Some 500 prisoners in several of Colombia’s facilities have initiated an indefinite hunger strike. The strikers are mostly imprisoned FARC guerillas who demand that they be recognized as “political prisoners of war and conscience.”
Both attacks by guerillas and road blockades by peasant protesters have slowed progress on Colombia’s new Bicentenario pipeline, slated to be the country’s biggest and extending into remote territory in the conflicted eastern lowlands.
Peru’s government sent a protest note to Chile, claiming an unauthorized incursion by Chilean troops into its territory—as the International Court of Justice at The Hague scheduled oral arguments in the border dispute case between the countries.
The US International Narcotics Control Strategy report has harsh words for Peru, lamenting the country’s “slow advance” in coca eradication. Bolivia’s Evo Morales meanwhile brandished a coca leaf at the annual UN anti-drug summit in Vienna.
The former head of Peru’s National Water Authority, Abelardo de la Torre, warned that the country faces at least 70 social conflicts related to control of water, and that these are likely to worsen if urgent action is not taken to address them.
Peru’s President Ollanta Humala announces a deal with the Camisea consortium to assure that Block 88 gas will be used for domestic consumption—even as the consortium began fulfilling its long-delayed export contracts.
The Bolivian government declared three days of mourning for union and leftist leader Domitila Barrios de Chungara, who led the mass hunger strike that brought down dictator Hugo Banzer Suárez.
Former general Pedro Pimentel has been sentenced to 6,030 years in prison for his participation in a 1982 massacre of 201 civilians–most of them women and children–in the village of Dos Erres.
Transgender activist Agnes Torres Sulca and anti-mining activist Bernardo Vásquez Sánchez are the latest victims of a wave of violence that seems to target grassroots political organizers.
Tens of thousands of Mexican teachers in several states went on strike or took to the streets March 14-16 in three days of “Action in Defense of Education.”
While 2011 was dominated by massive student protests in Chile, some local media have suggested that 2012 is starting to look like the real “year of the protest.”
Ngöbe-Buglé leaders reached an agreement with the Panamanian government that would ban mining in the group’s territory and limit hydroelectric projects–but there is strong opposition.
