Latin America

 

17 03, 2026

A decade after the death of Berta Cáceres, we can no longer tolerate threats to environmental activists

2026-10-30T17:52:12-04:00Tags: , , , |

According to Global Witness, 2,253 environmental defenders have been killed since 2012, with Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers among the most affected. These defenders often face powerful industries and governments while protecting their lands and communities. Berta Cáceres was murdered in 2016 for successfully halting a massive hydropower development along the Gualcarque River in Honduras. She was assassinated by hired gunmen by executives of the company building the dam. In 2019 in Colombia, Francia Márquez, was the target of a grenade and gunfire attack for defending her Afro-Colombian community from illegal mining. Her advocacy and sacrifice led her to be the first Afro-Colombian to be elected vice president of Colombia. The work, legacy, and attacks against these women  inspired international legal efforts to protect environmental activists, such as the Escazú Agreement, the first ever international treaty made so governments had to specifically protect environmental human right defenders in Latin American and the Caribbean. Philanthropists are also providing financial and strategic support to global environmental defenders. While progress has been made, stronger government accountability, enforcement of existing protections, and continued funding are needed to ensure environmental defenders can continue their work without sacrificing their lives.

7 02, 2026

The importance of environmental care in Latin America

2026-10-30T16:30:50-04:00Tags: |

In Latin America, women perform three times as much care work as men, much of it unpaid, including child-rearing and eldercare. This burden is even greater for rural and low-income women. Therefore, according to anthropologists Merrill Singer and Bárbara Rylko-Bauer, COVID-19 brought upon not just a pandemic, but a syndemic for these women. A syndemic is “the synergy between a virus, other health conditions, and social afflictions in a combination that had a particularly severe impact on the realities of socially vulnerable groups.” For women, this meant greater exposure to the virus, but it also highlighted the vital roles they played in their communities. They were volunteering at soup kitchens, providing protection against violence, and organizing street cleanups—making them unofficial but key leaders in the health response. This raises an important question of women's bodies so often at the forefront of these crises. The same gendered systems that place the responsibility of caring for others on women also make their labor invisible and unpaid. Their work is treated as essential to the survival of communities, yet their bodies, health, and safety are so often treated as expendable.The climate response is no different. In this context, care is not an individual act but a political and collective practice. Recognizing and supporting this work is essential to resisting the climate crisis, and women are central to these efforts.

25 04, 2025

Showcasing Indigenous Water Rights Activists

2026-03-29T17:57:45-04:00Tags: , , , |

Fiona McLeod, a freelance writer reporting on environmental justice issues, highlights the film “Water For Life” which tells the story of three Indigenous activists in Central and South America as they face threats to their lives in the fight to protect their communities’ access to clean water and ancestral lands from mining, hydroelectric projects, and large-scale agriculture plans. The three activists have all previously received the Goldman Environmental Prize, and include the now deceased Berta Cáceres, a leader of the Lenca people who successfully stopped construction of a hydroelectric project in Honduras; Francisco Pineda, a subsistence agriculture farmer who led a movement that stopped a gold mine in El Salvador; and Alberto Curamil, an Indigenous Mapuche leader in Chile who organized to stop two hydroelectric projects on the sacred Cautín River. The podcast invited the filmmakers to discuss the narratives and stories shared during the film, specifically the human costs, sacrifices, and loss of environmental defenders in Latin America. In the story of Berta Cáceres, they share how she mobilized her community to resist the construction of the Agua Zarca Dam on the sacred Gualcarque River by the Honduran corporation DESA. The river is considered sacred and to be a place where female spirits live, and the dam was planned to be built in the heart of the river. As Berta put forth, the Lenca consider the river and Mother Earth to have rights, sentiments spoken long before the Rights of Nature movement had been used as a legal precedent. Less than a year after earning the Prize, Berta was assassinated in her home. Her death inspired activists around the world to support the Lenca’s fight to protect their ancestral land. Her three daughters, Olivia, Berta, and Laura Cáceres, carry on her work, continuing to raise international awareness of Berta’s work.

28 11, 2024

Women Crossing the Line: Defensoras in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala

2026-03-26T00:50:17-04:00Tags: |

“Women Crossing the Line: Defensoras in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala,” is a three part mini-documentary series that spotlights the work of women defenders in each of the three countries. The filmmakers meet women activists from Latin America who have stood bravely to demand an end to violence and promote women’s rights. The films highlight Alma Gomez, a former guerilla fighter now working to seek justice for victims of femicide in northern Mexico; Daysi Flores, who took to the streets in defense of democracy after the 2009 coup in Honduras; and Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum, who works to defend the rights of Indigenous communities in Guatemala. The episodes document how women human rights defenders combat femicide, seek justice for victims of sexual violence, promote human rights in communities, navigate setbacks in militarized landscapes, and defend their land and livelihoods against violence and extractives.

31 05, 2022

A look at violence and conflict over Indigenous lands in nine Latin American countries

2023-11-30T14:33:37-05:00Tags: |

This article interviews twelve Indigenous leaders from nine Latin American countries to discuss the violence and conflict experienced in the region due to land disputes. One leader interviewed, Ruth Alipaz (leader of the San José de Uchupiamonas community of Bolivia), has been pushing against the Chepete-El Bala hydro project. The proposed project would create two reservoirs which would flood around 66,000 hectares of territory, and displace 5,000 or more people, the majority being Indigenous. Ruth shares how she has received threats for her vocal opposition to the project, emphasizing this common shared experience between female Indigenous leaders. About 363 Indigenous activists in Latin America were murdered between 2012 and 2020. Marina Comandulli, who is a campaign officer for Global Witness, shares how Indigenous People make up one third of the global number of murdered environmental activists despite comprising only 4% of the global population. In the face of violence and discrimination from male peers, Indigenous women continue to lead the forefront of land protection, creating organizations like Amazonian Women, a group made up of over one hundred Ecuadorian women who work on land protection and cultural preservation.  Photo Credit: Flor Ruíz

29 03, 2021

Finally, UN Recognizes We Need Indigenous Peoples to Save Forests

2025-07-10T09:18:51-04:00Tags: , |

The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations released a report stating that Indigenous and tribal communities in Latin America and the Caribbean, the primary protectors of the forests and biodiversity in the region, need more protections and resources that have consistently been denied or taken from them. Ginny Alba and Robinson López Descanse are a married Colombian couple who have dedicated their lives to climate activism. After López Descanse died of COVID-19, leaders became more aware of the need for better health, education, and financial resources for Indigenous and tribal groups. Providing Afro-Latin and Indigenous peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean with land rights and economic support protects communities, cultures, livelihoods, while protecting biodiversity, reducing carbon emissions, and creating a more liveable environment Earth. Indigenous sovereignty is a climate solution.

12 05, 2020

Berta Cáceres’ legacy among women land and water defenders in Latin America

2026-05-12T15:01:58-04:00Tags: |

Ivonne Ramos of “Acción Ecológica” (Ecuador) prepared a statement for the virtual launch of the “Latin American Network of Women Defenders of Social and Environmental Rights” (“la Red Latinoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Sociales y Ambientales”), a women’s organization present in 11 countries of Abya Yala, a term used by some Indigenous peoples of the Americas to refer to the American continents. The network is composed of women land and water defenders from El Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, and advocates for policies, projects, and practices that contribute to the defense of the rights of our communities, nature, and social rights. Ramos notes, “Our cultural identity’s values and paradigms and our condition as women allow us to prioritize the sacredness of life and the need to care for Pachamama (nature), as a giver of life, commissioned by our grandparents and our sacred heritage to deliver to future generations,” and “There is a link between women and land; this is the space where life is reproduced. Women and land are united by a bond stronger than the economy. It is a symbolic bond, a bond of support and historical belonging.” The emergence of women as leaders in defense of their territories since the 1990s has risen in powerful opposition to patriarchal and colonial models of power, which are based on the exploitation of natural resources in Latin America and increased foreign investment for these resources. The various forms of violence and criminalization women have faced in defense of land constitute a form of social control, discrimination, and maintenance of the interests of powerful economic groups. An emphasis on the gendered impacts of land defense is needed due to a lack of data and because, in addition to being exposed to the same risks as male defenders, women defenders run risks specific to gender.

7 06, 2017

Women’s right to the city; reflections on inclusive urban planning

2025-05-24T18:58:13-04:00Tags: , |

Ana Falú is an Argentinian architect, professor, researcher, and feminist activist whose work focuses on the shortcomings of traditional city design and planning, recognizing the unequal relations between men and women, and the opportunities to do better. Women's rights to the city have historically been overlooked, despite their active participation in city building and social movements. In Latin America, these challenges are exacerbated by high urbanization rates and climbing inequality. Therefore, urban policies and gender-sensitive planning must ensure equal conditions and opportunities for all genders and diverse groups, including transgender people and sexual minorities. Such planning can also address economic well-being, political participation, bodily autonomy, and equal access to urban resources. Falú' calls for the incorporation of women's right to the city into the Habitat III process and the New Urban Agenda in urban planning conferences, emphasizing the need for gender equality in urban planning to create more democratic and inclusive cities.

12 05, 2017

Women Activists are Targets of Gender-Biased Violence

2026-05-12T15:23:29-04:00Tags: |

In Latin America, gendered violence extends throughout the region against women defenders. Fanny Kaekat, Indigenous leader of the Shuar Arutam people in the Southeast of Ecuador, has spent her life defending territories in the region from the threat of mining. At the 14th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Conference (Eflac), Kaekat spoke of how the military entered to force the Shuar Arutam families out of their village. The soldiers focused their brutality on women by forcing them to move quickly, despite them caring for children, as well as burning their homes and kicking over their pots with food. The article notes the Latin American region has the highest rates of gender violence not perpetrated by a partner and the second highest committed by an intimate partner. The 2016 annual report of “Global Witness” points out that 60% of the 200 murders of human rights defenders in the world occurred in Latin America. Cases show that violence against women activists is due to their role in defending the territories and community life, along with specific gender biases. As said by Denisse Chávez, from the Peruvian group Women and Climate Change, “Women rights activists challenge many traditional and cultural roles, breaking with the stereotype of women dedicated to the home, and they mobilise for a double agenda, the sovereignty of their bodies and of their territories, the freedom to decide over them. The system’s response is to discipline them,” alluding to the concept contributed by the Argentine feminist academic Rita Segato. While the current institutions are weak to protect women defenders, by joining efforts, women will find the support and the strength to continue, under the slogan of Eflac: “diverse but not dispersed.”

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