The Environment

During the last few decades, illegal construction projects have encroached on Puerto Rico’s beautiful beaches, leading to the destruction of mangrove forests that protect the coastline from storms and rising sea levels.

The plan to build the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, dubbed “Cop City,” has seen people of all backgrounds unite and organize against it, including Atlanta’s Black residents, various religious organizations, Indigenous people, climate activists, college students, and families affected by police violence.

Starlink, a division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has almost 4,000 low-orbit satellites across the skies, connecting people in remote corners of the Amazon. The lightweight, high-speed internet system has also proved a new and valuable tool for Brazil’s illegal miners.

With thousands of Bolsonaro supporters either in jail or under investigation for plotting against democracy in Brazil, the nation’s attention has shifted to the defense of the Amazon rainforest and its Indigenous peoples and the policy shifts under President Lula.

On Saturday, hundreds of activists flooded Playa Almendros in Rincón, Puerto Rico to complete the demolition of a wall that was illegally built too close to the beach by a condo developer.

On Wednesday, Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural and Environmental Resources ordered a developer that built illegally built on top of Cueva Las Golondrinas in Aguadilla must restore the area impacted by the construction.

With miles of beaches and lush rainforest, Puerto Rico is often touted as a paradise for vacationers. But for the people who live there, rampant development and the worsening effects of climate change have bred a sense of ecological anxiety that drives many to fight for the environment.

On this episode of Latino Rebels Radio, host Julio Ricardo Varela speaks with Latino Rebels’ Caribbean correspondent Carlos Edill Berríos Polanco about the challenges environmentalists face in their fight against land privatization in Puerto Rico.

A judge in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico has ordered the demolition of two illegal structures built on top of Cueva Las Golondrinas after ruling that the lawsuit filed by the municipality against Aguadilla Pier Corporation has merit.

Armed government officials with Brazil’s justice, Indigenous, and environment ministries pressed illegal gold miners out of Yanomami Indigenous territory Wednesday, citing widespread river contamination, famine, and disease they have brought to one of the most isolated groups in the world.

Human rights groups and activists are demanding that Puerto Rican and U.S. authorities launch an investigation into the shooting of an environmental activist by private security personnel in the coastal town of Aguadilla on Sunday.

The Maya Train is intended to drive economic development to some of the country’s poorest areas, in part by bringing up to three million tourists each year. But one section crosses the Calakmul jungle, part of the Mayan jungle, the largest tropical forest in the Americas after the Amazon.

Manuel “Tortuguita” Páez Terán was shot and killed by a Georgia State Patrol officer on January 18 during a multi-agency sweep to remove land defenders from the Weelaunee Forest in southeast Atlanta—one more in a long legacy of murdered land defenders around the world.

A wrap-up of this week’s most important and interesting Latino news and views from around the world and the across the internet.

Fed up with the slow government response, Puerto Ricans in beach towns along the western coast have set up encampments to demand action be taken to stop illegal construction from further destroying the environment.

This week’s wrap-up comes to you from the cozy confines of quarantine, as senior editor Hector Luis Alamo has managed to catch COVID for only the second time this year.

Hurricane María, a Category 4 storm that swept through Puerto Rico in September 2017, left the island with a “new coast,” according to a new study by the Institute of Investigation and Coastal Planification of Puerto Rico.

A group of 16 municipalities filed a lawsuit on November 22 against multiple Big Oil companies for downplaying the risks of their fossil-fuel products on climate change.

Puerto Ricans will likely spend this Christmas without their time-honored tradition of eating plantains with dinner, after Hurricane Fiona destroyed 80 percent of the island’s plantain and banana crops in September.

The announcement, made on Friday, is part of the Biden administration’s effort to directly address the disproportionate impacts of pollution that have existed for decades in many low-income communities and communities of color.

On Thursday, private businesses used heavy machinery to block the public access path to Cueva del Indio, a Taíno historical site on Puerto Rico’s northern coast, which had been cleared by activists in mid-October.