Bolivian prosecutors brought charges Dec. 19 against 39 people in an alleged plot to assassinate President Evo Morales and launch an armed rebellion last year. The accused include leading opposition politicians and Gary Prado, the ex-general who captured legendary guerilla leader Che Guevara in 1967. The supposed plot was uncovered in April 2009, when national police killed three suspected European mercenaries in the eastern lowland city of Santa Cruz. The accused deny the charges, calling them politically motivated. Most of those charged are already in custody, but 17 are now living outside Bolivia. The most prominent figure among the accused is Branco Marinkovic, a business leader and former head of the opposition Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, who is exiled in the US.

Police in Argentina sealed off the Villa Soldati area of Buenos Aires Dec. 14 following a week of violence between squatters, authorities and local residents in which at least three have been killed. Some 1,000 people, mostly of Bolivian and Paraguayan origin, had pitched tents in the local Indoamericano Park after being evicted from a shantytown. A Paraguayan and a Bolivian were killed Dec. 7 when city police, executing a court order secured by the Buenos Aires municipal government, attempted to remove the squatters. Two days later, clashes between residents and the okupas, as the squatters are known, resulted in the death of another Bolivian. Four men are still in the hospital. Prosecutors in Buenos Aires are investigating the clashes.

On Dec. 3 the government of Brazil announced that it was recognizing Palestine as an independent state within the borders defined in 1967. Argentina followed on Dec. 6. Uruguay is planning to recognize Palestine in 2011, Foreign Relations Vice Minister Roberto Conde has told the AFP wire service.

Students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) started a 48-hour strike on Dec. 7 to oppose plans for an $800 tuition surcharge at the public university beginning on Jan. 1. Five people were injured during the first day of the strike as students confronted guards at the Río Piedras campus in San Juan, and the campus was closed down through Dec. 8. On Dec. 10 police chief José Figueroa Sancha announced that police agents would patrol UPR campuses, at the request of university president José Ramón de la Torre. This is the first time the police have had a presence in the university in nearly 30 years.

On the evening of Dec. 7 Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced the preliminary results of presidential and legislative elections held on Nov. 28. The elections had been chaotic and sometimes violent, and the majority of the presidential candidates denounced the process as fraudulent even before the polls closed.

A report by a leading French cholera expert, Dr. Renaud Piarroux, concludes that the outbreak of the disease in Haiti in mid-October originated at a base maintained by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) near Mirebalais in the Central Plateau. "No other hypothesis could be found," Piarroux wrote, even though he and his team had looked for "another explanation, even an improbable one, [that] could be advanced to explain the sudden occurrence of this cholera epidemic."

The World War 4 Report House Band, featuring Subcommander Pogo, will play Otto's Shrunken Head, 538 East 14th St. (near Ave. B) on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Sunday Dec. 12 at 5:30 PM. If you missed the politically didactic power trio's premier performance at the World War 4 Report benefit in June, this is your chance. Other bands to follow on the bill include Iconicide, Fast Lane and Damn Kids.

On Dec. 1 indigenous Guatemalan Angelica Choc and her lawyers, Klippensteins Barristers & Solicitors, announced a lawsuit in Ontario, Canada, against the Canadian mining company HudBay Minerals Inc. for the murder of Choc's husband, Adolfo Ich Chamán, in the community of El Estor in the eastern department of Izabal on Sept. 27, 2009. Choc charges that security guards working for HudBay, HMI Nickel Inc., and their Guatemalan subsidiary, Compañía Guatemalteca de Níquel, murdered Ich, a leader in the local Q'eqchi' community, because of his opposition to violations by the mining companies.