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.
A deliberate strategy by Colombia’s former intelligence agency to undermine NGOs and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has been revealed in secret documents. The Administrative Security Department (DAS) was recently disbanded.
Peru’s Prime Minister SalomĂłn Lerner resigned after failed attempts to negotiate an end to the Cajamarca protests—to be replaced by Oscar ValdĂ©s, a former army officer who as interior minister has overseen the police repression in Cajamarca.
Following an appeal from Christian Salazar, representative to Colombia for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the FARC rebels said they will go ahead with plans for the unilateral release of “war prisoners.”
President Ollanta Humala of Peru went on national TV to announce that he has imposed a state of emergency in Cajamarca region, the scene of a general strike in opposition to a mega-scale mining project that threatens local water resources.
Some 400 protesters clashed with police as they attempted to occupy the site of the planned Conga gold mine in Peru’s highland region of Cajamarca. Protesters say they will keep up their regional strike until the project is cancelled.
Venezuela announced the first air shipment of overseas gold holdings as part of a move to repatriate the country’s foreign reserves from Europe and North America. Hugo Chávez said the gold “should have never left” government coffers.
Guerilla fighters of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) executed four captive members of the security forces as the army raided the camp where they were being held in a rescue attempt, the Defense Ministry charges.
President Santos withdrew his education “reform” bill, and student leaders responded by suspending a month-old strike that shut down the country’s public universities and many of the private schools.
Rodrigo Londoño AKA “Timochenko,” issued his first statement since assuming command of the FARC guerillas, saying official celebrations of the death of his predecessor Alfonso Cano exposed “the macabre face of this beautiful democracy.”
Chilean and Colombian students are planning a binational demonstration in defense of education as the two countries’ rightwing governments may be preparing to meet some of the strikers’ demands.
Residents in Cajamarca, Peru, held a general strike, blockading the local highway and occupying the university campus, to demand that the US-owned Yanacocha Mining Corp. drop its plans to develop a giant gold mine.
