Indigenous peoples marched throughout the hemisphere on Oct. 12, while El Salvador’s President Mauricio Funes apologized in the name of the state for centuries of “persecution and extermination.”
While the world media focused on the successful rescue of 33 Chilean miners, union leaders charge that persistent problems with safety in the country’s mines are being downplayed.
About 60 Haitians protested an extension of the mandate for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) by blocking the entrance to the mission’s base near the Port-au-Prince airport.
After 90 days of negotiations with unions and social organizations, the government of right-wing Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli approved an agreement to rescind a controversial labor law.
A group of 45 US Congress members called on the United States not to support presidential and legislative elections in Haiti in November if 14 political parties continue to be excluded from the ballot.
Former US president Bill Clinton and Haitian leaders met with the group monitoring international earthquake recovery aid to hear proposals that benefit the private sector in the donor countries.
Ten indigenous Mapuche prisoners in Chile’s southern AraucanĂa region agreed to end a liquids-only hunger strike protesting the use of an “anti-terrorism” measure against indigenous activists.
Barack Obama personally apologized by phone to Guatemalan president Ălvaro Colom for a US program that purposely infected Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea in a 1946-48 experiment.
The National Refugee Commission of Argentina (Conare) granted political asylum to Sergio Galvarino Apablaza Guerra, a former leader of Chile’s rebel Manuel RodrĂguez Patriotic Front (FPMR).
The Colombian inspector general removed Senator Piedad CĂłrdoba from her position and barred her from public office for 18 years because of what he said were her links to the rebel FARC.
“But what’s the problem with that?” Honduran president Porfirio Lobo said when a reporter asked about calls from unions and grassroots organizations to rewrite the country’s 1982 Constitution.
Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, described policy changes intended to expand Cuba’s small private sector, part of a plan to lay off some half million public employees.
