The mixed blessings of the simple life led by indigenous people deep in the forest

POLITICIANS all over the world are accustomed to cutting ribbons on new buildings. In the Alto Solimoes region of the Brazilian Amazon, they are sometimes expected to wield bigger shears. An extension to Novo Paraiso’s schoolhouse is being built and Yudo, recently elected to the post of vereador, a kind of town councillor, strides into the forest with a chainsaw to get more timber for the beams. The tree falls exactly where he wants it to, but on the way down it rips a branch from the overhanging canopy. It falls, slicing through the top of Yudo’s ear. An inch to the right and it would have cracked open his skull like a nut.

The timing of his misfortune could not be better. For the past ten days, Novo Paraiso, which has a population of about 50 souls, has had a hospital as good as almost any to be found in Brazil (albeit a temporary one), courtesy of a Brazilian charity called Expedicionarios da Saude. It comprises three air-conditioned sterile tents for surgery, a pharmacy, a post-operative ward and a team of experienced anaesthetists, surgeons, nurses and technicians, all of whose services are free. Novo Paraiso sits in an area of the forest that, after a long fight, was reserved for the Ticuna people. Most of the Ticuna live in Brazil, but there are some in Colombia and Peru too. One patient has apparently travelled for eight days from Peru to get an operation. ...

A dying profession in the heart of the city

BEFORE you even reach the square, the offers of counterfeit receipts and diplomas come in rapid fire. The modest plaza of Santo Domingo, a few blocks north of Mexico City’s grand central square, the Zocalo, is a district of printing shops and stationery stores, dominated by a church which, with its solitary bell tower skewed off to the side, appears to be winking at the activities—both licit and illicit—unfolding below. The church has been there since 1736. For almost as long, scribes have gathered on its plaza to tend to correspondence, public and private. It was they who gave rise to the printing shops. They, too, who gave the neighbourhood its character. But they are now a dying breed, superseded by ever-spreading modern gadgetry.

Although Mexico’s literacy rate has improved markedly over the years, nearly one in ten Mexicans are still unable to read or write. So some 20 or so scribes remain, having traded quills for pens and pens for typewriters. At 27, Tono Rojas is among the youngest. He charges 20-30 pesos (around $2) a page. Most of his clientele, he says, are illiterate; nowadays only a few use his services simply for convenience. He mostly writes receipts for tradesmen—plumbers, construction workers and the like—or helps fill out tax forms. As a sideline, he types letters of complaint to government agencies, the city’s mayor or even to the president himself. In a full day’s work, he can still expect to see eight to ten customers. But business is down, he says, even over the four years he has been there. ...

A clash between environmentalists and Inuit rights

“WE DON'T have no vegetarians here,” says James Qillaq, a long-time resident of Kanngiqtugaapik in Canada’s Nunavut territory. North of the 70th parallel, where winter temperatures regularly drop below -30°C, “nothing can grow in the ground, so the only thing we eat is animals.” Inuit like Mr Qillaq have been hunting here for generations, and though sledge dogs and spears have been replaced by snowmobiles and rifles, the prime target remains unchanged: polar bears.

As if global warming weren’t problem enough, a row over how to determine hunting quotas has recently begun to heat up. Polar bears are divided into 19 distinct populations throughout the high Arctic, all in varying stages of distress. One of the most fragile is in Baffin Bay, where there are now only about 1,500 animals, down nearly a third from a count a decade ago. ...

A state of emergency is declared after swindled investors take to the streets

ALL it took was the first hint of a rumour that the government was about to shut down an illegal pyramid investment scheme for the owners of the scam to flee the country, prompting tens of thousands of furious investors to go on the rampage in 13 cities across Colombia. On November 12th and 13th, shop fronts were torched, offices looted and government buildings attacked in violent protests that left two dead, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency.

The rioting began after news spread that the owners of Proyecciones DRFE (the Spanish initials for “Fast Easy Money In Cash”), an investment scheme in which hundreds of thousands of Colombians had sunk their savings, had bolted. Tempted by astronomical rates of return, many investors, ranging from poor farmers to wealthy senators, had sold their homes or taken out loans in the hope of watching their money double in just a few months. Some even quit their jobs. Now most had been left virtually penniless. ...

The provinces plead for cash

KEEPING the budget in surplus has been a near-obsession in Canada ever since a Liberal government felt obliged to slash public spending in the mid-1990s to end almost three decades of deficits and rising public debt. In the campaign for last month’s general elections, all five party leaders vowed to maintain a budget surplus. Yet within days of winning a second term at the head of a minority government, Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister, admitted that “global economic instability” meant that next year’s budget might involve a deficit.

That makes sense: governments across the world are resorting to deficit spending as their economies slide into recession. For much of this year, Canada seemed aloof from financial turmoil, but its exports are feeling the effects of plunging commodity prices and falling demand in the United States, its main trading partner. ...