The Persian Gulf holds many attractions for the intrepid traveler, but I’ve already made up my mind: for a media junkie, no visit to Qatar can be complete without a trip to the Al Jazeera TV channel headquarters in downtown Doha. Full story

A view of the city of Doha

 Posted by Stephanie Boyd
It feels like I’ve won the lottery. A documentary I made about Peruvian farmers standing up to US and British-owned mining companies has been selected for the Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival in Doha, Qatar. Suddenly I find myself far from my Andean mountain home Continue Reading

On this day March 31 in the year 2001, Godofredo García Bacas was killed.The truth behind his murder has not been adequately explained to this day.  But that hasn’t stopped the resistance against the Canadian mining company Manhattan and the Peruvian state institutions that are party to the problems. That the resistance goes on is Continue Reading

So is Europe. Peru, however, is booming. What’s that mean? Go to Perú … while it’s still easy!

Father Marco Arana (pictured here with Bianca Jagger), the Catholic priest who supports indigenous Peruvians in protecting their eco-system in opposition to foreign mining companies, received the Cinema for Peace Human Rights Award.
Arana and the surveillance operation and intimidation campaign mounted against him are the subjects of Stephanie Boyd’s (CHOROPAMPA, TAMBOGRANDE, co-directed with Ernesto Cabellos) Continue Reading

At Hot Docs in Toronto, North America’s largest documentary festival, The Devil Operation received two standing ovations at sold-out screenings. Each presentation had over 300 people in attendance and the festival invited Father Marco to present the film. This August the film premiered in Asia at Korea’s prestigious EIDF festival, held by the country’s public Continue Reading

Free trade agreements? Who cares? How boring can you get. Yeah well… this ain’t boring. The free trade agreement between the European Union, Columbia and Peru makes for suspenseful reading. Adhesion contracts that have precious little to do with free trade. What would you need fat law books for if you really did promote free Continue Reading

The villagers’ courageous struggle for health care and justice inspired my colleague Ernesto Cabellos and I to make the documentary ‘Choropampa, The Price of Gold’. The film has been broadcast in the United States, Canada, Burma, Peru and several other Latin American countries. It has screened at over 50 film festivals on 5 continents and won 10 international awards. Yet despite Continue Reading

Ok, he’s already used to being followed. But that was back before he became politically involved, when he was still a priest who fought together with GRUFIDES activists for the rights of small farmers in the region. Farmers who were in conflict with the Yanacocha mining company over water and land rights (= their sustenance).
Now Continue Reading

Photo Credit: Satellite image of Cerro de Pasco, Google Maps
[supayfotos.com]
Cerro de Pasco is located in the Andes mountains in central Peru. Spanish conquerers established this area as a mining town in 1578. Its centuries long silver and zinc production has made the city one of the most important mining areas in the world – similar Continue Reading