Some 1,000 members of the Federation of Socialist Campesino Students of Mexico (FECSM) blocked the Sun Highway in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero for more than an hour on Dec. 11 to protest plans by state education secretary Jose Luis Gonzalez de la Vega to assign teachers based on an exam administered by the National Evaluation Center. Students from Guerrero teaching colleges and their supporters have been demonstrating since Nov. 14 around demands for 75 additional teaching positions for teaching college alumni and for retention of the degree in primary education.

At a Dec. 9 ceremony hosted by outgoing Argentine president Nestor Kirchner in the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, the heads of six South American countries signed an agreement formally creating the Bank of the South, a development bank to be financed by South American countries to promote infrastructural projects and to aid companies from the region. Bolivian president Evo Morales, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa, Paraguayan president Nicanor Duarte Frutos and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez attended the signing. Argentine president-elect Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was also present; she was to succeed her husband on Dec. 10. Uruguayan president Tabare Vazquez decided to skip the Dec. 9 ceremony and wait until Dec. 10 to sign the accord; his absence reflected strains between Argentina and Uruguay over the Botnia paper mill being built in Uruguay.

After a 10-year trial, on Dec. 12 Bolivian judge Angel Arias sentenced three former officers to 30 years for their involvement in the 1980 military coup in which Luis Garcia Meza overthrew President Lidia Gueiler. Socialist leader Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz and legislative deputy Carlos Flores Bedregal were murdered soon after the coup in an assault on the offices of the Bolivian Workers Central (COB). Judge Arias convicted Felipe Froilan Molina Bustamante, Franz Pizarro Solano and Javier Hinojosa Valdez of armed uprising and the organization of irregular groups. The judge did not find them guilty of murder, leading to shouts of "murderers" and "neither forgetting nor forgiving" from friends and relatives of Flores Bedregal and Quiroga Santa Cruz in the courtroom. Another 14 defendants were found guilty of coverup and false testimony; they received sentences of two to four years. Former dictator Garcia Meza began serving a 30-year sentence in 1995; charges against him included sedition, genocide and the theft of the diaries of Argentine-born guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara. (La Jornada, Mexico, Dec. 13)

On Dec. 10, some 150 people marched to the federal building in Hartford, CT, to demand an end to immigration raids. Activists were upset about the arrest of 21 Brazilian immigrants in early November in the city's Parkville neighborhood in a joint operation between local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Local police said they had asked ICE to help them search for a Brazilian man being sought on attempted murder and robbery charges. They didn't find the suspect, but ICE picked up 21 other people suspected of being in the US without permission.

A Mexican citizen who is in the US legally has filed the first lawsuit challenging the aggressive immigration-enforcement efforts of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona's Maricopa County, charging unlawful detainment and racial profiling. The suit seeks a declaratory judgment that Arpaio's actions are unconstitutional, and injunctions prohibiting the use of Arpaio's anti-immigration hotline and directing the Sheriff's Office to disband its Illegal Immigration Interdiction unit.

From the Iraq Freedom Congress, Dec. 12:

We Must Stand Together Against the Women-Killing Gangs
Unidentified gangs began to commit a series of organized crimes and killing many women in various cities in Iraq, particularly in Basra where more than 40 women are said to have been killed in the last 5 months. In addition to those crimes, these gangs threatened unveiled women to follow Islamic law and start wearing head scarf otherwise facing the severe consequences.

From the Iraq Freedom Congress, Dec. 8:

Under the slogan of "No to occupation ... No to sectarianism and subservience... No to the Oil & Gas Law," the clans of southern Iraq held a large conference in the province of Basra on December 8, 2007. These clans have a strong opposition to the Iranian interference in Iraqi affairs, especially in the city of Basra.

Turkish warplanes attacked PKK guerilla positions across the border in the mountains of northern Iraq early Dec. 17, the military General Staff said in a statement. BBC reports that 10 villages were hit, and at least one person killed. A representative of the Kurdish Regional Government said the struck villages were not held by the PKK, and asserted the attacks were illegal. The representative said that while Turkish forces have previously hit Iraqi territory with artillery and helicopters, this attack marked the first time planes were used. (Reuters, BBC World Service, Dec. 16)