Musically speaking, Brazil’s Amazon region has a reputation for its musicians “leaving for the big city”, as they say of people moving to São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro in pursuit of a career. However, there are some... Read Article
Stan Davis’ Secrets of the Rio Negro is a boy’s own paper piece of adventure fiction. Slash and Burn The preamble is straightforward and cursory. The hero, Martin Lockwood, recounts his somewhat spare childhood. His mother is almost... Read Article
To introduce her by saying that Dona Onete is a 73-year-old singer who has just released her début album, doesn’t quite do justice to an artist “entrapped” for decades in the body of a history professor and the... Read Article
If you were to listen to some instrumental tracks from this compilation without reading any reviews about it, including this one, and without any knowledge whatsoever about Mestre Cupijó (bandleader and composer) you might just think this music... Read Article
When Gaspar de Carvajal, the Dominican friar, chronicled the voyage of Francisco de Orellana (1541-1542) down the Rio Napo and into the Marañon and thence to the Amazon in Relación*, his account was lodged in the Archivo de... Read Article
Rock legend Mick Jagger has been drawn into a bitter row over an ‘illegal gas grab’ in the Peruvian Amazon. Peru’s government has provoked fury from indigenous groups after it was discovered that it is attempting to explore... Read Article
Chevron, which already faces allegations of fraud over an $18 billion liability in Ecuador for environmental damage, is being accused in Brazil of trying to cover up the extent of an oil spill caused by one of the... Read Article
A provisional list of the New Seven Wonders of Nature has been announced, with both Iguazu Falls and the Amazon River included in the choices, meaning that these were two of the the seven most popular natural attractions... Read Article
In New York on Monday, a US court dealt Chevron a severe blow after lifting a ban on an $18bn judgment against the oil giant for contaminating the Amazon. A New York appeals court vacated a lower court’s... Read Article
A TV series about the Matsigenka tribe has been slammed as “staged, false, fabricated and distorted” by experts on the tribe. Mark & Olly: Living with the Machigenga was shown on the Travel Channel in the US, and... Read Article
Two weeks ago Santander Bank pulled out of the controversial Santo Antonio dam project, citing environmental and social concerns. Now, oil giant ConocoPhillips have pulled out of a similarly controversial project in the Peruvian Amazon.
30,000 Amazon Indians were enslaved, tortured, raped and starved in just 12 years during the rubber boom, according to a historic report submitted by Irish investigator Roger Casement, 100 years ago. Casement was sent by the British government... Read Article
