Colombia’s former Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, now on the lam, was charged with conspiracy, fraud and illegal arms trafficking related to the bogus “demobilization” of non-existent FARC fighters in a “criminal enterprise.”
As government troops search southern Colombia for FARC guerillas after a wave of audacious attacks, the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca protested that several indigenous residents have been killed by armed actors in recent weeks.
Former militants of the Alfaro Vive Carajo guerilla group turned over to Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa the swords of revered 19th century presidents Eloy Alfaro and Pedro J. Montero, stolen by the guerillas from a Guayaquil museum in 1983.
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-LimĂłn 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 RĂo 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.”
