Five hundred years after Spanish conquistadors arrived, gold is still a driving economic force in South America's Guiana Shield. But the industry depends on another element, one with deadly side effects for miners and rainforests: mercury.
Two commodities that are frequently taken over illegally are gold and mercury, and in the Guiana Shield region, one does not go without the other. Mercury has grave impacts on human health and the environment, but efforts so far to curtail its use in the gold industry have only pushed supply chains underground.
A new report dives into the underworld of the mercury trade, as experienced across the Amazon region; in Bolivia, Guyana and Suriname.
More than one in two women in Guyana said they had experienced some form of intimate-partner violence. Daja Henry looks at past and present—tracing the colonial roots of gender-based violence.
Most of Guyana's suicides occur in rural regions, where people turn to alcohol and self-harm to cope with feelings of hopelessness and economic despair.
Compassion helps public health workers face human suffering every day, but compassion fatigue can set in if they neglect their own health and self-care.
We accompanied Caitlin Vieira on a typical workday to observe the many roles she juggles as one of only three psychologists in the small Caribbean nation of Guyana.
After our first full day in Guyana, Madeline Bishop and I met a contact at the commemoration for Walter Rodney hosted by the Working People’s Alliance, a socialist political party.
In Guyana, domestic violence has become a part of everyday life. Campbell Rawlins spends a morning in a housing project to experience what life is like in one of the most isolated communities.
Philip Fearnside, a biologist who studies the relationship between human activities, such as agriculture, and the protection of tropical forests, says that soy production threatens the Amazon forest.
A group portrait of the generation of Guyanese leaders whose task it was not to oust the colonizer, but to contend with what came after.
Why a tiny South American country can't escape the ugly legacies of its idiosyncratic past.
Mercury, the toxic quicksilver that pumps through the veins of gold miners is a necessary evil to extract gold in the Amazon. In this series, we take you on a trip through the underworld of the trade.
In Guyana, women are beaten and murdered at alarming rates. Activists have taken the fight against gender-based violence into their own hands and are looking to the country’s past for clues.
How is post-colonial Guyana working to break free from its enduring cycles of abuse and suicide?
A country populated by the descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured servants struggles to transcend a history of voting along racial lines.
In early 2008, gunmen wielding AK-47 rifles started attacking villages in Guyana. Twenty three people died in a series of ambushes, including three police officers whose station was overrun and weapons stolen. The attacks are attributed to Rondell Rawlins, an escaped convict who had threatened violence if police didn't release...
Gaiutra Bahadur presents an overlooked chapter in the Cold War's annals, one story of U.S. interventions and the racial strife and dictatorships they fostered across the globe.
Guyanese-American journalist and Pulitzer Center grantee discusses how her work connects her personal history with Guyana's complicated political past
Fellows spent time in Washington, D.C. preparing for their international reporting projects and learning from Pulitzer Center staff and professional journalists.
Gaiutra Bahadur reflects on the making of "The Terror and the Time," a film that chronicles the events of 1953 in British Guiana with the election resulting in the suspension of the constitution.
This is a painting lesson that combines Pablo Picasso's famous 1937 Guernica with current day issues presented from The Pulitzer Center.
This is a painting lesson that combines Pablo Picasso's famous 1937 "Guernica" with current day issues presented by the Pulitzer Center.
This is a painting lesson that combines Pablo Picasso's famous 1937 Guernica with current day issues presented by the Pulitzer Center.
This lesson plan outlines a project that allows students the opportunity to connect with a contemporary crisis somewhere in the world.
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