Strikes and protests against the Bolivian government’s wage hike offers this week marked a break by organized labor with the leftist government of President Evo Morales.
On a tour of Colombia and Peru, Defense Secretary Robert Gates voiced support for the US-Colombia FTA and hailed Bogotá as a human rights example for the region that Lima should emulate.
Talks are underway in Lima between small-scale miners and Peru’s Ministry of Mines following deadly repression of a protest campaign by miners to demand land and prospecting rights.
A second rancher was sentenced for his role in the murder of Dorothy Stang, the US-born nun who was gunned down in retaliation for her efforts on behalf of poor farmers in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
Spanish-Argentine oil giant Repsol-YPF has applied to Peru’s government to cut 454 kilometers of seismic lines and construct 152 heliports in its search for oil on uncontacted tribes’ land.
A group of indigenous Kichwa men from the community of Sarayaku in the Ecuadoran Amazon were attacked with dynamite and firearms by invaders illegally encroaching on indigenous lands.
Ecuadoran police fired tear gas at indigenous protesters gathered outside the National Assembly building in Quito to oppose a water resources bill that they say favors mining companies and agribusiness.
Members of the Mauritanian diaspora are holding a protest at the country’s Washington embassy against Prime Minster Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf’s move to ban African languages.
The Greek Parliament passed the austerity package, with protesters gathering outside the Parliament’s doors. The deaths of three bank workers in a fire set by protesters has polarized Greece.
Western Sahara’s Polisario Front condemned a Security Council resolution extending the UN mission mandate for the Morocco-occupied territory, but imposing no mechanism to monitor rights.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, in a survey of global press-freedom “Predators,” ranks Eritrea’s President Issaias Afeworki as the world’s worst abuser of media freedom.
This year’s May Day mobilization in Bolivia comes amid mounting social conflicts, with protesters on the left and the right launching road blocks, hunger strikes and other direct actions.
