An Array of Utopian Flowers
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The Literary Labyrinth of Stephen T. Vessels
Posted on November 27, 2022 | No Comments - Indigenous Voices from the Northeast: Past, Present and Future
Posted on November 26, 2022 | 1 Comment - Microplastics Are Everywhere: What’s The Risk?
Posted on November 22, 2022 | No Comments - Solving the Climate Crisis Through Global Soil Health with Didi Pershouse
Posted on November 20, 2022 | No Comments - Visionary Art of Lakota Sundance Chief Marvin Swallow
Posted on November 14, 2022 | 2 Comments
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WilderUtopia in 102 Languages
‘Medicine Walk’ Featured in SBLitJo
Santa Barbara Literary Journal released ‘Bellatrix: Volume 3’ in June 2019, which among adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, features an excerpt of Jack Eidt’s psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk. Buy the book!
South America Archive
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Field Guide to Adventures in Tropical Botany
Posted on May 16, 2017 | No CommentsField Guides to the Wild intrigue Naomi Pitcairn, sharing her adventures in scientific documentation of the wonders of nature, in this case the botanical wealth of the American Tropics. -
Ecuadorian Amazon Under Oil Assault to Service Chinese Debt
Posted on July 5, 2016 | No CommentsEcuadorian state capitalism has sacrificed significant tracts of one of the planet's most important biosphere reserves, Yasuni National Park in the Amazonian region, to a massive new oil drilling project. It threatens multiple indigenous territories and the area's biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. -
“Embrace of the Serpent” Film: Journey of Healing and Ethnobotany
Posted on April 11, 2016 | 4 CommentsEthnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, one of the most important plant explorers of the 20th century, served as a key inspiration in a recent film called "Embrace of the Serpent." In December 1941, Schultes entered the Amazon to study how indigenous peoples used plants for medicinal, ritual, and practical purposes. After nearly a decade of fieldwork, he made significant discoveries about the sacred hallucinogen ayahuasca. In total, Schultes would collect more than 24,000 species of plants including some 300 species new to Western science. -
Colombia: Stunning Indigenous Rock Art from Amazonia
Posted on September 2, 2015 | 3 CommentsPrehistoric paintings on vertical rock faces in an Amazonian wilderness in Colombia were recently photographed and filmed for western eyes. The pretense of this British filmmaker as the "discoverer" of the paintings is of course ludicrous. The once populous Karijona Tribe most likely painted these masterpieces, and continue to live uncontacted in the vast rainforest, and anthropologists and explorers have studied the region for hundreds of years. -
China’s Latest Earth Assault: Trans-Amazonian Railway
Posted on May 23, 2015 | 1 CommentEnvironmentalists push back against more Chinese-financed plans to construct 5,300km (3,300-mile) route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to cut transport costs -
Rio’s Favela Pacification: Militarized Gentrification With Benefits?
Posted on July 3, 2014 | No CommentsThe Brazilian government’s militarized efforts to clean up Rio de Janeiro’s notoriously dangerous favelas is giving hope to some people living there, while others question the violent tactics and the whether it will make a difference. We provide counterpoint to Joshua Hammer's 2014 investigation. -
Gabriel García Márquez on Latin American Dictatorship and Liberation
Posted on April 18, 2014 | No CommentsWe celebrate the late Colombian magical realist Gabriel García Marquez, exploring some of the highlights from his Nobel Prized Literary career. -
Peru: lllegal Gold Mining versus Biodiversity and Ecotourism
Posted on April 9, 2014 | 2 CommentsA gold rush that accelerated with the onset of the 2008 global recession compounds the woes of the Amazon basin, laying waste to Peruvian rain forest and spilling tons of toxic mercury into the air and water. -
Jorge Luis Borges: On Literary Magic and Garden Labyrinths
Posted on January 29, 2014 | 7 CommentsJorge Luis Borges forged into the realm of literary magic, he led his readers down through the Garden of Forking Paths, wandering the red and tranquil labyrinths in Elegy, growing old in so many mirrors, seeking in vain the marble gaze of statues, compiling regrets of a fantastic nature. Watch the BBC profile on him as an elder of strange destiny who had seen nothing, or almost nothing, but the face of a girl from Buenos Aires, a face that does not want you to remember it. -
Argentina: The Second Conquest of Patagonia’s Indigenous
Posted on September 29, 2013 | No CommentsDocumentary film on indigenous communities in Chubut province in Patagonia, Argentina, their struggle over land rights and the threats from mining its mineral wealth, cutting its trees and development by other multinational interests. -
Operation Condor: Eradicating South American “Communism” at Any Cost
Posted on March 14, 2013 | 2 CommentsIn the name of the struggle against terrorism, a special operation -- code named CONDOR - was conducted in the 1970s and 80s in South America. Its targets were left wing political dissidents, the organised labour and intellectuals. Condor soon became a network of military dictatorships, supported by the US State Department, the CIA and Interpol. A trial began in early March in Buenos Aires to attempt to bring to justice former dictators and military officers. -
Matt Pallamary: Guaraní Shaman’s Quest for “Land Without Evil”
Posted on December 17, 2012 | 3 CommentsMatthew Pallamary's acclaimed novel "Land Without Evil," recently performed as an aerial acrobatic stage show, narrates the true story of a young shaman of the Guaraní people of South America facing European conquest and conversion to Catholicism in the 1700s. -
Bolivia: Global Warming Endangers Kallawaya Healers
Posted on December 13, 2012 | 3 CommentsThe Kallawaya cosmovision is based upon thousands of years of experiential knowledge about their environment and shared among many other communities across the High Andes. At the center of the cosmovision is the notion that humanity must live in harmony with the environment. Illness is the result of a spiritual dissonance caused by some sort disconnect between a person and his or her environment. One of the main tenets of the Kallawaya cosmovision is an ethic of reciprocity that is applied equally to people, communities, and the environment. -
Brazilian Amazon: Massive Damage from Belo Monte Dam
Posted on October 10, 2011 | 3 CommentsThe controversial Belo Monte dam, operational in 2016 and the world’s third biggest, was forced on the people of Altamira, Pará state, and is now believed to have been built largely as payback to Brazil’s construction industry by the nation’s then ruling Workers’ Party for campaign contributions received. -
Bolivia: Indigenous Protest Can’t Stop Amazon Superhighway
Posted on August 28, 2011 | 5 CommentsPresident Evo Morales signed into law in 2017 that stripped protection from the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory, known as TIPNIS for its Spanish initials, opening it to highway construction and other development. -
Destructive Progress: Brazil-Peru Transoceanic Highway
Posted on November 3, 2010 | 4 CommentsWith completion of the 3,400-mile Transoceanic Highway, the Amazonian state of Acre in Brazil now connects with the southern Pacific Coast of Peru, unleashing numerous impacts to the environment and indigenous people.
