.
Environmental and land management in South America is being slowly but persistently militarized with the aim of controlling extractive industries, especially gold mining.
If the Trump administration and its allies continue to pursue their reckless course in Venezuela, the most likely result will be bloodshed, chaos, and instability.
In the middle of October, the Juicio Popular y Comunitario Contra el Estado y las Empresas Mineras (People’s Trail against the State and the Mining Companies) was carried out in Oaxaca City, Mexico. The participating organizations denounce that in the Central Valleys, the most populated region in the state, 80% of the territory is awarded to mining companies from Canada and the United States.
