Natural Rights: People and Environment in Latin America

In this NACLA Report we look at both growing cooperation and continuing conflict in the name of protecting Latin America's tropical forests and wetlands. In the 1970s and 1980s, during the first flush of international interest in "saving the rainforest," many environmentalists focused on creating protected natural areas like parks that could be fenced off, literally or figuratively, from use by local people, especially poor people who had previously survived by exploiting park land and resources.

May/June
2003
Volume: 
36
Number: 
1

Taking Note

JoAnn Kawell
On April 14, María Elena Foronda was awarded a Goldman Environmental Prize, one of six given each year to grassroots “environmental heroes” from around the world. The community activist from Chimbote, Peru was honored for her work in cleaning up health-threatening pollution left by Chimbote’s fishmeal industry.

Intro

NACLA
In this NACLA Report we look at both growing cooperation and continuing conflict in the name of protecting Latin America’s tropical forests and wetlands.

Updates

Rául Molina-Mejía
While the world is focused on the U.S. aggression against Iraq, an invisible political conflict worsens in Guatemala. There, pro-democracy actors, including human rights groups, are under attack, as the country prepares for the forthcoming November 2 general elections.

Report

Marcelo Ballvé
The gleaming military installation rises from the patchy forests surrounding Belém, a city of one million people in Brazil’s eastern Amazon Delta. The building’s futuristic design seems out of place amid neighborhoods of wood and brick homes with tin roofs, and rutted alleyways where cattle pace.
Kenny Bruno
On March 4, 2003, the Ecuadoran newspaper Hoy reported that Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment had agreed to allow two transnational companies to cancel their oil concession contracts under the provision of force majeure.
Martha Honey
Costa Rica is the poster child for ecotourism. This brand of nature-based tourism, which seeks to be low impact and provide tangible benefits for both the environment and host communities, is widely said to be the fastest growing sector of the tourism industry. And tourism, in turn, rivals oil as the world’s largest industry.
Barbara J. Fraser
Mention of Peru’s rainforest conjures images of vast, trackless jungle rich in exotic plants and animals. But that image, on which the country’s tourism industry banks, is only half the truth.
Fernando Gabeira
As of this writing, the new Brazilian government headed by President Lula da Silva is scarcely two months old. It will require many more assessments before it can be determined just how far its accomplishments match up with its intentions in the environmental area.
Bill Weinberg
The Cessna bush plane takes off from Ocosingo, where the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico slope down to the Lacandon Selva—the jungle. We leave behind paved roads and the electricity grid, heading into the verdant canyonlands of what remains a wild frontier, a stretch of jungle along the Guatemalan border only partly under government control.
Wendy Call
A rusted, faded sign arches over the entrance to the town of Unión Hidalgo, in Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca. The sign tells visitors in Zapotec and Spanish, “Welcome to Gubiña Ranch.”

In Brief

Teo Ballvé
Cuban courts handed down heavy sentences of up to 28 years in the first weeks of April, after authorities arrested scores of government critics in a crackdown on what they deemed subversive activities.