Opponents of the US-owned Conga mining project in Peru’s northern Cajamarca region launched a cross-country National March for Water, symbolically departing for Lima from one of the mountain lakes threatened by the project.
Distrust continues between popular Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa and many of the grassroots and leftist organizations that helped bring him to office five years.
Colombia’s Caño-Limón oil pipeline was bombed by presumed FARC guerillas in Norte de Santander near the Venezuelan border. The rupture has local communities worried about an oil slick advancing on the Río Catatumbo.
After a regional strike shut down Colombia’s central Andean department of Huila for 15 days, the protest campaign was suspended when the government agreed to public hearings on the Quimbo hydro-electric project.
Milciades Trochez Conda, an indigenous leader who 11 years ago escaped kidnappers from the FARC rebel group, was gunned down by presumed paramilitary hit-men in the southwestern Colombian department of Cauca.
Ricardo Soberón, the anti-drug chief who last year briefly suspended coca eradication in Peru, resigned under pressure from the administration of President Ollanta Humala—to be replaced with an outspoken eradication advocate.
The State Department expelled Livia Acosta Noguera, Venezuelan consul general in Miami, over an alleged plot involving Venezuela, Iran and Cuba to launch a cyber-attack against the FBI, CIA, NSA and other top US government agencies.
A “Plurinational Encuentro” held last month in Cochabamba brought together lawmakers and leaders of popular movements—but was boycotted by Bolivia’s main labor federation and dissident campesino organizations.
Despite the mobilization of some 500 National Police troops, the streets of towns in Colombia’s northern Urabá region have been cleared by threats from Los Urabeños paramilitary network, which has declared an “armed strike.”
More than 950 relatives of inmates launched a protest occupation of a Venezuelan prison over the New year holiday, saying they will refuse to leave the facility until authorities agree to their demand for faster trials for their loved ones.
Protests in Peru’s north-central region of Cajamarca resumed with a thousand gathering in the city square to protest against the Conga gold mining project. The regional council voted to declare the project “unviable.”
Peruvian authorities finally allowed paroled US citizen Lori Berenson to leave for a brief visit to her family in New York; meanwhile, ex-president Alberto Fujimori is hoping to get a pardon.
