Vanishing Homelands

Stories

Yuqui Indians cut down trees to cultivate banana and corn. Photo © Nubar Alexanian.

Saving Jungle Souls
Profiles Ataiba, chief of one of the last bands of nomads in the Americas, as he leaves the Bolivian jungle to live with evangelical missionaries. Produced by Sandy Tolan and Nancy Postero.

Homelands Regained
The Paez Indians have resorted to guerrilla insurrection to reclaim their ancestral territory from the great landed families of Spanish descent in Colombia's southern Cauca province. Produced by Cecilia Vaisman and Alan Weisman.

Celebrating the "Discovery"
A look at the Dominican Republic's huge 500th anniversary tribute to Christopher Columbus, including the construction of a giant, crucifix-shaped lighthouse that displaced more than 100,000 people to crude cardboard shacks on the outskirts of Santo Domingo. Produced by Sandy Tolan and Alan Weisman.

Oil in Ecuador's Amazon
As late as the 1970s, Ecuador's Amazon lay practically untouched. Now it is criss-crossed by a web of roads and oil pipelines. Here we look at a controversial plan by Conoco to build a new road and oil pipeline into some of the most remote Indian lands in the Amazon. Produced by Sandy Tolan and Nancy Postero.

Miskito Coast
We go to Nicaragua, where exiled Miskito Indians who opposed the Sandinistas are back after the Contra war. But so are American investors who once exploited the pines, hardwoods, gold, and lobster of Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast. A three-cornered battle has erupted over the future of these resources. Produced by Cecilia Vaisman and Alan Weisman.

Refugees From a Fallen Landscape, Part 1
In Part One of a two-part feature about the effects of deforestation and desertification, we follow poor farmers in Honduras who are fleeing their damaged lands to an uncertain life in the misery belts that surround Tegucigalpa. Produced by Nancy Postero and Sandy Tolan.

Refugees From a Fallen Landscape, Part 2
We return to Honduras to examine attempts by foreign and private relief agencies to regenerate the soil and help farmers stay on their lands. Produced by Nancy Postero and Sandy Tolan.

Yacyretá
Dozens of dams were built in South America between the 1960s and early 1990s. Many were financed by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, to bring progress to the continent by harnessing its powerful rivers for industry and growing urban populations. The largest of these dams was Yacyretá, on the border between Paraguay and Argentina. Yacyretá was to produce thousands of megawatts of energy. But it was also to flood the biologically richest area of both countries, and force the largest urban displacement by a development project in history. In the latter half of the 1980's, the banks held up loans to Yacyretá, pending plans to address environmental and social concerns. Then, despite protests that people and endangered animals would be left homeless, the banks began preparing to restart the loans, raising questions about the policy of international lenders to leave environmental protection and resettlement to the borrowing countries. Produced in 1991 by Cecilia Vaisman and Alan Weisman

Panama: Clash of Cultures on the Frontier
The construction of a road and hydroelectric dam in eastern Panama, which was supposed to bring electricity and industrial development to the capital and productive farms to landless peasants, has instead created massive deforestation by an influx of settlers and threatened the survival of Kuna Indians who live in the area. Produced by Nancy Postero and Sandy Tolan.

Caribbean Dreams
Explores peoples dreams—some sweet, some desperate—in the eastern Dominican Republic, where industrial parks, vast sugar cane fields, and the Caribbean's poshest resort all belong to a single US corporation. Produced by Alan Weisman and Sandy Tolan.

Escaping the Tourist Trap
More than almost any country in the Americas, Mexico has turned to tourism to help anchor its economy. In the state of Chiapas, Chamula Indian artisans are trying to turn this trend to their advantage instead of allowing developers to overrun their traditional villages. Produced by Katie Davis.

Argentina's Guaraní Indians
The Guaraní Indians were the once the largest tribe in South America. Their home was a forest that stretched from the Argentine pampas to the Brazilian Amazon. Four centuries ago, Jesuit priests arrived in Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil to evangelize the Guaraní, a story told in the 1985 movie "The Mission." The Jesuits coaxed the nomadic, hunter-and-gatherer Guaraní to live in Catholic missions called reductions. Some Guaraní, however, never accepted the church, and remained hidden in the forest. Today, their descendents confront a world in which paper mills, dams, settlers, and tourism development have so diminished their habitat that, increasingly, the forest's edge is all that's left. In 1992, when this story was reported, the government of Argentina was planning to relocate the last of that country's Guaraní onto small plots of farmland. Yet one small band of Indians, in northern Argentina's Misiones Province, was still holding out. Produced by Alan Weisman and Cecilia Vaisman.

Sugar and Sorrow in Hispaniola
This is the first in a series of reports on how the products we consume in the United States affect people in the lands of production. This program examines the subhuman conditions faced by Haitian cane cutters in the Dominican Republic. Produced by Sandy Tolan and Alan Weisman.

Shrimp Cocktail
Backed by funds from the US Agency for International Development, salt flats along the southern Honduran coast have been converted into giant shrimp farms for the United States market. This program weighs the benefits of US-sponsored export strategies in Latin America against the lax enforcement of environmental, social, and labor laws often found in emerging free-market economies. Produced by Sandy Tolan and Nancy Postero.

Flowers for Export
This feature takes us to a sea of greenhouses surrounding Bogota, Colombia, which have converted some of Latin America's best soils from food to flower production. Produced by Alan Weisman and Cecilia Vaisman.

Ecuador's Amazon
Faced with crushing foreign debt and pressure from the World Bank and other lenders, Ecuador rushes to open the Amazon to oil development. But spills and dumping threaten settlers, indigenous people, and the land itself. Produced by Sandy Tolan and Nancy Postero.

Ecuador's Golden Cities
During the 16th century, the hills of southern Ecuador became a center of gold production for the Spanish. Today the region booms anew. Driven from poor lands by erosion and hunger, thousands of would-be entrepreneurs have rediscovered Ecuador’s "golden cities." Produced by Sandy Tolan and Nancy Postero.

Quichua Indians and Oil
In the Amazon of Ecuador, two Quichua Indian villages have profoundly differing philosophies toward oil exploration. Produced by Sandy Tolan and Nancy Postero.

Sustainable Colonization
This story, the first of two about efforts to farm sustainably in the Brazilian Amazon, features a small farmers' cooperative made up of peasants resettled from southern Brazil. The group has planted native crops, using methods designed to preserve the delicate forest soils. But the farmers have little formal education, and even less experience managing a business. Produced by Cecilia Vaisman.

Rainforest Crunch
In an "extractive reserve" deep in the Brazilian Amazon, seasonal rubber tappers harvest Brazil nuts during the off-season. As part of a model project financed by the indigenous rights group Cultural Survival, the tappers began selling the nuts to the US-based Ben & Jerry's ice cream company. But the tappers aren't happy with the deal they're getting, and the relationship with Cultural Survival has frayed. Produced by Cecilia Vaisman.

Life on the Edge of the Ozone Hole
The final program of the Vanishing Homelands series takes us to Antarctica and to the world's southernmost population in Chile's Magallanes province, on the brink of a deepening danger that may one day force them from their beautiful homeland—and eventually imperil us all. Produced by Alan Weisman and Cecilia Vaisman.