Climate Change Affecting Andes Mountain Villages in Peru

posted on February 28th, 2010 in Andes Mountains, Environment, Peru, Peruvian Mummies

The Bolivian ski resort of Chacaltaya, stranded once its 18,000-year-old glacier disappeared in 2009

The Bolivian ski resort of Chacaltaya, stranded like a beached whale once its 18,000-year-old glacier disappeared permanently in 2009

(Note: Since the early 20th century, glaciers around the world have been retreating, presumably as a result of humans burning greater and greater quantities of oil and coal, rampant deforestation, and the raising of livestock, which create greenhouse gases that absorb more sunlight and thus heat the atmosphere. Mt Kilamanjaro’s glacier in Tanzania, for example, which has been around for 12,000 years, is expected to completely disappear by 2020… (more…)

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The Uprising of Chile’s Mapuche Indians

posted on February 7th, 2010 in Chile, Indigenous Rights

Chilean Police Drag Mapuche Protester

Police arrest a woman who was demonstrating against the arrest of Mapuche Indians involved in a land dispute in Valparaiso, Chile, about 75 miles northwest of Santiago. Dozens of protestors marched through downtown Valparaiso on Dec 13, 2007 to pressure the government to release five Mapuche Indians. The Mapuche had been holding a hunger strike in the south of Chile after being arrested for starting forest fires on land belonging to a logging company whose land they are claiming by legacy.

Prosperous Chile’s Troubling Indigenous Uprising

Dec. 12, 2009

Time Magazine 

Compared to high-profile groups like the Quechua of Peru and the Yanomami of the Amazon rain forest, Chile’s Mapuche are a relatively obscure indigenous cohort in South America. But that has changed dramatically in recent months as a growing number of armed and masked Mapuche activists, pursuing a centuries-old claim to land they say was taken from them by the Spaniards and then the Chilean government, have engaged in a wave of arson attacks… (more…)

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