On April 7 a catastrophic oil spill in Ecuador polluted the Coca and Napo Rivers where 27 thousand indigenous and 90 thousand mestizo people depend on for drinking water and fishing. It was a predictable industry-provoked disaster that geologists and environmentalists long warned about: the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant was generating heavy erosion near…
FROM THE EDITORS: The COVID pandemic has exposed an urgent global need to generate fundamental changes that reject the unlimited accumulation of capital through the exploitation of our bodies and Mother Earth. In April, indigenous, Afro-descendants people and popular organizations of Latin America already made a call to change “the economic inertia of the neoliberal…
We spoke with Irma Pineda Santiago, a Zapotec from Juchitán, Mexico, who speaks Diidxazá and is the Latin American representative for the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She talks about the effects of the pandemic on Indigenous populations, the recovery of ancestral knowledge—and its practice, in the midst of the pandemic—and the resilience of…
With the COVID-19 crisis, the Ecuadorian nation state, like many other failed states, panicked and its reactions were late, with omissions and negligence towards its civilian population. For example, two months ago, salaries to state workers were suspended , but they have not stopped paying the foreign debt, nor have they suspended oil and mining…
FROM THE EDITORS: We share a reflection by Miriam Miranda, president of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization, OFRANEH, about the work they are doing around the COVID-19 emergency. This is a transcript based on an interview by Radio Temblor. We highlight the community efforts that are being made in Honduras, despite the abandonment of the…
“Due to the health emergency that we are experiencing, the State must take measures to suspend the payment of credits, not only for agricultural activity but for all economic activities in Ecuador,” Leónidas Iza, here during a conversation in Loja. (Diego Vaca / MICC Communication) FROM THE EDITORS: In the face of the pandemic, indigenous…
Indigenous law exists. The courts have recognized it. The Wet’suwet’en are following it. By Paige Raibmon.* Originally Posted by The Tyee. “One-way streets.” That is how Harold Cardinal, the great Cree politician, activist writer, and teacher, characterized 100 years of “talking and listening” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada. Yes, there had been a…
FROM THE EDITORS: Wetʼsuwetʼen is a First Nations people living in British Columbia, Canada. They call themselves Wetʼsuwetʼen, which means “People of the Wa Dzun Kwuh River.” For hundreds of years, the Hereditary Chiefs of Wet’suwet’en have maintained, without assigning or subject to any treaty, the use and occupation of the 22,000 square kilometers of…