Since the first, unplanned visit of a Brazilian entrepreneur in 2011 to Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, a diverse group of professors, practitioners, civil society leaders and other committed individuals at Harvard and in Brazil have…
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Sergio Sepúlveda is a Chilean miner with an enviable salary—equivalent to that earned by a university-educated professional. He owns a brand new Korean-made car, and every three years…
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Latin America’s governments and its indigenous peoples are clashing over the issue of mining. Governments, motivated by economic growth, have established legal frameworks to attract foreign investments to extract mining resources. When those resources are located in…
Consider two seemingly unrelated issues: rising urban poverty and electronic waste. The Cities Alliance estimates that urban slums in developing countries are growing by…
Two tales of very small human settlements with mining potential may help us reflect on what Latin America, on a larger scale, faces today regarding the exploitation of minerals from its territories. At these two settlements, mining was stopped because of human choices and…
Will tiny El Salvador, where half the rural population lives on less than two dollars a day, become the first nation on the planet to legally ban gold mining? Or will profit-maximizing transnational mining companies succeed in using investor-friendly international…
It was another cold summer’s night in the Guatemalan highlands when I received a devastating phone call.“Yoli has been shot!” said a voice on the other end. Frantically, I gathered all the information I could: Was she alive? Where is…
On May 23, 2013, Vice President Alvaro García Linera announced that Bolivia would promote drilling for hydrocarbons inside protected areas. His statement projected the image of a sovereign, ecologically modernizing…
El Salvador’s history of internal conflict during the Cold War era both parallels and diverges from the experiences of its Latin American neighbors. On the one hand, El Salvador shared in the devastation: its governments, backed…
Just over a generation ago, Wayúu healers made ritual journeys to Cerrejón Mountain, where they gathered traditional plants for remedying community members’ ailments. The people of La Guajira, Colombia, roamed the…
“That’s the shame of it all, because the relationship got off on that type of foot. You make noise, you get in the way, you cause a problem, we give you money; we get what we want, you’ve got what you want, and then once that…
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos likes to promote extractive industries as the “locomotive” that will pull the country’s economy forward. His plan projects providing mining concessions for large-scale operations to multi…
Latin America has witnessed an unprecedented natural resource boom in the last decade. The prices of many of the commodities exported by the countries in the region have dramatically risen over most of the last ten years…
Over the last decade, Peru has become one of the most successful economic performers in the developing world, registering average growth rates above 6 percent a year. The resurgence of mining, at a time of high metal prices…
As its title suggests, Susanna B. Hecht’s The Scramble for the Amazon and the ‘Lost Paradise’ of Euclides da Cunha is actually two books in one. The first takes a macro approach, examining the geopolitics of imperialist competition in South…
Imagine that you have to move. Imagine that you must pack all of your belongings and memories and move six miles down the road. Your town will be swallowed up to make way for an open pit copper mine. The mountain you’ve looked at all…
Some acquaintances asked me a few days ago if I missed journalism. Without hesitation, I answered yes: journalism had provided me with the tremendous privilege and opportunities for my work to be heard, seen or read, and this can turn into…
A laminated picture of the Sacred Heart hangs from a naked light bulb in Floresmiro Olaya’s prefab home. It seems that the Christ, with its heart on fire like a burning coal, stares at him out…
Metallurgy in Latin America dates back more than 4,000 years. Ancient artifacts of gold have been found at numerous sites throughout the Andes. The colonial era brought expanded mining of gold, silver and other metals. Techniques to increase…
The phenomenon of maras (gangs) has become prevalent and pervasive in Guatemala. As one example, during a Kaqchikel Maya language and culture course I co-directed in 2013, one native speaker drew an image of the devil with M-18 written…
