Bogotá’s Small Transport Providers Association (APETRANS) pulled some 16,400 buses and collective taxis out of service to protest plans for modernizing the city’s transit system.
A confrontation between police agents and market vendors in Piura, capital of Peru’s northwestern Piura province, resulted in the deaths of at least five civilians.
Following an “extraordinary assembly,” the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) called for an “uprising” to press demands for a “pluri-national state.”
A Spanish judge accused the Venezuelan government of aiding two rebel groups—Spain’s ETA and Colombia’s FARC—in a plot to assassinate Colombia’s president in Spain.
The China-Peru FTA took effect, calling for phasing out tariffs on 90% of goods exchanged between the two nations. Peruvian minerals are critical to the pact.
Colombia’s Constitutional Court voted down the proposed referendum to allow President Alvaro Uribe to run for a third term, calling the idea “unconstitutional in its entirety.”
Venezuela’s top human rights official criticized a new OAS report which is harshly critical of the Hugo Chávez government. Gabriela Ramírez said rights have actually improved.
The UN International Narcotics Control Board finds an 8% decrease in overall coca production in South America last year—but a 45% increase in Peru.
Indigenous peoples are once again caught in the middle as the Colombian army launches a major offensive against the FARC guerillas in the southern Andean department of Cauca.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced the creation of a new Campesino Militia, which will be under the command of the national Bolivarian Armed Forces (FAB).
Bolivian President Evo Morales appointed 18 judges ahead of the country’s judicial elections, calling the move “the beginning of the decolonization of the judiciary.”
Gubernatorial candidate José Pérez Restrepo in Colombia’s Guaviare department was wounded and three of his bodyguards killed when presumed FARC guerillas attacked his caravan.
