Category Archives: Americas

Guatemala mine’s ex-security chief convicted of Indigenous leader’s murder

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  • Mynor Padilla pleaded guilty over death of Adolfo Ich in 2009
  • Mining firms accused of litany of abuses in Central America

A judge in Guatemala has accepted a guilty plea by the former head of security at Central America’s largest nickel mine who was on trial for killing an Indigenous leader, in a rare conviction over human rights violations allegedly linked to Canadian-owned mining companies in the region.

Mynor Padilla was found guilty on Wednesday of homicide for the 2009 fatal shooting of Adolfo Ich, a Maya Q’eqchi’ teacher and community leader who opposed the Fenix mine outside the town of El Estor.

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Quebec to enter full lockdown as Covid cases spiral

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Canadian province implements ‘shock measure’ intended to blunt steady growth of infections

Quebec will enter a full lockdown on Saturday, becoming the first Canadian province to enact a curfew as coronavirus cases once again spiral out of control.

The premier, François Legault, announced the sweeping rules on Wednesday, describing them a “shock measure” intended to blunt a steady growth in cases.

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Brazilian beef farms ‘used workers kept in conditions similar to slavery’

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Workers on farms supplying world’s biggest meat firms allegedly paid £8 a day and housed in shacks with no toilets or running water

Brazilian companies and slaughterhouses including the world’s largest meat producer, JBS, sourced cattle from supplier farms that made use of workers kept in slavery-like conditions, according to a new report.

Workers on cattle farms supplying slaughterhouses earned as little as £8 a day and lived in improvised shacks with no bathrooms, toilets, running water or kitchens, according to a report from Brazilian investigative agency Repórter Brasil.

Since 1995, the report said, 55,000 Brazilian workers have been rescued by government inspectors from “situations similar to slavery”. While the number of investigations has fallen in recent years – 118 workers were freed in 2018, compared with 1,045 a decade earlier – that does not mean the situation has improved, just that inspections have been reduced, it noted.

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Lupita: the indigenous activist leading a new generation of Mexican women – video

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In a country where indigenous people are increasingly displaced and journalists are killed at an alarming rate, a courageous new voice has emerged: Lupita, a Tzotzil-Maya woman​ ​at the forefront of a Mexican indigenous movement. Twenty years after Lupita lost her family in the Acteal massacre in southern Mexico, she has become a spokesperson for her people​ and for a new generation of Mayan activists. She balances the demands of motherhood with her high-stakes efforts to re-educate and restore justice to the world

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Lupita: the powerful voice of one indigenous woman leading a movement

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Film-maker Monica Wise talks about making her documentary on Mexican indigenous resistance

Our latest Guardian documentary tells the story of Lupita, a courageous young Tzotzil-Maya woman​ ​at the forefront of a Mexican indigenous movement. Over twenty years after Lupita lost her family in the Acteal massacre in southern Mexico, she has become a spokesperson for her people​ and for a new generation of Mayan activists. She balances the demands of motherhood with her high-stakes efforts to re-educate and restore justice to the world. The film-maker Monica Wise talks to us about her experience making the film.

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Outcry after Canadian politicians confess to ignoring holiday travel advice

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Jason Kenney, Alberta’s premier, faces calls to resign after refusing to punish party members and staff who took vacations

As winter descended over Canada and coronavirus case numbers rose, officials begged residents to remain home over the Christmas holidays.

But a string of politicians at federal or provincial levels have admitted to having taken vacations outside of the country, prompting outrage across the country and raising fears that their behaviour could undermine confidence in Canada’s fight against the pandemic.

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The vagina dialogues: 33-metre artwork draws far right’s ire in Brazil

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Juliana Notari’s hillside sculpture sparks clash between Bolsonaro-supporting right and leftwing cultural community

A 33-metre reinforced concrete vagina has sparked a Bolsonarian backlash in Brazil, with supporters of the country’s far-right president clashing with leftwing art admirers over the installation.

The handmade sculpture, entitled Diva, was unveiled by visual artist Juliana Notari on Saturday at a rural art park on the grounds of a former sugar mill in Pernambuco, one of Brazil’s most culturally vibrant states.

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Nicaragua’s Covid story far from truth | Letter

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The country should not be held up as a shining example in its response to the pandemic, writes Dr Hilary Francis, who points to the failure to provide accurate data and firing of health workers

John Perry (Letters, 31 December) suggests that we should learn from the Nicaraguan government’s management of Covid. He doesn’t mention that 700 Nicaraguan health professionals wrote an open letter begging the government to acknowledge the extent of the crisis, or that at least 10 health workers have been fired for criticising the government response. In the absence of accurate government data, an independent citizen observatory has been established, which attempts to keep track of the rate of infection. They estimate 11,935 cases in the period to 23 December, nearly double the official number.

On 21 December, Nicaragua’s national assembly passed a law that gives President Daniel Ortega the right to unilaterally declare that citizens are “traitors to the homeland” and ban them from running for office. The new legislation ensures that elections, scheduled for November 2021, will not be free and fair. There are no lessons to be learned from Ortega’s policies, but Nicaragua’s descent into dictatorship demands much closer attention.
Dr Hilary Francis
Northumbria University

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The world in 2021 – how global politics will change this year

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Donald Trump’s departure will alter the face of geopolitics. The climate crisis and Covid response will affect all nations – while others face very particular challenges. Observer correspondents examine the 12 months ahead

A potent mix of hope and fear accompanies the start of 2021 in most of the world. Scientists have created several vaccines for a disease that didn’t even have a name this time last year. But many countries, including the UK and the US, are still stumbling through the deadliest period of the pandemic.

The shadow of Covid will not begin to lift, even in richer countries, for months. Britain was the first to approve a vaccine and has secured extensive supplies, yet Boris Johnson’s suggestion that life might be returning to normal by Easter is widely seen as optimistic. Other countries, particularly in the south, face a long wait to get vaccines, and help paying for them. The rebuilding of economies shattered by Covid everywhere will be slow; even countries that managed to contain it have taken a hit, from Vietnam to New Zealand.

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Squatters issue death threats to archaeologist who discovered oldest city in the Americas

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Squatters reportedly belonging to one family claim site of 5,000 year-old ruins was given to them in the 1970s

Illegal squatters have invaded the ruins of the oldest city in the Americas, and made death threats against Ruth Shady, the celebrated Peruvian archaeologist who discovered the 5,000 year-old civilization.

The threats came via telephone calls and messages to various workers at the archeological site at the height of Peru’s Covid-19 pandemic. They followed reports to the police and prosecutors about the invasions of the ancient ruins of Caral.

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Beekeepers brace for next round with Canada’s ‘murder hornets’

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British Columbia resigned to a ‘long fight’ after 2020’s efforts to track and kill the invasive insects ended in frustration

The year 2020 is not one that beekeepers in Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia are likely to forget in a hurry. Since the spring, experts in both states have been gripped by fears of Vespa mandarinia, a hulking insect whose voracious appetite for honeybees and stealthy spread could pose a threat to the region’s vulnerable ecosystem.

I squeezed [the queen] on her thorax ... and this huge stinger came out. And the giant mandibles moved, trying to bite me. It was really quite beautiful

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Ontario minister who flouted Covid advice to take Caribbean holiday resigns

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Rod Phillips steps down as finance minister of Canada’s most populous province, adding to pressure on the premier, Doug Ford

The finance minister for Canada’s most populous province has resigned after going on a Caribbean vacation during the pandemic and apparently trying to hide the fact by sending social media posts showing him in a sweater before a fireplace.

Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, said on Thursday he had accepted Rod Phillips’s resignation as minister hours after Phillips returned home from a more than two-week stay on the island of St Barts despite government guidelines urging people to avoid non-essential travel.

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Mexico security forces’ seizures of fentanyl rise by 486% this year

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  • Officials say synthetic opioids easier to produce and smuggle
  • Drug labs have doubled from 91 last year to 175 in 2020

Seizures of the synthetic opioid fentanyl by Mexican security forces have increased by at least 486% in 2020, the country’s defence secretary has announced.

Mexico’s military and police forces seized an estimated 1.3 tons of the synthetic opioid this year, compared to 222 kilograms in 2019.

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‘I’m fascinated by power, force and bravery’: the woman who surfed the biggest recorded wave of 2020

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Seven years ago, she was nearly killed in pursuit of the sport she loves, but she defied expert’s predictions and made a stunning comeback

In the photographs of her record-breaking ride, the Brazilian surfer Maya Gabeira is a tiny blade on the water, cutting a line of white spume down the deep ridge of the vast grey wave that climbs behind her. The wave in question measured 22.4 metres (73.5ft), the highest ever surfed by a woman, the first to be measured and verified by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and a couple of feet greater than the one surfed by her nearest rival. It is also the biggest wave measured this year, surfed by man or woman.

Gabeira, who broke her own previous Guinness world record of 68ft, attributes her achievement to what she calls “taking a critical line”. In short, she takes her board to the fiercest and tallest part of the wave, “where the most powerful energy is, where it is actually breaking”. This, she says, is how “you put value into your wave”.

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Canadian politician faked Twitter posts to conceal Caribbean holiday

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Ontario premier Doug Ford under pressure after he admits knowing about Rod Phillips’s trip for weeks

Ontario premier Doug Ford is under pressure after admitting that he has known for weeks that his finance minister – who faked social media posts to conceal his location – had ignored a coronavirus lockdown to go on holiday in the Caribbean.

Posts on Rod Phillips’s social media accounts suggested that he remained home over Christmas, but it emerged on Tuesday that the minister flew to the island of St Barts in mid-December – despite his own government’s advice to avoid non-essential travel.

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Argentina legalises abortion and pro-choice campaigners erupt in celebration – video

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Argentina has become the largest Latin American country to legalise abortion after its senate approved the law change by 38 votes in favour to 29 against, with one abstention. Elated pro-choice campaigners who had been keeping vigil outside Buenos Aires’s congressional palace erupted in celebration after more than 30 years of activism

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Indigenous environmental defender killed in latest Honduras attack

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  • Félix Vásquez, 60, shot in own home in front of family
  • Killing followed death threats linked to work on environment

Another indigenous environmentalist has been killed in Honduras, cementing the country’s inglorious ranking as the deadliest place in the world to defend land and natural resources from exploitation.

Félix Vásquez, 60, a veteran leader of the indigenous Lenca people, was shot dead at home in Santiago de Puringla, a rural community in the department of La Paz, western Honduras on the night of 26 December – just weeks after reporting death threats linked to his work. His adult children were beaten and threatened by the four armed assailants in balaclavas, but survived the ordeal.

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‘Miners out, Covid out’: threats to indigenous reserve in Brazil grow

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Illegal goldminers supported by Bolsonaro bring environmental destruction and coronavirus to Yanomami communities

A petition with 439,000 signatures demanding “miners out, Covid out” of the Yanomami reserve in Roraima state was handed to Brazil’s congress this month as shamanic images were projected on to the building’s exterior. With Covid-19 ravaging the Yanomami population since the first death from the disease was reported in April, the existence of the “garimpeiros”, or goldminers, has brought even greater threats to the reserve.

The estimated 20,000 miners were already blamed for bringing alcohol and prostitution into the Yanomami reserve, where they have worked illegally for decades, clearing forests and polluting rivers with mercury used in separating out the gold. The destruction wreaked by their work has increased since far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took office – and they have kept working during the pandemic.

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Maradonaland: Naples plans statues and museum to honour ‘Saint Diego’

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City’s murals of Maradona have become pilgrimage sites since footballer’s death in November

A month since the death of Diego Armando Maradona and the southern Italian city of Naples is looking more like a Maradonaland each day.

After renaming Napoli football club’s San Paolo Stadium and a train station in his honour this month, local authorities are planning a large museum, commissioning statues and dedicating an entire square to the Argentinian who took the city’s football team to glory and is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.

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Covid fatalities soar in Mexico as president condemned for inaction

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As the crisis worsens, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government has hardly changed its minimal restrictions

When Rufino Pacheco arrived at the hospital, his breath jagged and his legs buckling, a doctor thrust papers at his stepdaughter, asking for her approval to put him on a ventilator. But the elderly patient balked.

Less than 12 hours later, Pacheco died, hooked up to an oxygen tank in his bedroom, as his wife cried out, “Don’t leave me, old man.” Days later, she too fell sick with Covid-19, along with her adult son.

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