Following a wave of forest fires in the southern Araucania and Bio-Bio regions that left seven fire-fighters dead this week, Chile’s government suggested that “terrorism” by indigenous Mapuche activists may have been responsible.
The US has sent the Argentine human rights group Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo a fully declassified 1982 memo on the abduction of prisoners’ babies under the 1976-1983 dictatorship.
After eight months of mobilizations, strikes and campus occupations, Chilean university and secondary students held their last protest of the 2011 school year.
A Chilean judge charged former U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis with involvement in the murders of two US citizens in the days after the 1973 military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende.
Talks are underway between the government in Argentina’s Neuquén province and local indigenous Mapuche communities after a days-long protest occupation of a natural gas plant owned by the Houston-based Apache Corporation.
On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, women’s organizations throughout Latin America said regional governments have failed to take measures to reduce “femicides” and end impunity in such crimes.
Tens of thousands of students marched in more than a dozen Latin American cities in a coordinated regional demonstration to support free and high-quality public education.
Hundreds of riot police and navy commandos invaded the Rio de Janeiro favelas of Rocinha, Vidigal and Chacara do Ceu. Brazilian authorities say they plan to pacify dozens more favelas ahead of the 2014 World Cup.
A US Congress member is asking for the declassification of several US intelligence documents with information on the abduction of children during Argentina’s “dirty war” against suspected leftists.
An Argentine court sentenced 12 former military and police officers to life in prison for crimes against humanity. The defendants were convicted of various crimes that took place in the notorious Naval Mechanics School.
About 50 Chilean students and their supporters took over a congressional budget subcommittee’s meeting in Santiago to demand that the government hold a binding plebiscite on their demands.
Environmentalists and Mapuche indigenous leaders rallied in Chile’s remote southern town of Curarrehue to oppose the planned Panqui hydro-electric project, which would inundate several small Mapuche communities.
