from Weekly News Update on the Americas ZULIA: INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY ATTACKED On Sept. 15, a group of 15 heavily armed men in olive green military uniforms arrived in two pickup trucks at the Yukpa and Wayuu indigenous campesino community of… Read moreVENEZUELA: PARAMILITARIES ATTACK INDIGENOUS
Continue ReadingVENEZUELA: PARAMILITARIES ATTACK INDIGENOUSfrom Weekly News Update on the Americas INDIGENOUS HOLD NATIONWIDE “MINGA,” TWO DIE On Oct. 10, tens of thousands of Colombian indigenous people began marching to various regional capitals in a coordinated Minga (community mobilization) to demand indigenous rights, protest… Read moreCOLOMBIA: INDIGENOUS MOBILIZE—DESPITE STATE TERROR
Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA: INDIGENOUS MOBILIZE—DESPITE STATE TERRORfrom Weekly News Update on the Americas On Sept. 30, residents of the districts of Atalaya, Sepahua and Tahuania in the Peruvian Amazon held a 24-hour strike protesting the contamination of the region’s rivers by the Camisea natural gas project…. Read morePERU: INDIGENOUS BLOCK CAMISEA GAS PROJECT
Continue ReadingPERU: INDIGENOUS BLOCK CAMISEA GAS PROJECTColombian guerrillas and paramilitary fighters engaged in a bloody gun battle over control of the cocaine trade in western Chocó department, leaving at least 75 fighters dead, the Bogota daily El Tiempo reported. Victor Mosquera, a regional human rights observer,… Read moreColombia: paras, guerillas battle for control of Chocó
Jorge Noguera, the head of Colombia’s Administrative Security Department (DAS) announced his resignation Oct. 25, inviting authorities to investigate accusations against him in the national press that he had cololaborated with illegal paramilitary groups. Noguera told reporters he was innocent… Read morePara collaboration scandal shakes Colombian secret police
On the morning of Oct. 27, authorities certified that the body of an Afro-Colombian found washed up on the banks of the Rio Leon at Bocas de Zabalo, Chocó department, dead of gunshot wounds, was that of Orlando Valencia, a… Read moreParas kill Afro-Colombian leader
“Plan Colombia,” Bogotá’s US— backed program to reduce drug production in that Andean nation, “isn’t working,” charges Luis Correa, leader of Venezuela’s National Commission Against Illicit Drug Use (Conacuid). Luis Correa said there had been “a huge increase” in illegal… Read morePlan Colombia “ineffective”: Venezuelan drug czar
On Oct. 11, unidentified gunmen shot dead Francisco Antonio Cuchillo Baltazar, a 57-year indigenous governor of Ginebra municipality of the southwestern Colombian department of Valle del Cauca, the authorities said. Cuchillo was hit by three bullets when he was waiting… Read moreIndigenous leader assassinated in Colombia
On Oct. 10 in Santiago, Chile, nearly 4,000 people took part in a “Dignity March” called by Meli Wixan Mapu and other Mapuche organizations. The marchers called for the release of Mapuche political prisoners, and for Mapuche unity in the… Read moreChile: Mapuches march
At midday on Oct. 16, Orlando Valencia, an Afro-Colombian representative of the Community Council of Curvaradó in the department of Chocó, was arbitrarily detained and “disappeared,” despite being protected by official measures of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The… Read moreAfro-Colombian activist “disappeared”
In an Oct. 9 interview with CNN, televangelist Pat Robertson—who recently got in hot water by calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez—accused the Venezuelan president of giving Osama bin Laden $1.2 million after the 9-11 attacks and of trying… Read moreOsama bin Laden: football in US-Venezuela spat
On Oct. 5, a group of seven Mapuche indigenous students from the Frontier University in Temuco, Chile—on hunger strike since Sept. 29—began an occupation of the Temuco cathedral. Another two hunger strikers did not participate because they were hospitalized on… Read moreChile: Mapuche youth seize cathedral
