Peru’s Prime Minister Salomón Lerner resigned after failed attempts to negotiate an end to the Cajamarca protests—to be replaced by Oscar Valdés, 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 24-hour general strike Nov. 11, with protestors erecting roadblocks to halt traffic on the Cajamarca-Bambamarca highway. Students from the National University of Cajamarca took over the campus, and almost all urban transport unions, teachers… Read morePeru: anti-mining protesters occupy Cajamarca
Bolivia and the US agreed to restore diplomatic relations, three years after President Evo Morales expelled the US ambassador. But in announcing the move, Morales emphasized that the DEA would not be allowed back in his country.
As many as 600,000 students and their supporters marched in cities across Colombia against proposed legislation which they say will “reduce education to a commodity.”
