By Sam Cowie Maria talks fondly about the peaceful rural community where she grew up. As a child, she recalls playing games in the forest and in the river with the other kids, picking fresh açaí berries and foraging for nuts under towering trees. There were no “industrialized toys,” she says. It was “all nature.” […]
Category: long form
For young Venezuelan migrants in Brazil, drugs, gold and early death
By Emily Costa, Mariana Rios and Rodrigo Chagas Miguel has a new job. It looks like he’s managing a café — in the place he oversees, a young man is serving coffee to a group of Brazilian boys, all of whom appear to be under age 18, who are sitting around a wooden table in […]
In Venezuela, Colombian guerrillas recruit Indigenous youth
Along border with Venezuela, Colombian guerrillas lure unemployed Indigenous youths into drug trade, extortion rackets and armed conflict.
Brazilian drug gang takes root in Peruvian Amazon
The notorious Brazilian gang Comando Vermelho has seized control of the cocaine trade in Peru’s Ucayali region.
Colombian drug runners turn to shamans for protection
Before embarking on a perilous trek through the jungle, drug couriers in Colombia turn to shamans for protection.
The poorest narcos in the drug-trafficking chain
The poorest narcos in the trafficking chain risk even their own children to deliver drugs to criminal organizations.
Armed groups threaten Indigenous lands in southern Venezuela
In Venezuela’s southern Amazon region, Pemón Indigenous communities are caught between encroaching armed groups and illegal gold miners.
Dredges: Gold mining spurs crime & corruption on Brazil-Colombia border
Miners dredging millions of dollars in gold from Brazil’s Puruê River devastate the environment and attract armed groups.
Welcome to the Amazon Underworld
3 August 2023 The Amazon, the largest rainforest in the world, is also a source and transit point for illegally extracted jungle resources and narcotics, linking nine countries together. As criminal economies expand, violence and deforestation worsen, and the Amazon and its communities face an existential threat. Beneath the lush canopy of the world’s most […]
Despite lawsuit, Casino Group still sells beef from an Amazonian Indigenous land
A new investigation shows that farms located in the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon supplied two JBS meatpacking plants that sell beef to brands of the French supermarket giant.