Paraguayan foreign minister Ruben Ramirez announced on Oct. 2 that in 2007 Paraguay will stop granting US troops immunity from prosecution. The change in policy is an effort to coordinate policies with the other member nations in the Mercosur economic… Read moreParaguay: US troops lose immunity
On Sept. 6, Chile’s Senate voted 20-13 with two abstentions against a bill introduced by Socialist senator Alejandro Navarro which would have granted conditional release to jailed Mapuche activists. In May, four Mapuche political prisoners ended a 70-day hunger strike… Read moreChile: Mapuche prisoners betrayed
Thousands of people marched on Sept. 10 in Santiago, Chile to commemorate the Sept. 11, 1973 coup in which Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte overthrew the democratically elected government of Socialist president Salvador Allende Gossens. The march led from the center… Read moreChileans remember September 11… 1973
On Aug. 20, Brazilian landless activists Josias de Barros Ferreira and Samuel Matias Barbosa were murdered at an encampment of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in Pernambuco state. Police claim the two men were murdered by other landless… Read moreBrazil: landless killed, arrested
More than 2,000 workers went on strike Aug. 7 at the Escondida mine in northern Chile, the world’s largest privately owned copper mine. The workers were demanding a contract with an increase in salary and benefits that reflects this year’s… Read moreChile: copper strike ends
On Aug. 28, two agents of Chile’s militarized Carabineros police, acting without a warrant, raided a Mapuche family’s property in the Bollilco Chico sector of the Nueva Imperial commune, Region IX, allegedly to search for stolen livestock. The family refused… Read moreChile: police kill Mapuche elder
On Friday, Sept. 8th, Alwan, the Arab Center for the Arts in New York City, will host an event in support of the indigenous people of Northern Argentina. Luisa Boggiano, an Argentinean activist, will present a documentary about the conflicts… Read moreNYC: Argentine activist to speak on indigenous struggles in “Triple Border” region
On Aug. 22, the government of Chaco province in northeastern Argentina signed a broad accord with representatives of the Chaco Indigenous Institute (IdACH) on land and budget issues in an effort to end a nearly three-month-old indigenous protest. Since June… Read moreArgentina: Chaco indigenous win accord
On Aug. 22, hundreds of Chilean students clashed with police in the capital, Santiago, and in the northern city of Copiapo. In Santiago, at least 1,000 students marched toward the La Moneda presidential palace and the Education Ministry building; police… Read moreChile: student protests face repression
According to the Indianist Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic church-based group which works in solidarity with Brazil’s indigenous communities, 15 Tupinikim and Guarani indigenous people and seven non-indigenous people have been jailed since Aug. 9 in the city of Aracruz,… Read moreBrazil: land barons set up arrests of indigenous leaders
Like Guatemala’s genocidal Romeo Lucas Garcia a few weeks back, Paraguay’s brutal former dictator Alfredo Stroessner has died a free man in comfortable exile—despite vain efforts to have him extradited back home to face justice. We have noted that there… Read moreParaguay’s Stroessner dies a free man
On Aug. 4, a federal court in Buenos Aires, Argentina, sentenced former federal police officer Julio Simon to 25 years of prison for the 1978 abduction and torture of Chilean citizen Jose Poblete Roa and his Argentine companion, Gertrudis Hlaczik,… Read moreArgentina: ex-agent gets 25 years
