Category Archives: Brazil

‘Funk is the reality we live’: Rio show celebrates sound of the favela

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Exhibition puts music previously shunned by elites as ‘stuff of outlaws’ in long tradition of black culture and resistance

Hebert Amorim was eight when he got his first taste of funk carioca (Rio funk): a pirate CD by Mr Catra, a favela MC famed for his ferociously explicit verses about gangs, guns and sex.

“My mum caught me listening to it and went mental,” said the 30-year-old visual artist from Senador Camará, a hardscrabble corner of west Rio de Janeiro where police fear to tread.

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Deforestation has big impact on regional temperatures, study of Brazilian Amazon shows

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Research highlights benefits forests bring surrounding regions in terms of cooler air and more rainfall

Deforestation has a far greater impact on regional temperatures than previously believed, according to a new study of the Brazilian Amazon that shows agricultural businesses would be among the biggest beneficiaries of forest conservation.

The research has important political implications because farmers in Amazonian states have, until now, led the way in forest destruction on the assumption that they will make money by clearing more land.

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Aurelius Group in talks to buy the Body Shop, says report

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Banking sources say a deal for the beauty products chain is expected to be signed next month

The private equity investor Aurelius Group is in talks to buy the beauty products chain the Body Shop, which has been put up for sale by its Brazilian owner, Natura & Co, a source familiar with the talks has told Reuters.

If completed, the deal is expected to value the Body Shop at a lower price than the £400m-£500m suggested in some media reports, the source said.

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Environmental crime money easy to stash in US due to loopholes, report finds

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Secrecy and lax oversight mean illegal loggers and miners in Amazon can park billions in real estate and other assets

Secrecy and lax oversight have made the US a hiding place for dirty money accrued by environmental criminals in the Amazon rainforest, a report says.

Illegal loggers and miners are parking sums ranging from millions to billions of dollars in US real estate and other assets, says the report, which calls on Congress and the White House to close loopholes in financial regulations that it says are contributing to the destruction of the world’s biggest tropical forest.

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Ancient rock carvings revealed by receding Amazon waters amid drought

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Human faces and other figures believed to be up to 2,000 years old exposed as Brazil river level hits record low

Human faces and other figures etched in stone up to 2,000 years ago have been revealed on Amazon riverbanks as a historic drought in the Brazilian region has brought water levels to unprecedented lows.

The petroglyphs, which include animals and other natural forms, have been revealed on the shores of the Rio Negro, at an archeological site known as the Ponto das Lajes, or Place of Slabs.

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Argentina: leftists celebrate after far-right Milei fails to win election victory

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Lula and other Latin American leftwingers hail Sergio Massa’s first-placed finish, with election now headed to November runoff

Leading Latin American leftists have celebrated the thwarting of Javier Milei’s attempt to claim a first-round victory in Argentina’s presidential election after the far-right populist was beaten by his centrist rival Sergio Massa.

Milei, an oddball economist who has called climate change a “socialist lie” and the pope “a lefty son of a bitch”, had hoped an explosion of anti-establishment rage would catapult him into the presidency on Sunday as 27 million Argentinians turned out to vote amid the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

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Drought turns Amazonian capital into climate dystopia

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Forest fires leave Manaus with second worst air quality in the world, while low river levels cut off communities

A withering drought has turned the Amazonian capital of Manaus into a climate dystopia with the second worst air quality in the world and rivers at the lowest levels in 121 years.

The city of 1 million people, which is surrounded by a forest of trees, normally basks under blue skies. Tourists take pleasure boats to the nearby meeting of the Negro and Amazon (known locally as the Solimões) rivers, where dolphins can often be seen enjoying what are usually the most abundant freshwater resources in the world.

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Bolsonaro was engineer of ‘wilful coup attempt’, Brazil congress inquiry alleges

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Congressional investigation into failed rightwing insurrection on 8 January calls for former president to be charged with four crimes

Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro was the mentor of “a wilful and premeditated coup attempt” that sought to plunge Latin America’s largest democracy into political mayhem and perhaps even civil war, a congressional inquiry investigating the 8 January insurrection has alleged.

The dramatic assertion was made on Tuesday as the senator Eliziane Gama read the inquiry’s final report into January’s failed rightwing uprising in which thousands of radical Bolsonaro supporters rampaged through the capital, Brasília, after their leader failed to win re-election.

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Water level at Amazon port in Brazil hits lowest point in 121 years amid drought

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Port in Manaus records lowest water level since 1902, leaving boats stranded and unable to deliver food and water to remote villages

The water level at a major river port in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has hit its lowest point in at least 121 years, as a historic drought upends the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and damages the jungle ecosystem.

Rapidly drying tributaries to the mighty Amazon river have left boats stranded, cutting off food and water supplies to remote jungle villages, while high water temperatures are suspected of killing more than 100 endangered river dolphins.

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Lula urges end to ‘insanity of war’ as Latin Americans killed in Hamas attack

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Brazil president calls for humanitarian aid to protect Israeli and Palestinian citizens, while Latin Americans also taken hostage

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has called for an end to “the insanity of war” as it emerged that more than a dozen Latin Americans were killed during Hamas’s assault, with citizens of Brazil and Argentina taken captive in the Gaza Strip.

By Wednesday morning, Latin American government and media reports had confirmed the deaths of seven Argentinians, two Brazilians, two Peruvians, one Colombian and one Paraguayan. At least 15 Argentinians, three Peruvians, two Mexicans and one Brazilian remain missing.

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Indigenous Amazonians urge Brazil to declare emergency over severe drought

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Drought and heatwave has killed fish in rivers as Indigenous group Apiam says villagers have no water, food or medicine

Indigenous people in the Amazon are calling on the Brazilian government to declare a climate emergency as their villages have no drinking water, food or medicine due to a severe drought that is drying up rivers vital for travel in the rainforest.

The drought and heatwave has killed masses of fish in the rivers that Indigenous people live off and the water in the muddy streams and tributaries of the Amazon river has become undrinkable, the umbrella organization Apiam that represents 63 tribes in the Amazon said on Tuesday.

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Human emissions made deadly South American heat 100 times more likely

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Research shows climate crisis by far main cause of recent unseasonable temperatures in southern winter and early spring

The deadly heat in central South America over the past two months was made 100 times more likely by human emissions that disrupted the climate, scientists have shown.

Temperatures have exceeded 40C in late winter and early spring in the southern hemisphere, affecting millions and leading to heat-related deaths.

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Top grain traders ‘helped scupper’ ban on soya from deforested land

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Cargill and ADM led push to weaken new protections for threatened ecosystems in South America, report says

Cargill and ADM, two of the world’s leading livestock feed companies, helped to scupper an attempt to end the trade in soya beans grown on deforested and threatened ecosystem lands in South America, a new report alleges.

Soya is one of the cheapest available types of edible protein, and is in huge demand for feed for animals around the world; as our consumption of meat and dairy has risen globally, the need for soya has soared too.

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Three doctors shot dead in Brazil in suspected politically motivated attack

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Among the dead is a brother of a lawmaker belonging to the same party as Marielle Franco, Rio politician shot dead in 2018

Three doctors have been killed and another wounded in a beachside shooting in Rio de Janeiro, which Brazilian officials believe may have been a politically motivated attack.

Security camera footage obtained by local newspaper O Globo showed a group of black-clad gunmen emerging from a car and running up to the victims’ table in the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood and opening fire.

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Brazil expels illegal settlers from Indigenous lands in Amazon

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Thousands affected as government vows to stamp out land grabs in protected areas

Brazil’s government has begun removing thousands of non-Indigenous people from two native territories in a move that will affect thousands who live in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.

The Brazilian intelligence agency ABIN said in a statement that the goal was to return the Apyterewa and Trincheira Bacaja lands in Para state to the original peoples. It did not say whether or not the expulsion of non-Indigenous people had been entirely peaceful.

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Brazil bank’s past slavery ties to be investigated in unprecedented inquiry

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Banco do Brasil, one of country’s biggest banks, under scrutiny as institutions called to account for role in trafficking of Africans

Brazilian prosecutors have launched a civil investigation into one of the country’s largest banks’ historical links to slavery, in an unprecedented move to hold Brazilian institutions to account for their role in the enslavement of millions of Africans.

Banco do Brasil was notified this week of the public inquiry seeking reparations for the bank’s connections with the transatlantic trafficking of Black people.

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Brazilians push to make dream of Black woman on supreme court a reality

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Women make up 51% of the population, and Afro-Brazilians 56%, but no Black woman has ever sat on the highest court

A young Black Brazilian girl dreams of being a pop star, a writer or a world champion in gymnastics, dressing up like the Afro-Brazilian women who have achieved that before her.

But when her mother suggests that she aspire to become a judge on the supreme court, the girl looks incredulous and asks: “Like who?”

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Brazil supreme court rules in favor of Indigenous land rights in historic win

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Court voted against agribusiness-backed attempt to prevent communities claiming land they did not physically occupy in 1988

Brazil’s supreme court has blocked efforts to dramatically strip back Indigenous land rights in what activists called a historic victory for the South American country’s original inhabitants.

Nine of the court’s 11 members voted against what rights groups had dubbed the “time limit trick” – an agribusiness-backed attempt to prevent Indigenous communities claiming land they did not physically occupy in 1988.

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Bolsonaro met with army, navy and air force heads to discuss coup – reports

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Claims by former Brazilian president’s ex-secretary prompt calls for alleged rightwing conspirators to be brought to justice

Jair Bolsonaro’s former secretary has reportedly told investigators his ex-boss met the heads of Brazil’s army, navy and air force late last year to discuss a “putschist plan” for a military coup.

The claims – reported by two of Brazil’s most important news outlets, O Globo and UOL – prompted calls for the alleged rightwing conspirators to be brought to justice.

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US and Brazil warn of attempt to stop Guatemala president-elect taking power

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Fears Guatemalan democracy is in peril amid warning of potential coup to block inauguration of anti-corruption crusader

International concern over the future of Guatemala’s democracy is growing, as Brazil’s president warned of a possible coup to stop the president-elect taking power and the US denounced unprecedented attempts to undermine the Central American country’s election result.

The centre-left anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo was elected Guatemala’s new president last month. This week thousands of supporters took to the streets to protest against alleged attempts to block his inauguration in January.

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