A Peruvian farmer who defied an open-pit gold mining project and a Puerto Rican environmentalist who stared down beachfront developers are the South American and Caribbean winners of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize, awarded April 18 in San Francisco, California. Peruvian Máxima Acuña, whose family has been the lone holdout against a mine in Peru’s Cajamarca province, delivered her acceptance speech in the form of a song, its lyrics set to a plaintive Andean melody. Her award came days after the company building the mine revealed that it was suspending the project “for the foreseeable future.” In Aug. 2011, workers driving backhoes and escorted by riot police arrived at Acuña’s small house on a hill near the Laguna Azul, a lake destined to be... [Log in to read more]
