Four students and two police agents were injured in a confrontation between students and the notorious ESMAD riot police at Pamplona University in Colombia’s northern department of Norte de Santander.
Chilean students took to the streets again to push their demands for free public education and a reversal of the privatization policies started under Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s 1973-1990 dictatorship.
A Buenos Aires court declared former Argentine president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) innocent of involvement in the government’s clandestine sales of arms to Ecuador and Croatia from 1991 to 1995.
Honduras armed forces chief Gen. RenĂ© Osorio Canales claims police and soldiers were ambushed by “people with high-caliber weapons, people who have dedicated themselves to guerrilla activities” in the conflicted Lower Aguán Valley.
The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) agreed to end a sit-in the unionists had been holding in Mexico City’s main plaza since March; the government has agreed to find jobs for laid-off workers.
Leaders of 71 unions in 18 countries have called for Mexico’s federal government to take over the stalled investigation of a US union activist’s murder in 2007. Santiago Rafael Cruz was organizing migrant laborers in Monterrey when he was beaten to death.
Haitian president Michel Martelly announced the formation of an advisory council for economic development that will “remove the brakes” on foreign investment—and ensure a continued role for Bill Clinton as de facto “governor” of Haiti.
As student strikes continued, Chileans marked the Sept. 11, 1973 coup that overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende and installed the Pinochet dictatorship. A march was held for the 3,225 known to have have been killed by the Pinochet regime.
Activist Mahadeo (“Emo”) Sadloo was shot dead at his automobile tire shop in eastern Tegucigalpa; just one day later, activist journalist Medardo Flores was gunned down near his farm in the north.
US diplomats suspected in 2004 that the business owner at the center of land disputes in the Lower Aguán Valley may have been involved in three drug-related incidents at one of his properties.
A former member of the Macheteros Puerto Rican rebel group charges that US agents planted an electronic device in his car. The Macheteros meanwhile disavowed a letter sent in their name with a supposed chemical substance to Puerto Rico’s capitol building.
Some of the 1,100 Uruguayan troops in the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) may face repatriation following release of a video that appears to show the sexual abuse of a Haitian youth at a military base.
