Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos promised to return 6 million hectares of farmland stolen by right-wing paramilitary groups after the original owners were forcibly displaced.
Authorities in Colombia’s southern Nariño department found the bodies of Ramiro Inampues and his wife, Maria Lina Galindez, two Guachucal indigenous leaders who had been shot by unknown assassins.
Henry Benítez Huamán, 14, died from a gunshot wound he received when police agents attacked protesters in the town of Kitena, in La Convención province of Peru’s southeastern Cusco region.
Venezuela and the US are both seeking the extradition of notorious drug lord Walid Makled AKA “The Turk,” who was arrested in a joint operation by Colombian police and the DEA in Cúcuta.
Colombian congressman Iván Cepeda presented a slander case against ex-President Alvaro Uribe to the World Court for his accusations that the San José de Apartadó peace community is tied to the FARC.
Colombia’s new President Juan Santos met with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez in a move to restore relations. The meeting took place at Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, where Simón Bolívar died in 1830.
A judge in Medellín acquitted ten soldiers, including a colonel and major, of participation in the massacre of eight civilians at the “peace community” of San José de Apartadó in February 2005.
A court in the Venezuelan state of Anzoátegui state has handed down prison sentences to 15 police agents for the January 2009 shooting deaths of two unionists at a Mitsubishi Motors Corp plant.
The southern Bolivian city of Potosí has been paralyzed by strikes and protests for over a week, with roads blocked, businesses closed and the airport under occupation.
Bolivia’s government announced it has started a program of military training for civilians at army barracks in the east of the country—a stronghold of the right-wing opposition.
Community activist and hip-hop artist Marcelo Pimienta Sánchez AKA “MC Chelo,” 23, was shot dead by unknown assailants near his home in the conflicted Comuna 13 district of Medellín.
Nine US human rights activists are holding a vigil at the Tolemaida military base near Bogotá with a 12-foot banner that reads “U.S. MILITARY OUT OF COLOMBIA.”
