A consortium led by China Three Gorges Corp has agreed to buy a giant hydro-electric plant under construction in Peru from scandal-mired Brazilian company Odebrecht. The Chaglla complex, slated to be Peru's third largest dam, is the latest addition to a growing string of South American hydro facilities to come under control of Chinese companies.
Panama is the latest Central American nation to switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Bejing—under pressure of China's fast-growing economic presence on the isthmus.
The latest consulta (community referendum) to reject local oil and mineral exploitation, in the Colombian town of Cumaral, was ruled binding by the country's Council of State.
Ecuador's government has deployed drones and helicopters to the Amazon village of El Tink, where indigenous residents are blocking roads in a dispute over a mining project.
The Inter-Oceanic Highway, long a focus of protest in Peru's Amazon, is at issue in the corruption scandal implicating ex-president Alejandro Toledo.
Ecuador's government ordered Quito-based activist group Acción Ecológica closed amid a wave of repression against indigenous anti-mining protesters in the Amazon.
At the APEC the summit in Lima, China and Peru signed a series of bilateral agreements to advance "free trade" and cooperation in the mineral and resource sectors.
Blockades at the mammoth Bambas copper mine were relaxed after Peru's vice president flew in to meet with protesters, but local communities refuse to accept government terms.
Indigenous leaders in Pando region of the Bolivian Amazon issued an urgent call for the protection of "uncontacted" peoples threatened by oil operations.
The first death due to a social conflict in Peru under new President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski came as campesinos clashed with National Police over the contested mine at Las Bambas.
Peru's government announced that an official delegation will meet with indigenous protesters who have been blockading a main tributary of the Amazon River.
Panama opened the long-awaited expanded canal, designed to accommodate new "mega-ships." But the drought-stricken country struggles to conserve water for the giant locks.
