Venezuelan Minister for Prisons Iris Varela announced that she plans to release up to 40% of the country’s prisoners in an effort to reduce prison overcrowding, following last month’s deadly uprising at El Rodeo complex outside Caracas.
Labor and indigenous leaders are wary as Ollanta Humala, elected as a populist, begins his term in office with a rightward tilt. But Bloomberg warns that Humala’s efforts at “moderation” have not quelled the fears of multinational investors.
Communities affected by mining in Peru’s Andes issued a “Declaration of Huancayo,” demanding a new constitution guaranteeing the rights of the country’s indigenous peoples and establishing the “agricultural character of our country, and not the mineral.”
Speaking before a conference of campesina women in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales said he fears a US plot to frame him for a drug offense—as his government enters into a counter-narcotics pact with the United Kingdom.
All 44 teachers at a public high school in Colombia’s northern department of CĂłrdoba sought refuge in MonterĂa, the regional capital, after being threatened by a paramilitary group.
Peru’s populist president-elect Ollanta Humala takes office in just one week, and ominous signs are mounting that he will continue his predecessor’s trajectory towards breakneck resource extraction—and attendant bloody social conflicts.
Canadian oil company Pacific Rubiales reached a deal with striking workers following a month of labor unrest in Puerto Gaitan, Colombia, that culminated this week in a blockade of the oilfields and riots in which several vehicles were destroyed.
The People’s Defense Front in Peru’s central Andean region of Ayacucho, announced a one-week deadline for the Southern Peru Copper Corporation to halt its exploration activities in the area before local campesinos launch an indefinite civil strike.
Eight campesinos were killed when a group of 10 to 12 heavily armed men fired their weapons indiscriminately at the “Discovery Villanueva” disco and pool hall in Villanueva, Nariño department.
FARC guerillas attacked the central plaza of the indigenous Nasa village Toribio in Colombia’s Cuaca department, leaving two civilian residents dead and 73 injured. Indigenous authorities condemned the assault as a threat to their autonomy and survival.
Bolivia formally notified the UN of its withdrawal from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, in protest of the treaty’s provision that “coca leaf chewing must be abolished.”
Henry Castellanos GarzĂłn, AKA “Romaña,” a leader of Colombia’s FARC guerillas, was sentenced in absentia to 22 years in prison—a year after Colombian authorities reported that he had been killed in an army raid.
