Category Archives: Americas

It’s inspiring hope and change – but what is the IUCN’s green list?

Posted on by

The red list of species at risk is well-known, but the list for protected sites is quietly helping to ‘paint the planet green’

When Kawésqar national park was formed in the Chilean part of Patagonia in 2019, just one ranger was responsible for an expanse the size of Belgium. Its fjords, forests and Andean peaks are a precious wilderness – one of the few remaining ecosystems undamaged by human activity, alongside parts of the Amazon, the Sahara and eastern Siberia.

Chilean officials hope that Kawésqar will, one day, meet the high standards for protected areas laid out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and make it on to the organisation’s “green list”.

Continue reading...

Yemen, Myanmar and George Floyd: human rights this fortnight in pictures

Posted on by

A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Peru

Continue reading...

Latin America’s lack of a united front on Covid has had disastrous consequences | Andre Pagliarini

Posted on by

The regional coordination of the pink tide era has given way to various governments, left and right, going it alone

A terse report filed from São Paulo, Brazil, appeared in the 17 March 1919 edition of the New York Times. It read: “Influenza again has appeared here in epidemic form. The Government is taking steps to prevent the spread of the disease.” Just over one hundred years later, faced with another pandemic, the Brazilian government has taken a different approach. President Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right extremist elected in 2018, has repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus, urging citizens to suck it up and get back to work so that the economy can once again get moving.

The president has frequently appeared in public places without a mask, stopping to greet supporters, creating potential super-spreader events as a matter of course. Bolsonaro’s recklessness has had terrible consequences: Latin America’s largest nation has been ravaged by the pandemic, with more than 13m cases.

Continue reading...

Brazil’s ‘rapid and violent’ Covid variant devastates Latin America

Posted on by

Expert says global leaders must not ignore Brazil, which is ‘brewing variants left, right and centre’

As a coronavirus variant traced to the Brazilian Amazon marauded through Peru’s coastal capital last month, Rommel Heredia raced to his local hospital to seek help for his brother, mother and father.

“I said goodbye and promised I’d come back to take them home,” said the 47-year-old PE teacher, his voice muffled by two black masks pulled tightly over his face.

Continue reading...

Sharon Matola obituary

Posted on by
The founder of Belize Zoo and a champion of native species including the tapir and the scarlet macaw

In 1983, after a wildlife film-making project she was working on fell apart, Sharon Matola found herself in Belize, Central America, with a menagerie of homeless native creatures. She scrounged some land, wrote a sign on a piece of wood, and the Belize Zoo was open for business. Suddenly, she became “the zoo lady”, responsible for housing, feeding, cleaning and maintaining the health of the 20 animals.

The “office cat” was a jaguar, and there was a baby tapir in the bedroom on several occasions. It looked chaotic, but Matola, who has died aged 66 of a heart attack, was scrupulous about animal husbandry and determined that Belizeans would have a chance to learn about their tiny nation’s biodiversity.

Continue reading...

Canada judge delays extradition hearings in win for Huawei executive

Posted on by

Meng Wanzhou’s team had sought more time to review new documents after Hong Kong settlement with HSBC

A Canada judge has agreed to delay Meng Wanzhou’s US extradition hearings for three months, according to a ruling read in court on Wednesday, handing the Huawei chief financial officer’s defense team a win.

Meng, 49, was arrested at Vancouver international airport on charges of bank fraud in the US for allegedly misleading HSBC about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, causing the bank to break US sanctions.

Continue reading...

Trump-era policy forces families to make life-altering decisions at US-Mexico border

Posted on by

Families with older children are turned around under Title 42, invoked last year by Trump due to supposed health risk from Covid

Dazed and dejected, Mimi was sitting on a park bench in the Mexican city of Reynosa, Mexico, not far from the border with Texas. Clinging to her side was her six-year-old daughter.

The young Honduran mother seemed shocked by how close they had come to their American dream – and the realization that her own words had pushed it out of reach.

Continue reading...

Quebec court strikes down part of contentious religious symbols ban

Posted on by

Ruling removes limits on some teachers and provincial politicians but maintains ban for police, judges and other civil servants

A Canadian court has struck down part of a disputed Quebec law against public employees wearing religious symbols, removing limits on some teachers and provincial politicians but maintaining the ban for police officers, judges and other civil servants.

The 2019 law, which the Quebec government said was designed to preserve secularism in the mainly French-speaking province, prohibits many civil servants, including police officers, from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs and turbans on the job.

Continue reading...

The Oak Room review – bar-room tales brew up a storm

Posted on by

A father’s legacy is in dispute when wayward son RJ Mitte decides to spar with the barman who guards the man’s ashes

Several men walk into several bars in this interlocking suite of tales, and the repeating permutations of barman and barfly, blue collar and white collar, father and son, raconteur and listener pile up pleasingly into a kind of oppressive, Coenesque cosmic joke. RJ Mitte, Breaking Bad’s Walter White Jr, plays college boy Steve, who turns up in a snowstorm at a bar owned by the irascible Paul (Peter Outerbridge). He owes the latter money – and without it, Paul won’t give up the ashes of Steve’s recently deceased dad, Gord, whose funeral the youth failed to attend. And then this arrogant sadsack – whose very presence aggravates Paul – offers to pay him with a story.

Steve’s yarn is a slack spin on his own: a freezing wayfarer walks into The Oak Room, a pub in a neighbouring town, and puts a set of demands to an irked barman. Unimpressed, Paul tells him that he must learn to “goose the truth” to hold an audience, and then sucker-punches him with a story about Gord, with another story inside. Or he thinks it’s a sucker-punch – Steve reveals that he had only told the ending of his, and the start will transform everything.

Continue reading...

Violence erupts as Mexico’s deadly gangs aim to cement power in largest ever elections

Posted on by

Clashes have sparked political assassinations and the forced displacement of thousands ahead of crunch 6 June polls

Violent clashes between rival Mexican criminal groups – and their alleged allies in the security forces – are escalating ahead of mid-term elections in June, triggering a string of political assassinations and the forced displacement of thousands.

State and federal security forces have actively colluded with – and even fought alongside – the warring factions, according to local civilians, civil society activists and gunmen from various factions.

Continue reading...

Canada stimulus budget pledges funding for childcare and Covid-19 relief

Posted on by
  • Finance minister Chrystia Freeland seeks to slash deficit by 2025
  • ‘This budget is about finishing the fight against Covid’

Canada’s federal government has put childcare and Covid-19 relief at the heart of the country’s first pandemic budget, as the governing Liberals announced massive spending plans in an attempt to address growing inequality – and avert a snap election.

Delivering her government’s first budget in more than two years, the finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, on Monday framed the ambitious spending programme as both necessary to combat the disastrous “economic wounds” of the coronavirus pandemic and an opportunity to build a more equitable society.

Continue reading...

Ontario shifts strategy as it scrambles to combat worsening Covid outbreak

Posted on by

Province announces plans to make coronavirus vaccines more accessible in response to public pressure

Canada’s most populous province has announced plans to make coronavirus vaccines more accessible and the federal government pledged emergency aid as authorities scramble to combat a worsening outbreak in Ontario.

The shift in strategy comes after the premier, Doug Ford, was forced into a U-turn over deeply unpopular new restrictions announced on Friday.

Continue reading...

Cielo review – love letter to the desert’s starry skies

Posted on by

Alison McAlpine’s documentary draws out tales from locals and astronomers to evoke the magic and mystery of Chile’s stargazing hotspot

Cielo means “sky” in Spanish, and “heaven”, too. And it’s with a sense of humbled wonder at the immense mystery of it all that the Canadian film-maker Alison McAlpine casts her camera upwards in this beautiful documentary about the night sky. It’s filmed at the stargazing hotspot of Chile’s Atacama desert, where there is virtually no light pollution; the heavens appear to be within touching distance – as if a seam in the sky has been unpicked and the stars tumble out like diamonds.

For those of us who live in urban areas, we look up from noisy streets and bright city lights to the vast emptiness of the sky. In Atacama, it’s the reverse; the sky seems more alive than the earth – a bare, Martian landscape of rock and sand. With her cinematographer, Benjamín Echazarreta, McAlpine shoots some astonishing time-lapse photography, which features alongside interviews with astronomers at the European observatories in the desert and locals who eke out a living somehow. One man is a UFO photographer; he thinks that humans are more evil than the aliens and, knowing this, the aliens don’t bother to land.

Continue reading...

Skepticism and a shrug: Cubans greet the end of 62 years of Castro rule

Posted on by

People in Havana more concerned about buying chicken suspect little will change with Raúl’s departure

News travels swiftly through Havana, bumping against people so they turn, then rolling on. Cubans have a phrase for it: la bola en la calle, the ball in the street.

Raúl Castro’s announcement on Friday that he is to retire and bring 62 years of Castro rule on the island to a close caused barely a ripple, even if it sent waves around the world.

Continue reading...

Keiko Fujimori would be ‘lesser of two evils’ as Peru president, says Nobel prize author

Posted on by

Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa says Fujimori’s opponent Pedro Castillo would undermine democracy

The Nobel prize-winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa has called on his compatriots to support Keiko Fujimori’s bid to become president, despite once running against her now jailed and disgraced father, Alberto, and spending years savaging the dynasty for its corrosive effects on Peru and its politics.

Vargas Llosa said the rightwing Fujimori – who faces Pedro Castillo, a far-left but socially conservative union leader and teacher in June’s presidential runoff – was “the lesser of two evils”. Castillo won 19.1% of the vote in last week’s first round, while Fujimori took 13.4%.

Continue reading...

Police killing hundreds in Rio de Janeiro despite court ban on favela raids

Posted on by

The Brazilian state has seen nearly 800 police-caused deaths in nine months, with poor city communities raided almost daily

Nearly 800 people were killed by police in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro in the past nine months, as raids remain a terrifying routine for favela families – despite a supreme court ruling to halt incursions during the coronavirus pandemic.

New figures show that between June 2020 and March 2021, 797 people were killed in Rio state, 85% in the city of Rio and surrounding metropolitan region.

Continue reading...

Ontario gives police sweeping powers as Covid crisis spirals out of control

Posted on by

New measures to enforce stay-at-home order with hospitals ‘bursting at the seams’ but civil liberties campaigners cry foul

Ontario has announced sweeping new police powers to enforce an extended stay-at-home order, in the latest sign that officials in Canada’s most populous province have lost control of the rapidly spreading coronavirus.

With a record number of new cases, there is growing worry among experts that the already-strained healthcare system is being further pushed to the brink.

Continue reading...

Brazil warns women to delay pregnancy amid Covid-19 surge

Posted on by

Advice comes as country’s clinicians claim P1 Covid variant more aggressive during pregnancy

Brazil has warned women to delay getting pregnant until the worst of the pandemic passes, saying the virus variant that is devastating the South American country appears to affect expectant mothers more than earlier versions of the coronavirus.

The recommendation comes as Brazil continues to be one of the global epicenters of the pandemic, with more Brazilians dying of the virus each day than anywhere else in the world.

Continue reading...

Raúl Castro confirms he is resigning as head of Cuba’s Communist party

Posted on by

His retirement means that Cubans will not have a Castro formally guiding their affairs for the first time in over six decades

Raúl Castro has confirmed that he is resigning as head of Cuba’s Communist party, ending an era of formal leadership by him and his brother Fidel Castro that began with the 1959 revolution.

The 89-year-old Castro made the announcement on Friday in a speech at the opening of the eighth congress of the ruling party – the only one allowed on the island.

Continue reading...

US-made guns are ripping Central America apart and driving migration north | Ioan Grillo

Posted on by

An iron river of illegal guns flows from the US to Mexico, Central America, and across the hemisphere

The stray bullet from the gang fight struck Katery Ramos when she was 12 years old, playing on the dirt street in the poor Planeta neighbourhood of San Pedro Sula, Honduras. “I was standing up for a moment, afterwards I fell,” she told me, sitting with her mother in a scrubby field near her home.

Related: Biden strikes international deal in bid to stop migrants reaching US border

Continue reading...