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.
Five ZenĂş indigenous people were killed in the Lower Cauca region June 24-26 in the communities of La 18 and La UniĂłn-Pato in Zaragoza municipality, according to the Colombian Ombudsperson’s Office.
The Colombian army admitted that a man killed weeks earlier in the eastern department of Arauca—originally reported to be a “financial leader” of the FARC guerillas—was actually the noncombatant leader of a local indigenous community.
Venezuela’s Telecommunications Commission has opened sanction proceedings against news channel Globovision, accused of spreading “anxiety in the population” by broadcasting images of the deadly violence at El Rodeo prison.
Indigenous protest leader Walter Aduviri in Puno, Peru, announced a halt to the civil strike that has paralyzed the region for more than 40 days—and called for reconstitution of the “Aymara nation,” now divided between Peru, Bolivia and Chile.
Regional leaders across Peru have issued a demand that outgoing President Alan GarcĂa be investigated for the serial acts of deadly repression in his six-year term. The call comes after new deadly violence in Puno and Huancavelica.
