A special court for land restitution in BolĂvar, Colombia, issued an historic ruling, ordering the return of 65 hectares to 14 families who had been forced from their lands by paramilitaries.
President Evo Morales signed a new "Law of Mother Earth" that extends the agrarian reform, bans GMOs, and establishes a Climate Justice Fund to remediate impacted lands.
Riots rocked an industrial zone of Peru's capital, with police killing two and property damage costing millions—days after Hillary Clinton visited the district to hail its development.
Campesino leaders from Cajamarca will travel to Washington DC to testify before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission about abuses related to the Conga mine project.
United Nations independent human rights experts urged Colombian authorities to reconsider proposed constitutional reforms affecting the military criminal law.
Campesinos in Cajamarca are organizing round-the-clock vigilance at the proposed site of the Conga gold mine, skeptical of official assurances that the project is suspended.
Creditors of the troubled Doe Run Peru company voted to sell the controversial metal smelting complex at La Oroya—dubbed “Peru’s Chernobyl”—to Citibank.
The US Justice Department has frozen the assets of mineral companies owned by Peru’s Sánchez-Paredes family, finding that they are fronts for cocaine trafficking.
The Colombian National Police elite anti-riot squad, ESMAD, stormed the campus of the the Technological University of ChocĂł, which had been successfully occupied for 40 days.
In Venezuela as in the US, third-party candidates were roundly ignored by the media—including a veteran labor leader who challenged Hugo Chávez from the left.
Leon Panetta in Lima secured an agreement to revise Washington’s 60-year-old defense cooperation pact with Peru—as Sendero guerillas attacked pipeline infrastructure.
Human Rights Watch urged Peru’s President Ollanta Humala to take steps to prevent the unlawful killing of peasant protesters, noting growing incidents of deadly force.
