Latin America News

BAHÍA DE KINO, Mexico — For several years, Cosme Becerra was tasked with sacrificing a sea turtle to be eaten at a festival. In the mid-1990s, the fisherman received a…

In 1997, people in Asunción Mita, a municipality in eastern Guatemala, weren’t really thinking that mining could arrive close to home. But that same year, the country’s Ministry of Energy…

Loggers have entered the Trombetas River Biological Reserve in Oriximiná, in Brazil’s Pará state, to develop a forest management project that has divided the local Quilombola community.

The town of San José del Fragua is just over an hour's drive from Florencia, the capital of the department of Caquetá, in southern Colombia. On one side of the…

The human rights organization Front Line Defenders has published its Global Analysis 2022, a report on the state of people who have dedicated their lives to defending the environment, Indigenous…

MEXICO CITY — As climate change continues to choke off rainfall, many parts of the Amazon are facing a higher probability of dying off from drought than previously thought. A…

Conservation International and its partners pledged to plant 73 million trees in the Brazilian Amazon in 2017. Only 20% of that goal has been met, with the pandemic, the anti-environmental presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, and fires taking a toll.

The effects of rising global temperatures are becoming increasingly apparent. Heat waves, droughts, torrential rains and flooding are becoming more frequent. In the first three months of 2023, Latin America…

Officials are struggling to keep up with an increasing wave of deforestation in one of Guatemala’s largest protected areas, where squatters are clearing the rainforest to make room for settlements,…

Neves has studied human occupation of the Amazon for 30 years and found evidence of rice, manioc and palm tree cultivation dating back thousands of years.

In the village of Costa de San Juan, mangroves still dominate the landscape. Located on the shores of the Alvarado Lagoon System in Mexico, village homes sit on the edge…

LA PAZ — At dawn in Apolobamba, in the Bolivian highlands, groups of vicuña and alpaca — some sheared, some shaggy — amble around looking for scrub to graze on,…

MEXICO CITY — A major reform approved by congress last week is supposed to limit harmful practices by the mining industry and improve protections for the environment and Indigenous peoples.…

Protected areas and Indigenous territories in the Amazon Rainforest experienced just one-third the amount of primary forest loss as non-protected areas, according to a new report. The Monitoring of the…

YANOMAMI INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil – Four officers from IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental protection agency, throw themselves from a helicopter into the murky waters of the Uraricoera River below and swim toward…

Brazil’s Cerrado may not be a household name like the neighboring Amazon Rainforest, but this vast savanna biome is even more threatened and fragmented. A new study now shows there’s…

SÃO PAULO — Last Friday, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed documents officially recognizing six Indigenous lands across the country. After years of stalling due to opposition by…

In 1995, when Colombia protected the island of Malpelo by setting up the Malpelo Fauna and Flora Sanctuary, the area had a recorded 43 species of crustaceans, six species of…

State-owned Petrobras has requested a license to investigate an oil site in a region in the north of Brazil where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean.

*This report is part of a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Cuestión Pública, a Colombian news source. In 2019, the Colombian government launched a military offensive against deforestation known…

In an interview with Mongabay, Alessandra discusses what the prize means to her, the policy changes in Brazil, and the current crisis in the Munduruku territory.

A new wave of land conflicts between a major palm oil company and local communities has recently broken out in the Brazilian Amazon, raising concerns about escalating violence in the…

*This report is part of a journalistic collaboration between Mongabay Latam and Vorágine, a Colombian news source. Cecilia García Barros is seated atop the peak of Mavicure Hill, a rocky,…

Engineers and realtors from southern Pará take advantage of their knowledge to abet land grabbers.

SANTA CATARINA, BRASIL — A serene orange hue cuts across the horizon with the first rays of sunlight as dawn breaks in the mountainous countryside of Brazil’s second-most southerly state,…

MEXICO CITY — Protecting the environment is no easy task. But in Mexico, it can often be deadly. The country is seeing a rise in violence against environmental defenders, who…

The Comau, Reñihue and Reloncaví fjords, located in southern Chile’s Los Lagos region, are one-of-a-kind natural laboratories that host diverse species of crustaceans, sea anemones, sea cucumbers, polychaetes and corals.…

When asked if he had a message for the world, Júnior Hekurari Yanomami was emphatic: “Don’t buy Brazilian gold.” Júnior, 36, from the Surucucu community on Brazil’s largest and most…

For Indigenous women in the Amazon, the wetland of Lake Tarapoto is a living classroom. The women consider it not just a home for the fish they rely on to…

Las Chinchillas National Reserve is located in the hills of the Coquimbo region, in the province of Choapa, where more than a decade-long drought has turned the earth yellow. The…