Selected Articles

  • Informal Trash Recyclers Go Global

    NACLA, Feature, Apr 07, 2008

    In poor cities around the world, millions eke out a living by scavenging recyclable materials from the streets that can be exchanged for fractions of a cent. They are at the lowest rung of consumer society, the very rock-bottom of globalization. And they know it. “If we were any poorer, we’d be dead,” said Jorge Eliécer Ospina, a trash recycler in Bogotá, Colombia.

  • Waste Picker: 21st Century Profession

    New America Media (NAM), News Report, Mar 21, 2008

    Such economic development agencies as the World Bank and some local governments are beginning to recognize trash recyclers as relevant and good service to society as a whole. NAM contributor, Teo Ballvé reports from Bogota, Colombia, where the First World Congress of Waste Pickers conference was recently held.

  • Land Grab Threatens Indigenous Embera

    Embera paint

    Colombia Displaced, News Report, Mar 20, 2008

    Twelve years after the Embera were forced to flee, loggers and farmers are now leading a massive land-grab on their traditional territories in northwest Colombia. The group could stand to lose half of their lands.

  • Attack on Peace Community

    Z Magazine, Feature, Feb 13, 2008

    With a return to the hamlet of Mulatos planned for February 21, paramilitaries are once again on the rampage, while the army and police continue abetting the repression—in many cases, as active participants.

  • Mate on the Market: Fair Trade and the Gaucho’s ‘Liquid Vegetable’

    NACLA Report on the Americas, Feature, Nov 01, 2007

    When Eugenio Kasalaba awoke on March 24, 1976, in Argentina’s northeastern-most province of Misiones, he and his father began the day with their usual routine of heating water and turning on the radio. But instead of the expected news program or an old tango, they heard an unmistakable sign of the coming terror: “Avenida de las Camelias,” the Argentine military’s favorite marching-band song, all across the radio dial, the same song. Stunned, Kasalaba muttered, “Papá, el golpe, el golpe” (Dad, the coup, the coup). Without taking his eyes off the radio, his father replied, “Come, let’s have a mate.”

  • Bioprospecting and Biopiracy in the Americas

    NACLA, Essay, Aug 30, 2007

    In the 1570s, a physician named Francisco Hernández led the first colonial scientific expedition to the New World. He traveled Mexico collecting plants that might prove valuable in curing European diseases. Since Hernández was clueless when it came to the properties of local plant species, he depended on knowledgeable indigenous healers who guided him to medicinal plants.