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☆ The World’s Next Big Drag Queen Is Brazilian
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-30 | by ( Jack Nicas | Victor Moriyama | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

São Paulo’s main avenue was packed this month with thousands of people draped in the yellow and green of the Brazilian flag and captivated by a commanding figure atop a tractor-trailer rigged with speakers. From above, the scene could have maybe passed for one of the many political rallies held in the same spot by former President Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian far-right leader who has infamously declared that he could never love a gay son. (Though, to be fair, the enormous rainbow flag would be a giveaway.) It was, in fact, one of the world’s largest Pride parades, and the person atop the sound truck was Phabullo Rodrigues da Silva, 30, the gay son of a working-class single mother in Brazil’s north. Yet everyone in the crowd knew him as Pabllo Vittar, a 6-foot-2-inch drag queen in a glittering cutoff Brazilian soccer jersey and shredded jean shorts — one of the biggest pop stars in this nation of 203 million.

Persons: Jair Bolsonaro, Phabullo Rodrigues da Silva, Pabllo, jean Locations: Brazil’s

☆ The Internet’s Final Frontier: Remote Amazon Tribes
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-02 | by ( Jack Nicas | Victor Moriyama | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

But this was happening in a remote Indigenous village in one of the most isolated stretches of the planet. The Marubo people have long lived in communal huts scattered hundreds of miles along the Ituí River deep in the Amazon rainforest. They speak their own language, take ayahuasca to connect with forest spirits and trap spider monkeys to make soup or keep as pets. They have preserved this way of life for hundreds of years through isolation — some villages can take a week to reach. But since September, the Marubo have had high-speed internet thanks to Elon Musk.

Persons: scrolled, Elon Musk

Six months after the first round of planting, the team was ready to measure the 44 trees in one sample plot. Luiz Carlos Batista Lobato, a botanist who specializes in tree censuses, walked across the plot to document three trees that had died, many that were taller than him and one that was more than two inches thick. In a few years, Mr. Batista Lobato said, monkeys and armadillos would come to eat the fruits of different trees and birds would feast on the açaí berries, dispersing their seeds as they move around the forest. Watching the trees start to grow helped to dispel some of the skepticism that farmers across the region still have. “We end up feeling like following the same path,” he added, as he watched the sun set on a vast pasture.

Persons: Luiz Carlos Batista Lobato, Batista Lobato, ”, Djalma Soares, Mr, Soares Locations: Maracaçumé

☆ Ecuador lucha contra la peor ola de violencia generada por el narcotráfico
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-17 | by ( Genevieve Glatsky | José María León Cabrera | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesVictor Moriyama para The New York TimesCredit... Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesPolicías deteniendo a un hombre en mayo en Durán, en Ecuador. Durante la detención, la madre del hombre, Ana, insistía en que su hijo era un consumidor de drogas, no un traficante. Policías deteniendo a un hombre en mayo en Durán, en Ecuador. Durante la detención, la madre del hombre, Ana, insistía en que su hijo era un consumidor de drogas, no un traficante.Credit...Victor Moriyama para The New York Times

A total of 210 tons of drugs seized in a single year, a record. And all this chaos financed by powerful outsiders with deep pockets and lots of experience in the global drug business. Ecuador, on South America’s western edge, has in just a few years become the drug trade’s gold rush state, with major cartels from as far as Mexico and Albania joining forces with prison and street gangs, unleashing a wave of violence unlike anything in the country’s recent history. Fueling this turmoil is the world’s growing demand for cocaine. “People consume abroad,” said Maj. Edison Núñez, an intelligence official with the Ecuadorean national police, “but they don’t understand the consequences that take place here.”

Persons: ”, Edison Núñez Organizations: Prisons Locations: Ecuador, South, Mexico, Albania

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