Latin America Bureau

Folk-singer Victor Jara, murdered by Pinochet’s troops in 1973, had planned to record an album, telling the story of the 1934 massacre of peasants and Indigenous Mapuche and Pehuenche at Ránquil. He never completed the project and in the following decades repression has claimed new victims whenever the interests of large landowners were threatened.

In the second of three articles, Eva Newton explains how impunity is still operating for those responsible for the illegal kidnap, torture and disappearance of political opponents of Uruguay’s military regime in the 1970s. You can see the other two articles here. This article was published previously as a single article in NACLA. In May 2026, I took a ferry from Buenos Aires to Montevideo. Standing on the sunny deck, I sent Stella a photo of the view.

Apparitions can be read as many things: a tribute to women’s sexual emancipation; a cautionary tale of the disintegration of patriarchal family structures; even a meditation on the brutality of the Catholic Church and its frenzied devotees. Margo Glantz’s prose – her book Apparitions is published by LAB Partner Charco Press – can be eye-watering, oscillating between the hyper-pornographic and the ultra-violent in the blink of an eye.

LAB author and film-maker Marcos Colón travelled to Temuco to speak about listening to Indigenous knowledge. The conference listened. But Wallmapu asked whether listening is enough, whether reporting is extraction, whether audiences and their institutions are changed, and where commitment and responsibilities should lie. This is a shortened version of a longer article. I arrived in Temuco, Chile, carrying the Amazon with me.

In her the fourth post of the Amazon on the Brink series, LAB author and editor Sue Branford looks at the mounting evidence that the extent of deforestation matters: where it is greater it disrupts the natural water cycle, reducing rainfall and increasing the resulting dieback of trees. It has long been known by scientists that the Amazon forest would suffer dieback, that is, the widespread decline in the vitality of its trees and thus its eventual death, if global warming reached 3.5 °C.

In this three-part series, Eva Newton explains the continuing importance of political disappearances in Uruguay, a country where impunity is still operating for those responsible for the illegal kidnap, torture and disappearance of political opponents of the military regime in the 1970s. Stella’s early childhood memories are of a big house, noisy with lots of music. Windows and doors always open, neighbours often popping in. An obnoxious (her words) older brother who she adored.

A new wave of sanctions and escalated threats against the beleaguered people suggest that Trump will not be satisfied until the existing Cuban government is dismantled. A Venezuela-style ‘take-over’ looks impossible. A new wave of US sanctions has spelled chaos for Cuba’s economy in recent months, calling into question the future of its decades-long Revolution and raising fears of possible military intervention.

Cuba has weathered a series of crises since 1960, periods of siege followed by adaptation and survival, with the ever-debilitating effects of draconian US trade sanctions. But the present crisis seems more grave, with Donald Trump seemingly intent on regime change.

In her third blog in the Amazon on the Brink series, LAB author and editor Sue Branford looks at the sharpening political divisions which threaten the efforts of relatively progressive governments in recent years in Colombia, Peru and Brazil to prioritize nature, halt extraction of oil and minerals and save the Amazon. The survival of the Amazon forest is increasingly at risk as the countries that cover it are riven by profound political divisions.

Slow-seeing journalism is a different way of experiencing, writing about and reporting on the world. Marcos Colón, author of LAB book The Amazon in Times of War, celebrates this way of immersing oneself in a subject. Other outlets for news on the Amazon share this perspective: Amazônia Real, Sumaúma and Colón’s own Amazônia Latitude.