Brazil’s famed carnival kicked off in earnest on Saturday as millions of revellers poured into the streets, some of whom took aim at the nation’s deeply polarised politics. Most partiers, though, were dressed in distinctly apolitical garb, ranging from mermaid to cowboy costumes, suggesting that during carnival, Brazilians are focused on revelry first, and politics second
Category Archives: Americas
‘They wanted a better life’: the young Venezuelans escaping into Brazil alone
After six years of economic crisis in their neighboring country, Brazilian officials say more and more unaccompanied minors are arriving
Jesús Pérez was 16 when he crossed into Brazil in June, fleeing a life of hunger on the streets of his disintegrating homeland.
In Pacaraima, the Brazilian border town that is the main entry point for fleeing Venezuelans, he told social workers he hoped for a fresh start.
Continue reading...Justin Trudeau tells Canada protesters: ‘The barricades need to come down’
PM demands end to ‘untenable and unacceptable’ rail blockades erected in support of Indigenous activists fighting gas pipeline
Justin Trudeau has demanded that protesters lift railway blockades that have been erected across Canada in support of Indigenous activists who are fighting a natural gas pipeline.
“The situation as it currently stands is unacceptable and untenable,” the prime minister said on Friday afternoon. “Canadians have been patient. Our government has been patient. But it has been two weeks, and the barricades need to come down now.”
Continue reading...Brazil sends armed forces to north-east to quell violence from police strike
- Bolsonaro issued a warning: ‘it’s going to get ugly’
- A local senator was shot after driving into a picket line
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has dispatched army and national guard troops to the north-eastern state of Ceará in an attempt to quell a brewing security crisis triggered by a police officers’ strike.
Related: Rio Carnival takes a stand against Bolsonaro's divisive rhetoric
Continue reading...How Trump’s immigration policies hurt people’s lives – in pictures
Exhibit at the Bronx Documentary Center, the first in a year-long series, aims to document the current president’s overturning of decades of American immigration policy and law, and its profound effects on American society and the lives of immigrants
Continue reading...How the American dream died on the world’s busiest border
It is a place where worlds converge, a vast melting pot of different peoples, all in search of a better life. Yet the US-Mexico border is also, increasingly, a focal point for human suffering
Milson, from Honduras, sits with his 14-year-old daughter, Loany, on the reedy riverbank beside the bridge connecting Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, with downtown Brownsville, Texas, across the Rio Grande.
On the far reach – a few yards but another world away – is a vast tent (officially a “soft-sided facility”) erected to cope with the sheer numbers seeking asylum in the US. In a few weeks’ time, on the date stipulated on their “notice to appear” document, the people staying here will have their “credible fear interview” by video link.
Continue reading...Canadian police had ‘no authority’ to search pipeline activists, says watchdog
Letter offers scathing criticism of police’s tactics against Wet’suwet’en people amid growing protest over gas pipeline
Canadian federal police had “no legal authority” to make ID checks and searches on activists seeking to block a pipeline project on Indigenous territory, according to newly released correspondence from the force’s oversight body.
The nine-page letter written by Michelaine Lahaie, chair of the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, offers scathing criticism of the police’s continued use of tactics against Indigenous people which she had previously warned against.
Continue reading...Nearly 70 injured as 200 vehicles involved in pile-up in snowy Montreal
- Two people trapped in cars hours after accident
- ‘Pretty much everything with four wheels was involved’ – police
Nearly 70 people have been injured in a pile-up involving about 200 vehicles on a busy highway in a suburb of the Canadian city of Montreal.
Two people were still trapped in their cars hours after the crash, which happened at 12.30pm on Wednesday in La Prairie, Quebec, said Sgt Marie-Michelle Moore with the Sûreté du Québec, the province’s police force and highway patrol authority.
Continue reading...New train blockade piles pressure on Trudeau in Wet’suwet’en pipeline fight
Group of about 20 blocked Canadian National Railway Co rail line near Edmonton, capital of the western province of Alberta
Demonstrators opposed to a Canadian gas pipelinehave blockaded another railway line in the west of the country, adding to pressure on Justin Trudeau to solve a two-week protest.
Freight traffic in eastern Canada has already been stopped for days after campaigners blockaded a main line in Ontario. Protesters across the country have taken up the cause of the Wet’suwet’en indigenous people who are seeking to stop the C$6.6bn (US$4.98bn) Coastal GasLink gas pipeline project in British Columbia.
Continue reading...Justin Trudeau urges ‘dialogue and mutual respect’ to end rail blockade
- Canadian prime minister: ‘I know patience is running short’
- Indigenous activists are protesting against C$6.6bn gas pipeline
Justin Trudeau has called for patience and dialogue as his government seeks a peaceful end to a rail blockade that has shut down freight and passenger traffic. But the Canadian prime minister is under increasing pressure from the Conservative opposition to clear the tracks.
For almost two weeks, protesters across the country have taken up the cause of the Wet’suwet’en indigenous people of British Columbia in their campaign against the C$6.6bn (US$4.98bn) 40-mile Coastal GasLink gas pipeline project.
Continue reading...Will green technology kill Chile’s deserts? – video
The Atacama in northern Chile is the driest desert in the world, and may be the oldest. It also holds 40% of the world's lithium – an essential ingredient in the rechargeable batteries used in green technology. Indigenous leaders and scientists say Chile's plans to feed a global green energy boom with Atacama lithium will kill the desert. As violent protests rock the country, they are fighting for the mining to stop
Opioid vending machine opens in Vancouver
MySafe scheme for addicts aims to help reduce overdose deaths in Canadian city
A vending machine for powerful opioids has opened in Canada as part of a project to help fight the Canadian city’s overdose crisis.
The MySafe project, which resembles a cash machine, gives addicts access to a prescribed amount of medical quality hydromorphone, a drug about twice as powerful as heroin.
Continue reading...Venezuela: a year on from the failed uprising
Tom Phillips, the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, is back in Venezuela a year after the start of a dramatic, but so far unsuccessful, attempt to topple Nicolás Maduro. While conditions in Caracas appear slightly improved, outside the capital conditions in schools and hospitals are appalling – and getting worse. Also today: Jess Cartner-Morley on pockets
A year ago, the crisis in Venezuela reached a new pitch as the politician Juan Guaidó led an attempt to overthrow the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. As the bulk of Venezuela’s military remained loyal to the president, the attempt failed and Maduro maintained his grip on power. In the months since, he has boasted that Venezuela has enjoyed “the highest levels of nutrients and access to food”. But outside of the capital Caracas, the story is very different.
The Guardian’s Tom Phillips tells Anushka Asthana of his journey through the crisis-hit country and how the worst effects are being felt by children. Hospitals are falling into disrepair, schools are being repeatedly looted and some parents have fled the country, leaving their children behind.
Continue reading...Costa Rica’s largest drugs bust nets five tonnes of cocaine bound for Netherlands
Authorities found tonnes of cocaine stashed inside a shipping container of decorative canopy plants
Police in Costa Rica seized more than five tonnes of cocaine bound for the Dutch port of Rotterdam in the country’s largest ever drugs bust, officials said.
Authorities on Saturday found the cocaine in Costa Rica’s Caribbean port of Limon, stashed inside a shipping container of decorative canopy plants bound for the Netherlands.
Continue reading...Nayib Bukele’s military stunt raises alarming memories in El Salvador
The country’s popular, social media-savvy president marched troops into the parliament to demand $109m in security funds
It was a scene evoking bad memories of a bloody era in a country with a recent history of authoritarianism and civil war.
Soldiers in combat fatigues marched into El Salvador’s parliament, before the country’s popular young president, Nayib Bukele, sat down in the speaker’s chair and gave the assembled deputies an ultimatum: approve a loan for new security equipment or be summoned back in seven days for another session.
Continue reading...‘All we have are walls’: crisis leaves Venezuela’s schools crumbling
Schools across the country in dire straits as teachers abandon the profession or skip the country amid one of the worst economic downturns in modern history
There are 723 pupils at the José Eduardo Sánchez Afanador school but no electricity, no computers, no tables and no chairs.
The windows lack glass, the toilets have lost their sinks and its metal classroom doors have been plundered by thieves, allowing pigeons to colonize several of the filthy spaces.
Continue reading...Haiti: 15 children die in fire at orphanage run by US Christian group
- Two burned to death and 13 died in hospital due to asphyxiation
- Facility was run by US Christian group
Fifteen children have died after a fire swept through an orphanage in Haiti run by a US Christian group, triggering renewed controversy over the proliferation of non-registered orphanages in the poorest nation in the Americas.
Two children burned to death when fire broke out at the orphanage of the Church of Bible Understanding on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince on Thursday night. Thirteen others died in hospital due to asphyxiation.
Continue reading...‘It fills us with rage’: Mexican activists protest femicide at presidential palace
Demonstration stemmed from outrage over killing of Ingrid Escamilla and publication of photos of her mutilated corpse
Dozens of activists gathered outside Mexico’s presidential palace on Friday to protest against violence against women, chanting “Not one murder more” and splashing one of its large, ornate doors with blood-red paint and the words “femicide state”.
Related: 'Why did she have to die?' Mexico's war on women claims young artist
Continue reading...Canada driver captures rare sighting of mother lynx and her kittens
The wild cats which are larger than bobcats spend much of their life hidden in thick forest and are rarely seen in groups
It is one of Canada’s stealthiest predators, so spotting a single lynx is rare enough for travelers in the country’s hinterland.
But a driver in the western province of Manitoba recently managed to capture on video an entire family of the wild cats as they crossed the road.
Continue reading...‘We’re not giving up’: defiant Wet’suwet’en activists gain allies in pipeline fight
Pressure on Justin Trudeau’s government grows even as some politicians decry ‘hard-left ideology’
As armed Canadian police officers advanced through snow towards their camp, the group of Indigenous women was absorbed in a drumming ceremony to honour the spirits of missing and murdered Indigenous women across the country.
Rows of red dresses hung from a fishing line slung across the road, and from pine and spruce trees in the surrounding forest – each one a memorial to the thousands of Indigenous women killed or disappeared in recent years.
Continue reading...