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.
Bolivian President Evo Morales, empowered by his country’s new constitution, began redistributing land to indigenous peasants in the Chaco region—as local ranchers pledged to resist.
Bolivian President Evo Morales ate a coca leaf at the UN summit on drug policy in Vienna to press his demand that the crop be removed from the list of internationally prohibited drugs.
In the remote Peruvian village of Huanta, Ayacucho department, forensic workers are exhuming the remains of 49 buried in a mass grave and thought to be victims of an army massacre.
President Evo Morales expelled a US diplomat, accusing him of “coordinating contacts” in a conspiracy to infiltrate the state oil and gas company on behalf of the CIA.
President Hugo Chávez called Colombian Defense Minister Juan Santos a “threat to peace in South America” and pledged to hit back hard if Colombia made any military incursion into Venezuela.
Colombian para commander Hebert Veloza Garcia was extradited to the US—over the protests of rights groups who fear details of government collusion with the paras may never be revealed.
