Beneath the Boom showcases the nine months students and faculty of the International Reporting Program spent reporting, recording and editing their stories. Notably, it includes links to the two video documentaries the IRP produced for The New York Times website, “Dying for Land” and “Damming the Amazon.”
For “Dying for Land,” the IRP travelled to the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, a region in southwest Brazil where cattle ranching and farming have turned it into one of the major breadbaskets of the world. Much of this valuable land is on ancestral soil belonging to the Guarani Indians, who have begun to try to reclaim it, sometimes with violent results. Weeks after “Dying for Land” was published on the NYT site, authorities in Brazil took 18 people into custody as part of the investigation into the murder of Guarani leader Nisio Gomes. Gomes was shot by a group of masked gunmen who stormed a Guarani encampment in November 2011.
Meanwhile, in the state of Pará, located in the heart of the Amazon, Norte Energia is building what is slated to be world’s third-largest dam, Belo Monte. But as the IRP documents in “Damming the Amazon,” while the dam promises to supply electricity across Brazil, indigenous people fear it will force them off their reserves, destroying their culture and accelerating deforestation of the world’s largest rainforest.
