The governor of Bolivia’s Chonchocoro prison has been sacked after revelations that former military ruler Luis García Meza was being housed in luxury quarters at the facility.
Jesús Sosa Saavedra, a former agent of Peru’s Army Intelligence Service (SIE), confessed to a series of murders in the 1988 “Operation Lucero,” linked to the Colina Group death squad.
The Bolivian Armed Forces announced the declassification of files from the years of military dictatorship. The files will be used to investigate the disappearance of opposition figures.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called for Internet controls and demanded that authorities crack down on an independent news website he accused of spreading false information.
Venezuela tested six training and light attack jets bought from China for defense and anti-drug flights in a deal that dodges an embargo banning sales of US weapons parts.
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.
