The film chosen for this week was “Maria Full of Grace”, directed by Joshua Marston. Set in Columbia, this film follows a young girl named Maria who gets pregnant and results in becoming a drug mule to help her earn money. Maria worked in a factory in a small town outside of Bogota, helping provide […]
LASC vigorously denounces death threats received by Save Our Sperrins Protectors and stands in solidarity with them. Two months ago, during Latin America Week 2019, we held a public talk in Dublin entitled “Women Defending the Earth from Destructive Mining”. We are horrified to inform that, among the panel we had the chance to listen […]
This year, LASC’s annual Latin America Week (LAW) was focused on Gender and Extractive Industries. Between April 6th and 13th we hosted a series of talks in Dublin, Cork and Galway to explore how extractive industries impact on women in Latin America, and links back to Ireland. We also hosted an event titled “Poetry, Song […]
Since March 12 in Colombia, there has been a very strong mobilization in the Cauca region (echoed in other parts of the country) driven by indigenous and social organizations: the Minga. Minga is an ancient indigenous tradition of community or collective work for social utility purposes. The Indigenous people of Cauca have applied the […]
Blood coal: Ireland’s dirty secret, October 25th 2018, in The Guardian “The connections between County Clare, Ireland and La Guajira, Colombia may not be entirely obvious at first glance. Yet the regions are linked through a shared commodity: coal. Extracted in one region and burned in the other. Coal extraction in La Guajira has […]
Colombia Faces Challenge to Build Peace, Without Sacrificing its Famed Biodiversity Ondrej Prosicky / shutterstock By Jane Feeney Colombia is the second most biodiverse country in the world, as measured by species richness. But over the past half century it has also been home to a brutal civil war, inflicting death and displacement on its […]
By Eimhin O’Reilly A bright red cable car floats delicately in the air, steadily climbing the slopes of an Andean valley. It sweeps past three immense black boulders perched on the hillside, housing a state-of-the art library and surrounded by verdant parkland. In the city below, children and adults alike play in the Zen-inspired Barefoot Park. […]
By Eimhin O’Reilly While Colombia’s place in the headlines in recent months has been dominated by the halting efforts towards a definitive end to their lengthy civil war, behind the scenes the country has been undergoing a quiet renaissance. Slowly but surely, its cities have been reclaiming a sense of national pride that seemed […]
