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The US company Allied Energy Systems (AES) is trying to get funding from the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for the Chan 75, a hydro project in Panama that threatens to displace more than 1,000 indigenous Ngobe from their lands, and cause significant destruction to the environment.

Panama’s Alliance for Conservation and Development (ACD) explains in a recent article, “The dam’s construction is currently taking place in the Palo Seco Protected Forest within the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, in the Bocas Del Toro region of Panama. Yet the Chan 75 project does …

Indigenous People, local communities and labour groups in Bolivia and Brazil have declared an emergency in response to the Madeira River Hydroelectric Complex, a series of four dams along the Madeira river.

The Activist group, Root Force, explains that “Bolivia has [already] denied permission for two of the dams, one to be built entirely in Bolivian territory and the other along the border;” however, Brazil recently began working on the two dams in its territory (map), the Jirau and San Antonio.

Once completed, the dams would “flood and otherwise devastate Bolivian communities …

Three months after a week-long mobilization against corporations, Via Campesina and the Landless Workers Movement (MST) launched another mobilization in Brazil last week.

According to the Associated Press, the mobilization started on June 10, with “thousands of landless rural workers invad[ing] dams, railways, plantations and corporate headquarters in a wave of protests across eight Brazilian states.”

In fact, there were actions in 16 states. As noted throughout the official website of the MST:

In Minas Gerais, about 1,500 workers and members of Via Campesina occupied a railway owned by Vail, demanding …

Thousands gathered in Altamira, Para-Brazil last week for the Xingu Forever Alive Encounter, an historic gathering of Indigenous Peoples and allies opposed to damming the Xingu River.

A similar gathering took place in 1989, “where the Kayapó and other tribes from the Xingu basin rejected the Brazilian government’s plans for a series of six hydroelectric dams on the river. As a result, the World Bank cancelled a loan for the dams, and plans to dam the Xingu were suspended for more than a decade,” notes survival International.

In recent years however, Brazil has …

Indigenous Peoples in Brazil will hold a mass 5-day rally next week, dubbed “the Xingu Encounter,” to protest against a series of hydro dams planned for the Xingu river and its tributaries.

The sacred lands website explains, there are a total of 70 large dams and dozens of smaller ones planned throughout the central and northern parts of the country. “One of these is the proposed Paranatinga II dam. Located on the Culuene River, a tributary of the Xingu, Paranatinga II would destroy an area sacred to 14 tribal groups. The same …

Courtesy of Rights Action, here’s a story discussing a reparations plan for Genocide survivors and Mayan-Achi people who were massacred and forcibly evicted from their communities in the 1970s and 1980s - to make way for the Inter-American Development Bank- and World Bank-funded Chixoy hydro-electric dam.

CHIXOY DAM AGREEMENT
By Hugo Alvarado, www.prensalibre.com
Translated by Rosalind M. Gill, for Rights Action

The Government and communities affected by the construction of the Chixoy Dam have signed an agreement to set up a reparations plan. Diego Paz, representative of the OEA, Rafael Espada, Vice-president, and Juan …

Courtesy of Red Amazon, here’s a letter that was sent last month to Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa Delgado by the Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador (CONAIE).

This is being posted to add some proof against the myth that “only outsiders oppose development.” As it has always been, the People speak for themselves.

English Version of the Letter
Translated by Martin Allen
Spanish version available here

The full text of a letter to Señor Rafael Correa Delgado, Constitutional President of the Republic of Ecuador, dated 11th March 2008 and signed by Marlon Santi, President of …