Mexico's former President Vicente Fox again spoke out for drug legalization this month, telling a Washington DC meeting of the right-libertarian Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity that prohibition bears responsibility for the horrific toll in his country's cartel wars: "Fifty thousand kids from 15 to 25 years old have been killed in the last five years. Violence does not defeat violence." He asked rhetorically: "Do we really expect that the government will eradicate the drugs from the face of the earth?"

The clandestine online activist network Anonymous has released an Internet video demanding that Los Zetas, Mexico's bloodiest drug cartel, release one of its members who was kidnapped from a street protest in Veracruz. The Anonymous spokesman—in tie, jacket and Guy Fawkes mask—says if the Zetas don't release their comrade, it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate's associates. Speaking in Spanish with fluent use of Mexican slang, the masked spokesman says: "You made a huge mistake by taking one of us. Release him." Otherwise it threatens to reveal the Zetas' "cars, homes, bars, brothels and everything else in their possession. It won't be difficult; we all know who they are and where they are located."

Raquel Yrigoyen Fajardo, fired last week as head of Peru's indigenous affair agency INDEPA, is publicly accusing the government of removing her because she annulled the agency's approval of an environmental impact study for expansion of the Camisea gas-fields in the Amazon rainforest. The proposed expansion of the Pluspetrol-led consortium's exploration in Lot 88 would impact the Kugapakori Nahua Nanti Territorial Reserve, where "uncontacted" indigenous groups are believed to live. Her move to withdraw approval for the expansion came one day before she was suddenly replaced Oct. 19. She charged that the approval, granted under the previous administration before her appointment by newly elected President Ollanta Humala, was illegal. (Survival International, Oct. 27; Servindi, Oct. 25)

Growing political conflicts over development projects have prompted security forces to intervene in recent weeks in Ecuador. In the small hours of Oct. 8, military and police invaded the community of Río Grande, in coastal Manabí province, to evict a protest encampment that had been established by local comuneros of the Montubio ethnic group to resist construction of dam. Police say that the operation took place peacefully, but the comuneros report that tear gas was used and the protesters, including women and children, were assaulted. Protest leader Alfredo Zambrano reportedly suffered head wounds when he was detained. Four others were also detained, and all are still being held.

Radio Australia has released video coverage of an Oct. 19 attack by Indonesian security forces on an unarmed political meeting of indigenous leaders in West Papua after they issued a declaration of independence. Six people were killed and many more were injured after army troops and police Mobile Brigades broke up the meeting of the Third Papuan People's Congress in the provincial capital Jayapura. Police said their troops fired "warning shots" to disperse the crowd of thousands, and said the Congress "violated the permit" by issuing the declaration. But Congress leaders charge the deadly repression was a premeditated response to the declaration of independence and call for a West Papua government to be elected. Some 300 were arrested, and six have been charged with treason.

Police fired tear gas late Oct. 25 into a crowd of several hundred protesters backing the Occupy movement who had attempted to retake an encampment outside Oakland City Hall that officers had cleared 12 hours earlier. Police forces from throughout the Bay Area were mobilized for the pre-dawn eviction, which was carried out with smoke grenades, with 75 arrested. Authorities cited "sanitary and public safety concerns" in the eviction. In the evening, hundreds of protesters met outside the public library, a few blocks to the east, and then marched on the police-held Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of City Hall—which the protesters had renamed Oscar Grant Plaza. An online video shows police repeatedly firing tear-gas canisters into the crowd. As we write, the plaza remains in police hands, with helicopters circling above, while protesters are regrouping again at San Pablo Ave. to the west. (Gawker, San Francisco Chronicle, IndyBay, Oct. 25)

Peru's National Police report the seizure of nearly a ton of cocaine, after two operations coordinated with the army in the conflicted Apurímac-Ene River Valley (VRAE). Victor Torres, police commander in the VRAE, said 540 kilograms of cocaine were seized in the first operation on Oct. 7, near the community of Boca Sonaro, in the province of Satipo, Junín region. Seven were arrested in the operation, led by the army's 31st infantry brigade. Officials reportedly seized 415 kilograms in the second operation, which took place on Oct. 12, in Llochegua, Huanta province, in Ayacucho region. The operation, involving helicopters, also saw the destruction of two cocaine laboratories. Torres told radio network RPP that "although the operations were carried out at different times both are related, because it is the same gang, headed by a Colombian national, who went by the name of 'Bellota,' operating in Llochegua." (Peru This Week, Oct. 13)

Peru's new populist president, Ollanta Humala, is facing his first corruption scandal, as his Second Vice President Omar Chehade has come under investigation by the Prosecutor General on charges of using his influence to arrange a police eviction of cooperative farmers at a disputed property outside Lima. Former National Police general Guillermo Arteta claims that Chehade participated in a meeting with three police chiefs at the famous Brujas de Cachiche restaurant in Lima's fashionable Miraflores district, to discuss the conflict over the Andahuasi cooperative sugar mill and plantation in the Huaura-Sayán Valley. Chehade's brother and cousin also reportedly took part in the meeting, where they lobbied the generals to evict the 1,500 workers at Andahuasi, so that Peru's agribusiness giant Grupo Wong could take control of the site. Arteta says he was fired in an earlier purge of senior police generals because he refused to evict the workers.