Over the past 10 years, more than 40% of Colombia’s national territory has come under the control of multinational corporations for oil, mineral and biofuel production—part of what critics decry as a global land-grab.
Nine miners were rescued after six days trapped in a tunnel at an “informal” copper mine in Peru. President Ollanta Humala said the incident points to the dangers of informal mines—but several such disasters have recently struck legal mines.
In a YouTube statement, Colombia’s FARC guerillas responded to reports that they have been weakened, and asserted that the rebels’ “struggle for a socialist Colombia” is legitimized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Ecologists say “marine bubble” technology used in offshore oil explorations is behind the mysterious dolphin die-off on the Peruvian coast. An estimated 3,000 dolphins have washed up on the coast so far this year.
Hundreds of National Police and army troops have been mobilized to Peru’s northern Andean region of Cajamarca ahead of an announced resumption of the civil strike there in opposition to the Conga gold mining project.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released the last 10 members of the security forces they were holding captive—but over 400 civilians remain held in the guerillas’ jungle camps, receiving less priority from the government.
A Colombian judge overturned the conviction of FARC commander “Grannobles,” finding he could not be held responsible for the deaths of civilians in a Colombian air force strike on a village where he killed captive soldiers.
Colombia’s armed forces boast of wiping out FARC guerilla forces on the eastern plains, winning international coverage. But ongoing paramilitary terror against campesinos seeking restitution of usurped lands gets no coverage outside Colombia.
Peru’s Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa addresses an elite right-wing confab in Lima, intoning against the threat of “populism” and warning that “the radical left has found in ecology a new banner.” He also boasts that he has no cell phone.
On World Water Day, the “March for Water, Life and Dignity,” more than 1,000 strong, reached Ecuador’s capital after a two-week, 700-kilometer cross-country trek to oppose plans for large-scale mining projects on indigenous lands.
Some 500 prisoners in several of Colombia’s facilities have initiated an indefinite hunger strike. The strikers are mostly imprisoned FARC guerillas who demand that they be recognized as “political prisoners of war and conscience.”
Both attacks by guerillas and road blockades by peasant protesters have slowed progress on Colombia’s new Bicentenario pipeline, slated to be the country’s biggest and extending into remote territory in the conflicted eastern lowlands.
