Chile’s Supreme Court halted construction of the Cuervo hydroelectric dam in Patagonia pending further environmental studies. Chile needs to double its generating capacity to meet requirements of a planned expansion in the mining sector.
As workers mobilized throughout the hemisphere, Peru and Venezuela marked May Day by raising the minimum wage. Chile and Cuba said they would maintain the current wage levels.
A 16-year-old Chilean youth was seriously wounded with metal pellets in the latest raid by the carabineros militarized police on an indigenous Mapuche village in the southern region of Araucanía.
The Argentine government moves to take control of 51% of the shares in YPF SA, the country’s largest oil company—with the support of the politicians who privatized it 20 years ago.
Former Argentine dictator Gen. Jorge Videla has admitted that the military disappeared thousands of people after a coup whose goals included creating a market economy and “disciplining” unions.
A federal judge has ordered ex-president Carlos Saúl Menem to stand trial on charges that he impeded the first probe into a July 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building.
A sergeant in Chile’s notorious carabineros militarized police force was shot and killed in an ambush after a raid on an indigenous Mapuche village the southern region of Araucanía.
Chile’s supreme court ruled that the proposed mega-scale HidroAysen hydroelectric project in Patagonia does not violate the constitutional rights of residents opposing the project. Opponents pledge to continue to resist the project.
Thousands of Chileans turned out in Santiago for the funeral of Daniel Zamudio, a young gay man killed by a group of neo-Nazis. Even the conservative Catholic bishops finally denounced the crime.
A Brazilian federal judge blocked a move to try retired army colonel Sebastiao Curio Rodrigues de Moura AKA “Dr. Luchini” for abuses committed during the military dictatorship, as more human remains were unearthed at a barracks in Uruguay.
While 2011 was dominated by massive student protests in Chile, some local media have suggested that 2012 is starting to look like the real “year of the protest.”
Marches and protests celebrating International Women’s Day focused on violence against women and emphasized demands for abortion rights and equality in political representation.
