"Once the Declaration of Independence is issued by Congress, then it kind of changes the calculus. Then, both sides are putting pressure on Native people to join one side or the other."
That number represents roughly 7% of the state's land and waters. It also corresponds with the amount of land the federal government promised it would hold as reservations for Indigenous tribes after California joined the union in 1850. Congress ultimately rejected these treaties in a secret meeting - after pressure from the state - and failed to notify tribes, many of whom upheld their end of the agreement to relocate.
When California became a state in 1850, officials signed 18 treaties setting aside millions of acres for tribal reservations. Congress killed the deals in secret after pressure from state leaders. Many tribes had already moved, trusting the promises. Now California wants to make good.
The highlands are the sustenance of life, and all that water comes down from the mountains to the valleys, such as Azapa and Lluta and to the coast. The city of Arica is on the coast. So, we have a very serious problem. We will not have water—not for agriculture, not for livestock, not for tourism.
Financial strangulation, as he put it, is the latest weapon in the government's escalating effort to clear the way for expanded mining and oil development in one of the world's most biodiverse countries. Months earlier, officials had temporarily frozen the accounts of several of Ecuador's most prominent environmental defenders, including Tapia, citing investigations into unjust private enrichment and financing terrorism.
With time, as his research led to police intervention, he caught the attention of the city's gangs. In November 2024, during a period of escalating violence in the Haitian capital, gang members entered the compound where Gensley lived. They burned the radio station, my home and many other things in the area. They even killed his dog.
Before the 1970s, ancient Maya history was impenetrable. The civilization's grand ceremonial buildings and striking art, created in parts of Mesoamerica during the Classic Maya period (ad 150-900) had tantalized foreign visitors since the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century. But no one, including several million twentieth-century speakers of Maya languages, could read the ancient Maya hieroglyphs.
The river won, the forest won, the memory of our ancestors won, said the campaigners in Santarem when it was clear their actions had forced the Brazilian government into a U-turn on plans to privatise one of the world's most beautiful waterways and expand its role as a soy canal.
The 1980s bring revolutionary wars, CIA-backed conflict and the violent birth of a new democratic era. Episode 2: Wars begins with Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution, which promised egalitarian transformation through literacy crusades. But civil war erupted as United States President Ronald Reagan's administration covertly backed the Contra rebels, plunging the nation into turmoil and suffering. Panama transitioned from Omar Torrijos's diplomatic triumphs over the Panama Canal to Manuel Noriega's sinister collaboration with both the CIA and drug cartels.
On January 3, Panama woke up with the strange sensation of looking in a mirror. During the early hours of the morning while the world tried to process the details about the capture of Nicolas Maduro, as a result of a U.S. military operation the country that is home to the Panama Canal once again delved into a wound that, 36 years later, remains open: the 1989 U.S. invasion.
It was not just another bombastic statement in the Republican's provocative style it was the first visible sign of a policy that once again places the region under U.S. oversight. Trump revived old interventionist instincts by interfering in Honduras's presidential election and threatening to cut aid to Central American governments as leverage to force them into agreements aimed at curbing migration.
In Emilio Pena Delgado's home, several photos hang on the wall. One shows him standing in front of a statue with his wife and oldest son in the centre of San Jose and smiling. In another, his two sons sit in front of caricatures from the film Cars. For him, the photos capture moments of joy that feel distant when he returns home to La Carpio, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Costa Rica's capital.
In the small town of Chipaya, everything is dry. Only a few people walk along the sandy streets, and many houses look abandoned some secured with a padlock. The wind is so strong that it forces you to close your eyes. Chipaya lies on Bolivia's Altiplano, 35 miles from the Chilean border. The vast plateau, nearly 4,000 metres above sea level, feels almost empty of people and animals, its solitude framed by snow-capped volcanoes. It raises the question: can anybody possibly live here?
In April 2025, Peter Thiel's Palantir made headlines after documents were released detailing its partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to create ImmigrationOS, a massive database of information gathered from a variety of sources including the IRS, in order to surveil, detain, and deport immigrants. Thiel is not new to spearheading endeavors that aim to dehumanize and attack people of color. In fact, the tech mogul is one of the billionaires leading our modern-day version of tech neocolonialism,
In the coastal city of Trujillo, he'd observed how the US-owned United Fruit Company dominated the city's railways and docks and wielded significant political influence. This inspired his novel "Cabbages and Kings" (1904), in which he wrote about the fictional republic of Anchuria — a 'small, maritime banana republic' whose government bent to the interests of a powerful foreign corporation.
Colombia's government has announced it will resume peace talks with the powerful Gulf Clan, also known as the Gaitanist Self-Defence Forces (ECG), after the criminal group expressed concern about a recent deal with the United States. Tuesday's announcement addresses a temporary suspension the Gulf Clan announced earlier this month, in the wake of a meeting between Colombian President Gustavo Petro and his US counterpart, Donald Trump.
On the outskirts of Cartagena far from the brightly coloured facades of the old city and the 500-year-old fortress walls overlooking the Caribbean a crowd of about 300 people erupted into a roar. Given Colombians' passion for football, it could have been the celebration of a goal. But the cheers followed the bloody climax of bout in a cockfighting ring whose white padded walls were now splattered with blood.
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