A former Coca-Cola plant in the Caracas suburb of Catia is to be taken over for a cooperative public housing development under an agreement between the company and local municipal government.
The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) filed a lawsuit asking that the country’s new mining law—which sparked angry protests this year—be declared unconstitutional.
Faced with declining production and economic chaos, Venezuela is again opening its oil-fields to private companies—reversing much of the progress in asserting state control of the hydrocarbons industry that was made under Hugo Chávez. Just after a series of new contracts with private firms was announced, President Nicolás Maduro flew to Beijing for a meeting with Xi Jinping. The two leaders announced further deals to open Venezuela's Orinoco Belt to Chinese companies. This comes a decade after Exxon withdrew from the Orinoco Belt, unable to come to terms with the Chávez government. (Photo via OilPrice.com)
The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights issued a report finding that opponents of Bolivian President Evo Morales were responsible for some of the country’s worst rights violations last year.
In a program called “unprecedented” in Latin America, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has begun registering some 50,000 Colombians who have fled their country for Ecuador.
Rights organizations say more than 300 families have been displaced by the Peruvian army’s Plan “Excelencia 777,” launched to take Vizcatán zone from narco-trafficking and “terrorist” groups.
In a move aimed at appeasing US Congressional opposition to the free trade agreement, Bogotá has ordered palm oil companies to return thousands of acres to displaced Afro-Colombian peasants.
Calling it a measure to “reunify the motherland,” Hugo Chávez dispatched army troops to seize Venezuela’s air and sea ports—a move decried by the opposition as a power grab.
The DEA announced the arrest of two alleged narco-brokers for the 10th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the US.
Colombia's Supreme Court approved a request by the attorney general to reopen the investigation of former army general Rito Alejo del Rio, suspected of collaboration with illegal paramilitaries.
Bolivia, which kicked out the US DEA last year, applied for US State Department approval to purchase six warplanes with US-made components from the Czech Republic for drug enforcement.
Bolivia has issued a decree nullifying an exploration contract with the French oil major Total signed by rancher Ronald Larsen, leader of the resistance movement to Bolivia’s land reform.
