Category Archives: Americas

US CDC warns against travel to Canada amid rising Covid numbers

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Agency elevates recommendation to ‘level four: very high’ and says Americans should avoid travel to northern neighbour

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned against travel to Canada as Covid-19 cases surge across the country and rampant infections threaten to once again overwhelm fragile healthcare systems.

The CDC on Monday elevated its travel recommendation to “level four: very high” for Canada, telling Americans they should avoid travel to its northern neighbour. The CDC currently lists about 80 destinations worldwide at level four.

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Venezuelan opposition defeats Maduro candidate in Chávez’s home state

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Regime suffers symbolic blow as little-known Sergio Garrido secures victory in Barinas governorship election

Venezuela’s opposition has claimed a rare and highly symbolic victory over Nicolás Maduro’s regime after defeating the government candidate for the governorship of Hugo Chávez’s home state of Barinas.

Maduro had hoped his former foreign minister Jorge Arreaza would win control of the region, which is considered the cradle of Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution”, in Sunday’s election.

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Brazil: rock breaks from cliff and falls on boaters, leaving 10 dead

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Some people could still be missing after the accident on Furnas Lake in Minas Gerais state, police said

A towering slab of rock broke from a cliff and toppled on to pleasure boaters drifting near a waterfall on a Brazilian lake on Saturday, leaving 10 people dead.

Police said that there was a possibility that some people were still missing on Sunday following the accident in Minas Gerais state. At least 32 people were injured, though most were released from hospitals by Saturday evening.

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Desmond Tutu’s funeral and Kazakhstan clashes: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Hong Kong

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Peruvian statue’s giant penis thrills tourists but vandals are turned off

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Visitors stop for selfies with 9ft representation of fertility symbol from pre-Columbian Mochica culture but phallus already damaged

The newly erected statue of a grinning man with an enormous phallus has prompted delight and rage in an archaeological hotspot in northern Peru where it has been on show since the beginning of the year.

Although perhaps not anatomically correct, the crimson fibreglass structure is a faithful representation of a ceramic vessel from Peru’s pre-Columbian Mochica culture, whose people lived in the region between 150 and 700 AD.

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Ten bodies left in SUV outside Mexican state governor’s office

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Zacatecas governor says bodies of people left in front of palace near Christmas tree showed apparent signs of beating and bruising

An SUV filled with 10 bodies was left outside the office of a Mexican state governor in a public square lit up with holiday decorations, officials said on Thursday.

The bodies were crammed into a Mazda SUV left before dawn near a Christmas tree in the main plaza of the state capital of Zacatecas.

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Canada charter passengers who flouted Covid rules could be stranded in Mexico

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Justin Trudeau calls revellers who partied onboard flight ‘idiots’ as three airlines refuse to fly them home

A group of passengers who filmed themselves partying without masks onboard a chartered flight from Montreal to Mexico face being stranded after three airlines refused to fly them home to Canada.

Sunwing Airlines cancelled the return charter flight from Cancún that had been scheduled for Wednesday and Air Transat and Air Canada also both said they would refuse to carry the passengers.

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Brazil’s bars choose their customers for their politics as election nears

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Unjabbed supporters of President Bolsonaro are banned from some pubs – but elsewhere fans can buy pizza named after him

Jana Santos has an unambiguous message for Jair Bolsonaro-supporting anti-vaxxers who want to sup a Moscow Mule or Caipirinha at her bar in south Brazil.

“Don’t come. We don’t want you here,” said the mixologist and bar owner who recently placed a placard at its entrance instructing unvaccinated Bolsonaristas to steer clear.

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Trump’s border wall and the slow decay of American soil | Carlos Sanchez

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The ‘big, beautiful wall’ has kept US citizens away from the no man’s land it created – and in effect ceded territory to Mexico

Several miles south of the small town of San Juan, Texas, beyond acres of onion fields, orange groves and other cash crops sits a historic cemetery and the site of the beginning of a slow decay of American soil.

I hadn’t been to this area for more than a year because of the pandemic, and I was startled at how different this remote part of Texas had become. The most obvious change is the steel 18ft-high bollard fencing, among the last vestiges of Donald Trump’s glorious border wall with Mexico.

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Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro discharged from hospital

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Bolsonaro said he was discharged on Wednesday, two days after being admitted with intestinal obstruction

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been discharged from hospital, two days after being admitted with an intestinal obstruction, his latest health complication from a 2018 stabbing.

“Being discharged now. Thank you all,” Bolsonaro posted on Twitter on Wednesday morning alongside a religious message and a photo of himself and his doctors giving a thumbs up.

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Rocky road: Paraguay’s new Chaco highway threatens rare forest and last of the Ayoreo people

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Forced from their homes by missionaries, the Ayoreo cling on in the Chaco. Now the Bioceanic Corridor cuts through the fastest-vanishing forest on Earth, refuge of some of the Americas’ last hunter-gatherers

In 1972, Catholic missionaries entered the Chaco forest of northern Paraguay and forced Oscar Pisoraja’s family, and their nomadic Ayoreo people, to leave with them. Many perished from thirst on the long march south. Settled near the village of Carmelo Peralta on the Paraguay River, dozens more died from illnesses. Still, the survivors kept up some traditions – hunting for armadillos; weaving satchels from the spiky caraguatá plant. “We felt part of this place,” says Pisoraja, now 51.

Today, his community – and other indigenous peoples across the Chaco, a tapestry of swamp, savanna and thorny forest across four countries that is South America’s largest ecosystem after the Amazon – are confronting a dramatic new change.

Mario Abdo Benítez, Paraguay’s president, and Reinaldo Azambuja Silva, governor of Mato Grosso do Sul state in Brazil, at the site of a new bridge across the Paraguay River, due to be completed in 2024

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Cuba’s vaccine success story sails past mark set by rich world’s Covid efforts

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The island nation struggles to keep the lights on but has inoculated 90% of population with home-developed vaccines

General Máximo Gómez, a key figure in Cuba’s 19th-century wars of independence against Spain once said: “Cubans either don’t meet the mark – or go way past it.”

A century and a half later, the aphorism rings true. This downtrodden island struggles to keep the lights on, but has now vaccinated more of its citizens against Covid-19 than any of the world’s major nations.

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Canada reaches C$40bn compensation agreement to reform Indigenous welfare – video

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Canada has reached an in-principle agreement totalling C$4bn (US$31.bn) to compensate First Nations children who were taken from their families and put into the welfare system, a major step toward reconciliation with the country's Indigenous people. David Sterns, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said: ‘This settlement is the largest class action settlement in Canadian history and it is believed to be one of the largest anywhere in the world.' The agreement includes C$2bn for potentially hundreds of thousands of First Nations children who were removed from their families. Another C$2bn is to reform the system over the next five years

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Canada agrees C$40bn deal to reform child welfare for First Nations

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Half of total to be offered in compensation to 200,000 individuals and families who suffered from discriminatory system

A C$40bn agreement-in-principle has been reached in Canada to reform the child welfare system for First Nations people and compensate more than 200,000 individuals and families who suffered because of it.

At the heart of the deal is a legacy of discrimination in child welfare systems that saw many children removed from their homes and placed in state care, and others who were denied adequate medical care and social services because of their Indigenous identity.

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Preaching truth to power: the São Paulo priest standing up to Bolsonaro

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Júlio Lancellotti is an outspoken champion of homeless people – a cause that makes him unpopular with Brazil’s authorities

In 2017, most Brazilians were still unfamiliar with the name Jair Bolsonaro. But for Júlio Lancellotti, there was already cause for concern in the reactionary rhetoric of the man who would be elected president two years later under the slogan: “Brazil above everything, God above everyone.”

“I am astonished that a homophobic person like Bolsonaro appears on the presidential ballot,” said the priest during mass on 7 March of that year at St Michael the Archangel parish in São Paulo’s East Zone. The sermon, in which he also preached against rape culture and sexism, was typical of the man who has devoted his life to fighting injustice, often finding himself targeted by conservative politicians as a result.

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Canadian court awards $107m to families of Iran plane crash victims

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Civil lawsuit was filed against Iran and other officials the family members believe were to blame for the incident

A court in Ontario, Canada, has awarded C$107m ($83.94m), plus interest, to the families of six people who died when the Iranian Revolutionary Guards downed a Ukraine International Airlines plane near Tehran two years ago.

Iran shot down the airliner in January 2020. All 176 people on board were killed, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.

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Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro admitted to hospital, doctor says

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Leader admitted with intestinal blockage but is in stable condition, hospital says

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been taken to hospital with an intestinal blockage but is in a stable condition, according to the hospital.

Bolsonaro said in a Twitter post that his doctors were evaluating potential surgery on his intestine, adding that he was using a nasogastric tube.

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‘We can transition to a better country’: a trans Colombian on diversity in ecology and society

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Brigitte Baptiste has a high profile as a transgender Colombian woman and an ecologist – in a country where both are targeted

When Brigitte Baptiste walks on to the 10th floor of Bogotá’s Ean University at 9.45am in a plunging dress, knee-high cheetah-print boots and a silvery wig, the office comes to life. She examines some flowers sent by the Colombian radio station Caracol to thank her for taking part in a forum, her co-worker compliments her on her lipstick, and she settles in for a day of back-to-back meetings, followed by a private virtual conversation with the UN secretary general, António Guterres. Later that evening, she flies to Cartagena for a conference on natural gas.

The 58-year-old ecologist is one of Colombia’s foremost environmental experts, and one of its most visible transgender people, challenging scientific and social conventions alike. An ecology professor at the Jesuit-run Javeriana University for 20 years, she has written 15 books, countless newspaper columns, and won international prizes for her work. Most recently, she was appointed chancellor of Ean University, a business school, as part of its push for greater sustainability.

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House of healing: the Honduran sanctuary for female rights defenders

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In one of the world’s most dangerous regions for environmental and human rights activists, La Siguata offers a safe space for women suffering trauma as a result of their work

A milky-white and sky-blue stone hangs from a red string around Ethels Correa’s neck, and every so often she rubs it between her fingers.

“When I feel anger, I grab this stone and I begin to relax, because they taught me how to breathe, to relax the body and to relax the mind,” she says. “I carry it with me all the time.”

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