A US prosecutor has filed drug trafficking charges against retired Colombian police general Mauricio Santoyo Velasco—who was former President Alvaro Uribe’s security chief from 2002 to 2006.
The International Criminal Court will analyze information regarding the Colombian army murdering civilians and disguising them as guerillas killed in combat to artificially inflate their enemy kill count.
Even as the imprisoned mayor of Cuzco’s Espinar province was released and entered into a dialogue with the government over the Xstrata mining project, new violence is reported from Cajamarca over the proposed Conga mega-mine.
At a summit in Bolivia, a special target for Evo Morales and other leaders on the left was the OAS rights organization, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights—despite its record of criticizing the US and its Latin American allies.
Three prominent lawmakers publicly resigned from President Ollanta Humala’s ruling Gana PerĂş coalition over the government’s violent suppression of protests against the Xstrata Tintaya copper mine in Cuzco’s Espinar province.
National Police fired on protesters amid a new “indefinite” civil strike called to oppose the US-backed Conga gold-mining project in Peru’s northern region of Cajamarca. Supporters of the project are calling for a state of emergency to be declared.
The conflict over the Xstrata mine in Espinar province of Peru’s Cuzco region escalated as National Police troops in full riot gear stormed the office of the mayor, Oscar Mollohuanca, arresting him on charges of leading protests that have left four dead.
Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos and Chinese President Hu Jintao presided over the signing in Beijing of a pact calling for the two governments to cooperate in building a trans-oceanic pipeline through the Andean country.
Much of Colombia’s lowland jungle department of Putumayo is shut down by a “paro armado”—a civil strike enforced by the guns of the FARC guerillas, in response to glyphosate spraying across the territory.
Indigenous Aymara ayllus (communal villages) in Bolivia’s PotosĂ department clashed with police in an attempt to occupy the camp of a Canadian mining company they say is operating on their territory without their consent.
The struggle against the planned Conga gold mine in Peru’s northern region of Cajamarca continues to gain ground, with formation of a “Unitary Struggle Command for the Northern Macroregion and Oriente.”
A clash with National Police left 11 campesinos hurt and eight detained amid an indefinite paro (civil strike) in Espinar province of Peru’s Cuzco region, called to protest pollution caused by local mining operations.
