Support our work to help us bring you more quality analysis and reporting in 2023.
In addition to NACLA's original reporting and analysis, photojournalists contribute original photography to our coverage, providing glimpses of the people and places behind the stories. This year, that has included key protests in Costa Rica, Argentina, Panama, and Brazil; Indigenous land defense movements in Ecuador and Colombia; efforts to protect Nahuat language and culture in El Salvador; and the 50-year fight for justice and political memory in Chile.
Here is a list of our top photos of the year. Support our work to help us bring you more quality analysis and reporting in the new year.
International Feminist Strike in Argentina
Virginia Tognola | March 2023
Tognola chronicles scenes from International Women’s Day in Buenos Aires on March 8, in a march that centered the demands of sexually dissident communities and allies. Here, a protester holds a sign that reads: "I want to go out into the street without fear and be able to return home alive." Artículo también disponible en español.
Costa Rica Workers Face Longer Workdays and Cuts to Overtime
Isabel Villalon | May 2023
Villalon writes about a proposed law in Costa Rica poised to erode longstanding labor rights in the private sector after years of neoliberal entrenchment. In this image, the National Association of Public and Private Employees faces a line of police officers on horseback during protests in San José, Costa Rica, on May 1, 2023. Read more here.
Luz Tobar | May 2023
In January, the government of El Salvador dismantled the Cuna Nahuat Indigenous language program that, since the early 2000s, had trained hundreds of children in the Nahuat (or Pipil) language. Prior to Cuna Nahuat, there were approximately only 70 elderly people who spoke the language in the country. As Kevin Ramírez outlines in his article, the dismantling of the program is the latest in a long history of erasure for Salvadoran Indigenous communities. This image depicts nanzin (teachers) of the Cuna Nahuat program. Read the article here (también disponible en español).
Colombian Indigenous Communities Fight to Reclaim Land from Irish Packaging Giant
Independent Colombian photojournalist | June 2023
Indigenous Misak and campesino leaders have denounced the negative environmental impacts caused by the multinational company Smurfit Kappa, which produces 11 billion square meters of packaging each year. In the Cauca region, the company’s monocrop forestry has contributed to the disappearance of native forests and the drying up of watercourses. Indigenous Misak women are pictured above on a Smurfit Kappa forestry plantation; as a form of nonviolent resistance, activists have removed the bark from the lower part of the trees making them unusable to the company. Images are by an independent Colombian photojournalist who wishes to remain anonymous. Read the article by Tomás Ó Loingsigh.
Courtesy of Alessandra Korap Munduruku | July 2023
In Brazil, Lula’s government has been pushing back after encroachment on Indigenous territories intensified under Bolsonaro. For Munduruku leader Alessandra Korap Munduruku, grassroots territorial struggle remains critical. Alessandra lives in the village of Praia do Índio, in the Médio Tapajós region, and over the last decade she has dedicated her life to the Munduruku resistance movement, which wages a multifaceted struggle for the Munduruku territory and ways of life. Read Ana Carolina Alfinito’s interview with Alessandra here (também disponível em português). This conversation appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of NACLA's quarterly print magazine, the NACLA Report.
Jujuy Stands Up Against Multinational Mining Companies and Anti-Democratic Reforms
Susi Maresca | August 2023
In July, protests emerged in northern Argentina against controversial constitutional reforms that sought to criminalize protest and clear the way for lithium extraction at the expense of Indigenous rights. In this image, titled “Jujuy Resists and Exists,” a group of Indigenous peoples from Jujuy arrive in Buenos Aires to protest against the reforms and repressive tactics of the provincial governor Gerardo Morales. The march took place on August 1, International Day of the Pachamama. Read the article and see more of Maresca’s images here.
Chileans March for Memory as Wounds Remain Open 50 Years After the Coup
Anita Pouchard Serra | September 2023
NACLA contributor Lucía Cholakian Herrera and photographer Anita Pouchard Serra captured scenes from Chile’s ongoing struggle for truth and justice on the 50-year anniversary of the 1973 coup that began Pinochet's reign of state terror. Here, thousands of women chant in unison “Nunca más” (never again) at a candlelight vigil on September 10, 2023. See more here.
Water Defenders in Ecuador Win Key Anti-Mining Victory
Teresa Velásquez | September 2023
In late August, a historic court decision blocked the Loma Larga gold mine in the Azuay province of Ecuador, held by Toronto-based Dundee Precious Metals (DPM). The ruling comes after decades of organizing by Indigenous and campesino communities in defense of their water and territory. Known locally as Kimsacocha, the project site is situated in a high altitude paramo southwest of the city of Cuenca that stores, captures, and regulates water supplies for thousands of downstream rural and urban residents. In this image, local residents walk through the Kimsacocha paramo. Read more here.
“Somos Sur”: Mapuche and Palestinian Chileans Stand in Solidarity with Gaza
Folil Pueller | October 2023
Chile is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora outside of the Middle East. While Latin American leaders have been split on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, in Chile the Palestinian diaspora, Indigenous communities, and others have stood with the people of Gaza, drawing parallels between the Mapuche struggle to reclaim their lands and the Palestinian struggle to establish a permanent homeland. On October 25, thousands of people gathered on the outskirts of Santiago for a concert in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Above, a butterfly perches on the hand of a young girl during the demonstration. Read the article and see more of Pueller’s photos here.
Panama’s Massive Environmental Awakening
Olmedo Carrasquilla Aguila | December 2023
In late October, massive anti-protests emerged in Panama against the 20-year extension of a concession to the Canada-based company First Quantum Minerals to exploit a large open-pit copper and gold mine. In response to the mobilizations—which Francisco Javier Bonilla describes in his article as “paradigm-changing”—Panama’s supreme court ruled the contract was unconstitutional and ordered the mine to be closed. Here, thousands of people demonstrate along Panama City’s Cinta Costera to protest the controversial contract and the impacts of mining on the environment and people in general. Read more here.
