Military Police occupied the favela, or shantytown of Caramujo outside Río de Janeiro following riots sparked by the death of two local youths in incidents with the security forces.
Decades of uncontrolled urban growth in an area naturally prone to forest fires left Valparaíso's working-class neighborhoods vulnerable to devastation.
Brazilian Military Police backed by Marine troops occupied the massive Maré favela next to Rio de Janeiro's airport in a major clean-up operation ahead of the World Cup.
A new anti-terrorism bill in Brazil in advance of the World Cup has raised concern among human rights groups, who say the law threatens free speech and peaceful assembly.
Environmentalists accuse a former interior minister of diverting water illegally to his farming operations—so a local court punishes the environmentalists.
A general strike reveals fractures in the labor movement and in the center-left alliance that has dominated Argentina's government for the last decade.
More than 1,500 Military Police were mobilized to evict thousands of squatters who had recently taken over an abandoned office complex in Rio de Janeiro.
Five Paraguayan campesinos arrested during a violent squatter eviction in 2012 and held since then without trial are six weeks into a hunger strike.
The Aché indigenous people of Paraguay brought suit in an Argentine court demanding reparations for "genocide" carried out under the late Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner.
As Brazilians mark the 50th anniversary of a military coup, US documents show that plans for the action had the strong support of the liberal Kennedy administration.
Paraguayans used their first general strike in two decades to protest everything from low wages to the lack of an agrarian reform policy.
While the media focused on Rio's Carnaval celebrations, thousands of street sweepers went on strike in defiance of their union—and won.
