After marching by the hundreds in Bogotá, displaced Embera indigenous people won a pledge from Colombia’s government to return their lands usurped by paramilitaries—as an Embera leader was assassinated in CĂłrdoba.
Construction workers with the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP) marched in Lima to support the struggle against the Conga gold mine project—and press their own demands of better pay and working conditions.
On July 6, in a silent mass demonstration that filled the central plaza of CelendĂn town, last rites were held for three of the five campesinos killed in protests against the Conga mine project in Peru’s northern region of Cajamarca… Read morePeru: Cajamarca martyrs put to rest amid ongoing civil strike
Sendero Luminoso guerillas scored two attacks on army “counter-terrorist bases” in as many weeks, leaving one solider dead and one wounded. One attack was in Huancavelica, far outside Sendero’s usual jungle territory.
Bolivian police used tear gas, pepper spray and blasts from a water cannon mounted on an armored vehicle against protesters at the camp established by the Ninth Indigenous March just off Plaza Murillo in central La Paz.
With Peru’s northern Cajamarca region under a state of emergency, police again fired on protesters in a rural town, leaving one dead. Protest leader Marco Arana was meanwhile arrested and beaten in the regional capital.
Three people were killed—including a youth of 17 years—when National Police and army troops fired on protesters opposing the US-backed Conga gold mine project in Peru’s northern region of Cajamarca.
Under a new pact, Iran is to provide counter-narcotics aid and training to Bolivian forces. Bolivia meanwhile credits Brazilian reconnaissance drones for recent strikes against narco-traffickers in the country’s lowland east.
Aymara communal peasants in Bolivia’s PotosĂ department, seized two engineers at the local Malku Khota mining operation, to press their demand for the release of their leader Cancio Rojas, who was arrested last month.
A “humanitarian caravan” arrived in Colombia’s Cauca department, bringing aid to hundreds of campesinos who have been maintaining a protest encampment to prevent the military from establishing a new base.
The government of Peru’s President Ollanta Humala opened a new investigation into anti-mine protest leaders in Cajamarca. But protesters responded by holding a mock funeral for the president on his 50th birthday.
In a second day of mobilization, some 20,000 informal gold miners filled the streets of Puno in southern Peru, demanding that the regional government support their demands for “free sale” of gold.
