How a family living in an informal occupation in Brazil manages their expenses.

What’s your money worth? A series from the front line of the cost-of-living crisis, where people who have been hit hard share their monthly expenses.

Erecting the wooden shack in Ocupação Vitória in early 2021 meant that Mariele and her family were now official inhabitants of one of the dozens of informal occupations that Brazil’s Homeless Workers Movement (MTST) has established across the country.

When families can no longer afford rent, communities like Ocupação Vitória become an alternative to homelessness. These spontaneous settlements have been growing since the foundation of MTST in 1997 – when, faced with the lack of adequate housing in the peripheries of increasingly populated urban centres, thousands of workers started to fight for the constitutional right to decent housing.

Read full story on Al Jazeera.

Why a Lula-Maduro alliance has Venezuelans in Brazil worried

‘I listened to everything Lula said… but he didn’t mention us.’

President Jair Bolsonaro has been openly hostile to refugees and migrants. But during his tenure, the Brazilian government set a regional example for the welcome it provided to Venezuelans escaping poverty and starvation.

As Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva prepares to succeed Bolsonaro on 1 January, some are questioning if he will continue the same level of support, especially as he looks set to restore ties with Caracas and forge a left-wing alliance with President Nicolás Maduro.

Read full story on The New Humanitarian

Andean glaciers are melting, reshaping centuries-old Indigenous rituals

The Snow Star Festival, an annual religious celebration, has been an integral part of Andean tradition and beliefs. But climate change and COVID-19 are threatening that.

At night, believers would use the reflection from the moon that cascaded atop snow-capped peaks as a guide to make their way up the sacred Colque Punku glacier. The tradition goes back centuries for pilgrims from various indigenous groups in the Andes who have made the journey through the Sinakara Valley in Peru during four days of religious festivities known as Qoyllur Rit’i, Quechuan for “the snow star.”

Read full story on National Geographic.

Rural black communities in Brazil face both extreme drought and racism

“Life in a quilombo is a celebration”, says Nego Bispo, who grew up in the Quilombo do Saco-Curtume, in the Brazilian northeastern state of Piauí. In recent years, however, climate change has discouraged festive spirits in these communities.

A poet, writer, teacher and political activist, Bispo is among the loudest voices in the fight for rights of quilombolas—one of the traditional people in Brazil most vulnerable to climate change.

Centuries ago, quilombos emerged as rural communities where formerly enslaved people could live safely. While some of them originated in lands bought or inherited by those emancipated, most of them were built by enslaved men and women who managed to escape plantations.

Read full story on Climate Tracker

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