Anastasia Moloney profile background image
Anastasia Moloney profile image

Anastasia Moloney

Latin America Correspondent

Thomson Reuters Foundation

Anastasia Moloney is the Latin America and Caribbean correspondent based in Bogotá, Colombia. An award-winning journalist, Anastasia has a particular interest in climate change and the Amazon rainforest. Before joining the Thomson Reuters Foundation, she was a freelance journalist covering Colombia’s conflict, human trafficking and women’s rights issues for leading US and UK publications, including The Financial Times and The Guardian.

March 20, 2024

As a colossal Chinese container ship manoeuvered into the narrow Miraflores locks on the Panama Canal, around 27 million gallons of water rose around it, propelling the vessel along this vital maritime shortcut between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

But the critical water cushion that lifts and lowers ships through a series of locks along the canal is deflating because of repeated droughts, disrupting a key global trade route and slashing revenues that underpin Panama's economy.

February 28, 2024

Seeking a better life in the United States, migrant Nohe Vargas has spent the past two months dodging police as he weaves a slow way north by bus and motorbike from his home in Nicaragua.

Taking refuge at a migrant camp in Mexico City, the 32-year-old cook is now in a hurry to breach the U.S.-Mexico border.

January 16, 2024

After an 80-year struggle to regain control of their ancestral lands in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest, the Indigenous Siekopai people are set to return after a historic court ruling ordered the government to grant the community property titles.

Under the November ruling, Ecuador's Environment Ministry is expected to issue a land title to the Siekopai by April for more than 104,000 acres (42,000 hectares) of land, along with a public apology for violating their rights.

December 14, 2023

Abortion was a major flashpoint in 2023, dividing Americans and dominating political debate. Brace for more of the same in 2024, with key election battles and legal landmarks due to determine a woman's right to choose in the U.S. and well beyond.

In the year that Roe v Wade marked its 50th anniversary, pro-abortion Americans scored mixed results in 2023, months after the landmark decision was overturned and moral wrangling over abortion hit fever pitch.

November 29, 2023

From drug traffickers laundering money through dubious land purchases to miners illegally panning for gold, environmental crime is thriving in the Amazon and the question of what to do about it will be high on the agenda at the COP28 talks in Dubai.

For the first time, the global law enforcement community will gather at the U.N. climate conference, which starts on Thursday and runs until Dec. 12, to discuss how to combat the rise of illegal activities that threaten both people and planet.

November 22, 2023

Two years since the Mexican state of Veracruz legalised abortion, reproductive rights activist Metzeri Ávila still travels for hours into remote areas to deliver free abortion pills to women excluded by the public healthcare system.

Some women cannot afford to travel to a public hospital or do not know they are allowed to terminate their pregnancies, but others are being turned away by medical staff opposed to the procedure, Ávila said.

November 16, 2023

Along a dirt path in the heart of Guatemala's northern Maya Biosphere Reserve - a vast expanse of protected jungle and ancient ruins, ranchers on horseback herd cattle to grazing grasslands.

The cattle and cowboys should not be here.

November 06, 2023

After weeks of sleepless nights, Guatemalan farmer Lorenza Mendoza heard the words she had prayed for when a people smuggler called to say 'Your son is ok. He made it.'

About six months ago, Mendoza's 22-year-old son left his remote village in Guatemala's eastern Chiquimula province for the United States in search of a better life.

November 01, 2023

On a steep terraced slope in the mountains of eastern Guatemala, Gloria Díaz and a group of fellow farmers punch holes in the soil with wooden spades to plant bean seeds that they pray will yield a bumper harvest.

Sufficient production of beans, which most Guatemalan villagers eat daily, is no longer guaranteed in Chiquimula, a poor rural province in the drought-prone Dry Corridor - a belt of land stretching across Central America.

October 17, 2023

Weighing a crying 3-year-old girl on scales that dangle from the ceiling of a rural health clinic in eastern Guatemala, nurse Gamaliel Amador is not surprised by the reading - she hasn't gained weight.

The scales show 8 kg (17.6 lb), the same number recorded by Amador when the girl was first brought in two weeks ago - well below average for a child of her age and a sign of moderate malnutrition.