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.

Threatened, arrested, attacked, and shot, Puerto Rico’s environmental activists have endured a lot while trying to enforce the environmental protection laws they feel the government refuses to enforce. Still, most of them refuse to back down.

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

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.

Far from slowing the pace of construction on Puerto Rico’s coasts to address climate change, as experts have requested, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi’s administration hit the accelerator to approve construction permits along the coasts.

VERACRUZ, Mexico (AP) — At least a half-dozen bodies have been found buried in shallow pits in the scrubland of the northern Mexico state of Sonora, while in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, experts and police uncovered at least three burial pits in a tropical mangrove island, authorities said Thursday.

The case was the first to be filed before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and centers around the cases of five women.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The sight of a huge oil tanker that has taken on water and is leaning to one side off a remote stretch of Venezuela’s coast has triggered international calls for action.

On February 16, journalist Reynaldo López was shot and killed in the northern Mexican state of Sonora.

The government agency that serves Caño Martín Peña’s social, economic and environmental needs is at risk for potential cuts to its budget.

After two potent hurricanes struck the unincorporated territory, climate fears take on new urgency.

La industria más grande en Haití es fantasma. El negocio del carbón generó $300 millones en el año 2012, según la Oficina de Minas y Energía.

Haiti’s largest industry is ghostly. The charcoal business generated $300 million in 2012, according to the Office of Mines and Energy.

In Panama, the Guna ethnic group, which resides in the Caribbean’s Guna Yala archipelago, will be the first indigenous community in Latin America to be relocated due to climate change.

The Dominican Republic’s east coast is losing the fight against coastal erosion, due to a lack of government intervention against companies linked to hotel development.

Climate change is not only eroding islands, but also actively destroying community life and economic activity in plain sight with little to no governmental action to protect citizens.

It exposed the vulnerabilities created by ubiquitous socioeconomic inequality and the differential neglect of the island’s rural regions.

My husband Roland wakes me up to the tune of “no water today.”