Representatives of social and humanitarian organizations in Chile marked 518 years since the arrival of European colonizer Christopher Columbus by marching on Oct. 12 in the southern Araucanía region in solidarity with Chile's indigenous peoples. About 5,000 people had held a similar solidarity march in Santiago the day before. The marches had a special focus on the situation of the Mapuche, Chile's largest indigenous group, and a liquids-only hunger strike by Mapuche prisoners that ended on Oct. 8 after more than 80 days. A group of the prisoners released a communiqué on Oct. 12 calling on the government to fulfill the promises it made to them in negotiations to end the hunger strike. "A new process of struggle will begin," the prisoners wrote. (Prensa Latina, Oct. 12)

While the world media focused on the successful rescue of 33 Chilean miners on Oct. 12 and 13—69 days after they had been trapped by a collapse in the San José gold and copper mine in the northern Atacama region, Chilean union leaders charged that persistent problems with safety in the country's mines were being downplayed.

On Oct. 15 about 60 Haitians protested an extension of the mandate for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) by blocking the entrance to the mission's main logistics base near the Port-au-Prince airport. The Associated Press reported that the protesters, many of them people left homeless by a major earthquake on Jan. 12, spray-painted slogans on cars and burned the Brazilian flag; Brazilian troops lead the joint military-police mission, which has occupied Haiti since June 2004.

After 90 days of negotiations with unions and other social organizations, on Oct. 10 the government of right-wing Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli approved an agreement to rescind a controversial law and replace it with a package of six separate laws. The original Law 30—which was passed in June and quickly became known as the "sausage law" because so many different measures were stuffed into it—ignited strikes and protests by unions and environmental groups that resulted in at least two deaths in July and forced the Martinelli government to negotiate.

In a letter sent to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton the week of Oct. 4, a group of 45 US Congress members called on the US government not to support presidential and legislative elections in Haiti on Nov. 28 if the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) continues its exclusion of 14 political parties from the ballot. The letter focused on the exclusion of the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004); the letter's author was Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who is said to be close to Aristide and to FL. The elections will cost some $29 million and will largely be financed by the international community, including the US. (Radio Kiskeya, Haiti, Oct. 8; New York Times, Oct. 9 from Reuters)

On Oct. 6 Haitian president René Préval, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) attended a meeting in Port-au-Prince of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (CIRH), the group in charge of monitoring the use of international aid to help the country recover from a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. This was only the third time the group has met since it was formally established on April 21.

Ten indigenous Mapuche prisoners in the city of Angol in Chile's southern Araucanía region agreed late on Oct. 8 to end a liquids-only hunger strike protesting the use of Law No. 19.027, an "anti-terrorism" measure from the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, against indigenous activists. A total of 34 Mapuche prisoners in six locations had participated in the hunger strike, which started on July 12, but 24 of them ended their action on Oct. 2.

US president Barack Obama personally apologized by phone to Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom on Oct. 1 shortly after the US revealed that the US Public Health Service had purposely infected Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis and gonorrhea in a 1946-48 experiment to test the effectiveness of penicillin in fighting sexually transmitted diseases. The program exposed some 1,500 Guatemalans to the diseases, and 696 were reportedly infected. It is not clear how many of them received medical treatment.