Latin America Bureau (LAB) is launching its new major book, The Heart of Our Earth - community resistance to mining in Latin America by Tom Gatehouse.

The launch, on Thursday 30 March 6:30 - 8:30 is at Lumen Rooms, 88 Tavistock Place, London WC1H 9RS.

Tickets from Eventbrite (£7.50 including wine and a generous discount on copies of the book).

Speakers include author Tom Gatehouse, Brazil expert Sue Branford and Sebastian Muñoz of War on Want and London Mining Network

There will also be an exhibition of the work of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira (the environmental defenders assassinated in the Brazilian Amazon in June 2022).

The Heart of Our Earth: Community resistance to mining in Latin America tells the story of the unprecedented expansion of the mining industry across Latin America since the 1990s, and the massive social and environmental upheaval this has involved.

It is the product of years of monitoring and research, featuring in-depth interviews not only with activists and leaders from communities affected by the industry, but also with NGO representatives, international experts, academics and others. Nonetheless, it is aimed at a non-specialist audience and is written in clear, accessible prose.

The book depicts the birth of present-day resistance in Chubut, Argentina and includes a mixture of well-known cases – such as Cerrejón and Yanacocha and the tailings dams disasters in Brazil – as well as others which have received little or no attention in the Anglophone press.

It looks at Corporate Social Responsibility tactics, greenwashing, human rights, climate change and to what extent mining may be part of the solution (looking at two metals which will be essential for the energy transition: copper, focusing on the Cordillera del Cóndor, Ecuador; and lithium, focusing on the Salar de Atacama in Chile), and what exactly ‘sustainable mining’ might mean in practice.

Visit the book website here