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.
Even as the White House censures Venezuelan officials for “narco-terrorist” ties, the Hugo Chávez government handed a top Colombian drug trafficking suspect, Maximiliano Bonilla Orozco AKA “Valenciano,” over to US authorities.
Peru’s President Ollanta Humala called off the state of emergency in Cajamarca region after local leaders agreed to suspend their civil strike against Newmont Mining Corp.’s Conga gold project pending talks with the government.
The Colombian Armed Forces have created three new “joint task forces” aimed at targeting the core of the FARC guerilla army, in what the government is plugging as a final offensive against Latin America’s oldest insurgency.
