Latin America's Resource Battle

In Latin America, as in much of the developing world, voracious global demand for commodities such as oil, copper, gold and iron has collided with age-old grievances over land, marginalization and exploitation. As extraction companies have pushed into Amazonian rainforests, Andean highlands and once-protected national expanses, they have confronted indigenous and community resistance, often with violent means, as occurred in 2009 in Bagua, Peru, where 24 police officers and 10 indigenous leaders died in armed conflict.

The origin, or the solution to, this spike in local conflicts, depending on whom you talk to, is a little known and little understood international convention by the International Labour Organization, known as ILO 169, guaranteeing indigenous and ethnic communities the right to be consulted whenever a policy or project may affect their cultural heritage....

Read the full article in U.S. News & World Report's online opinion section.