“Our own people don’t have dignity. There’s no security. There are thousands of malnourished kids. How can we offer to be a safe country if it isn’t even safe for our own citizens?”
Latin America
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
Is reform possible in Puerto Rico after street protests drive governor out of office?
“The emphasis of the activists on the ground,” Rolando López said, “is that the governor resigning is not the last step. This really is about a more general critique of the economy of Puerto Rico.”
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
Puerto Rico’s bishops call for Governor Ricardo Rosselló to step down
The bishops said in a statement on July 19: “You, Mr. Governor, bribed and attacked people and groups that participate in our democratic coexistence and therefore cannot continue to exercise your role.”
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Residents fight to keep the Amazon alive, ‘but big money speaks louder.’ Can the church help?
For more than three decades, Juscelina Silva Batista’s life has followed the rise and fall of the Amazon River.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Struggles of families uprooted by Brazil’s Belo Monte reveal the dam’s dark side
“People used to live there,” said Joana Gomes da Silva, pointing to the cluster of skeletal trunks and branches. “It was a very pretty house. It’s underwater now.”
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Development in the Amazon threatens way of life for Afro-Brazilian communities
Although slavery as an institution no longer exists, forms of forced labor persist in the country.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
When miners, loggers and developers invade indigenous lands, isolated people die
With the miners came violence and diseases like malaria, to which the relatively isolated Indians had no resistance. In one village, no one survived. In others, as many as one-third of the villagers succumbed, some to disease and others to malnutrition.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
‘They put a gun to my head,’ says Honduran mother of six
Maribel’s plight highlights the despair and desperation of many migrants, who flee violence, poverty and, increasingly, drought and the early effects of climate change in Central America.
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
Who gets to be Brazil’s patron of education under Bolsonaro? Paulo Freire or a Jesuit saint?
Allies of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro want to strip Paulo Freire of his patronage of Brazilian education in favor of a Jesuit saint. But he did not count on one thing: the opposition of Brazilian Jesuits.
Posted inFaith, News
Vatican questions use of term ‘viri probati’
While the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Amazon aims to highlight the damage wrought by climate change and exploitation, the possibility of ordaining married men to minister in remote areas of the rain forest continues to garner more attention.