Feb
28
Climate Change Affecting Andes Mountain Villages in Peru
Filed Under Environment, Andes Mountains, Indigenous Rights
(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… Read more
Feb
11
Inca Author-Filmmaker Kim MacQuarrie to Give Talk in San Francisco on Recent Discoveries in Peru
Filed Under Incas, Recent Discoveries, Machu Picchu
You’re invited to an Evening with author and filmmaker Kim MacQuarrie & Writer/Editor Don George
Tuesday February 23rd, 7pm
Herbst Theatre
401 Van Ness Avenue at McAllister Street, San Francisco
Please be our guest as Don George and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and author Kim MacQuarrie take the stage for a globe-roaming conversation about indigenous peoples around the world, balancing contradictory creative passions and the allure of Inca history and culture…
Feb
7
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… Read more
Jan
7
New Fossil Find Points to South American Origin of Dinosaurs
Filed Under South American Dinosaurs, Recent Discoveries
Tawa hallae, a meat-eating Theropod dinosaur discovered in New Mexico
New Meat-Eating Dinosaur Alters Evolutionary Tree
December 10, 2009
Esciencenews.com
Paleontologists, aided by amateur volunteers, have unearthed a previously unknown meat-eating dinosaur from a fossil bone bed in northern New Mexico, settling a debate about early dinosaur evolution, revealing a period of explosive diversification and hinting at how dinosaurs spread across the supercontinent Pangaea.
Dec
24
Brazil Creates 20,000 Square Miles of New Indigenous Reserves
Filed Under Indigenous Rights, Brazil, Amazon Jungle, Uncontacted Tribes
December 23, 2009
On Monday, Brazil decreed nine new indigenous reserves covering 51,000 square kilometers (19,700 square miles) of the Amazon rainforest, an areas larger than Denmark or Switzerland, reports the AFP…
Nov
8
Ancient Nazca Civilization Committed Fatal Ecological Error
Filed Under Environment, Nazca Lines and Culture, Recent Discoveries
Logging Caused Nazca Collapse
BBC News
November 2, 2009
The ancient Nazca people of Peru are famous for the lines they drew in the desert depicting strange animal forms.
A further mystery is what happened to this once great civilization, which suddenly vanished 1,500 years ago….
Oct
21
Spanish-Peruvian Explorers Reach Cliff With Image of Incan Rebel King
Filed Under Incas, Recent Discoveries
Ukupacha Project Investigators Study Portrait of the Rebel Incan Emperor Manco Inca
Spanish-Peruvian Team Succeed in Reaching Rock Art Wall of [Emperor] Manco Inca II
The painting was completed over 400 years ago on a cliff in the Sacred Valley of the Incas
August 9, 2009
(ANDINA)
(Translation: K. MacQuarrie)
(Note: in 1536, a 19-year-old Incan emperor named Manco Inca rose up against the Spaniards and led a massive rebellion that almost succeeded in wiping Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors out. The young Inca king later retreated to the rugged area of Vilcabamba, about 90 miles from Cusco, a region from where the Incas carried out guerrilla warfare against the Spaniards for the next 36 years. The last Incan emperor, Tupac Amaru, was beheaded in Cusco in 1572, ending the Inca Empire: KM).
Sep
19
Peruvian Journalist Suggests Napalming Amazonian Natives
Filed Under Indigenous Rights, Amazon Jungle, Uncontacted Tribes
Survival International: Call for Napalm Bombing of ‘Savages’ in Peru’s Amazon Wins “Most Racist Article of the Year Award”
Peruvian Times
September 2, 2009
An article implying that Peruvian natives should be bombed with napalm has been named by London-based Survival International as the ‘most racist article’ published in the last year by the mainstream media.
Aug
11
Did Hiram Bingham Discover Machu Picchu Artifacts–Or Buy Them?
Filed Under Did a German Discover Machu Picchu?, Recent Discoveries, Machu Picchu
Hiram Bingham at Machu Picchu in 1912
Bingham Didn’t Dig Up The Yale Huacos –He Just Bought Them
August 6, 2009
Caretas
By Nicholas Asheshov
Here in Urubamba Hiram Bingham’s reputation has taken a knock in the run-up to the centennial of the discovery in 1911 of Machu Picchu.
The revisionists are saying that Bingham was not just a persistent explorer but also, frankly, a humbug.
Bingham’s economical use of the truth has been compounded by the poorly-advised refusal of Yale University and its Peabody Museum of Natural History to return, as promised, what Bingham’s Yale expeditions dug up in the Vilcabamba 1912-15.
The Peruvian government is taking Yale to court but they’re not pushing it.
Here’s why. None of the good pieces in the Yale Machu Picchu collection were actually dug up by Yale archaeologists.
Jul
14
Indigenous People Fight Against Peru’s “Law of the Jungle”
Filed Under Indigenous Rights, Amazon Jungle
Native Protestors at the entrance of Yurimagua, in the northern Peruvian Amazon
Blood at the Blockade: Peru’s Indigenous Uprising
NACLA (May-June 2009)
Gerardo Rénique
On June 6, near a stretch of highway known as the Devil’s Curve in the northern Peruvian Amazon, police began firing live rounds into a multitude of indigenous protestors – many wearing feathered crowns and carrying spears. In the nearby towns of Bagua Grande, Bagua Chica, and Utcubamba, shots also came from police snipers on rooftops, and from a helicopter that hovered above the mass of people. Both natives and mestizos took to the streets protesting the bloody repression.
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