On Dec. 20 the government of Bolivian president Evo Morales announced that a three-year literacy campaign had concluded successfully, making Bolivia the third Latin American country to end illiteracy, after Cuba (1961) and Venezuela (2005). The government said the campaign had succeeded with 819,417 (99.5%) of the 824,101 people who had been identified as illiterate. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) considers that a country has eliminated illiteracy as a social phenomenon when the illiteracy rate falls below 3.9%. However, the correspondent from the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada reported that some of the program's graduates "scarcely learned to sign their names and recognize some letters."

On Dec. 22 the second chamber of Argentina's federal appeals court confirmed that "there is no medical examination that would justify" releasing Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, the first president of the 1976-1983 military regime, from prison. The ruling upholds an Oct. 10 decision by federal judge Norberto Oyarbide removing Videla from house arrest and sending him to the Campo de Mayo Federal Prison under the supervision of the Federal Penitentiary Service (SPF). Videla is being held on charges that the military regime had a systematic plan to keep pregnant detainees in secret detention centers until they gave birth. The babies were then adopted by military or police families or their friends; the mothers were killed.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a $12 billion strategic partnership agreement in Rio de Janeiro on Dec. 23, the second day of Sarkozy's official visit to Brazil. The two presidents also finalized nearly a dozen other agreements, covering space, nuclear energy, climate change, biodiversity, professional training and scientific and cultural cooperation. Sarkozy currently holds the rotating presidency of the 27-member European Union (EU), and his visit included the renewal on Dec. 22 of a strategic partnership agreement between Brazil and the EU. After the two-day official visit, Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, were planning a vacation at a Brazilian resort.

Israeli air-strikes on the Gaza Strip entered a fourth day Dec. 30, with raids on a number of Hamas government buildings and security installations, as well as the Islamic University. Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the Knesset that Israel is engaged in an "all-out war with Hamas." UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for an immediate ceasefire and condemned both Israel and Hamas. While recognizing Israel's right to defend itself from rocket attacks, he condemned its "excessive use of force." The death toll has surpassed 350, some 60 of them civilians, by a UN count. (BBC News, IHT, Dec. 30)

Nearly two million hectares of forest in Peru have been destroyed in order to grow coca, the country's Environment Minister Antonio Brack said in a Lima Dec. 28. "The traffickers invaded protected areas and cleared forests for land to grow coca," the minister said, adding that most of the damage has been done in the jungle regions of San Martín and Huanuco, and in the Valley of the Apurimac and Ene rivers, known as the VRAE region. Drug trafficking also hurt the environment by dumping chemicals into rivers. "The illegal trade has had a very strong impact on the environment," Brack told the official Andina news agency. "We can help restore forests and improve environmental systems in the drug zones, once they are pacified." (IANS, Dec. 29)

A Brazilian rancher suspected of orchestrating the 2005 murder of Sister Dorothy Stang, a US-born nun who spoke out against logging in the Amazon rainforest, is to be charged in the killing and brought to trial following his arrest for land fraud, prosecutors announced Dec. 28. Federal police arrested the rancher, Regivaldo Galvão, two days earlier at his home in the northern Amazon state of Pará. He was accused of trying to use forged titles to claim possession of the same public land that Sister Dorothy was fighting to protect when she was fatally shot in February 2005.

On Dec. 12, some 1,300 federal prisoners staged an uprising at the privately run Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos, Texas, to demand better medical treatment after a detainee died at the facility, allegedly of natural causes. The Reeves County Detention Center has been run since 2003 by the GEO Group, based in Boca Raton, Florida, under contract with the federal government. The medium security prison holds more than 2,400 people, mainly inmates detained for immigration law violations. The uprising took place after the detainee's body was removed from the prison, Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper John Barton told the Pecos Enterprise. The prisoners set a fire in an exercise room at the facility and were evacuated to an outdoor yard, where they took two prison recreation workers hostage. The newspaper reported that firefighters had to extinguish bonfires inmates had set to keep warm overnight.

On Dec. 10, ICE agents arrested 15 immigrants who were employed as contract janitorial workers at the BP oil refinery in the town of Whiting in northern Indiana. ICE said the arrests stemmed from "a two-year critical infrastructure worksite enforcement investigation that is continuing." The 11 women and four men arrested on administrative immigration charges were all employed by United Building Maintenance (UBM) of Carol Stream, Illinois. One of the workers is from Guatemala; the others are from Mexico. All were expected to be placed into deportation proceedings. Each case is also being reviewed for possible criminal charges by the US Attorney's Office, Northern District of Indiana. Two former UBM employees from Mexico were arrested by ICE earlier this year after they were discovered working without authorization at the BP refinery; they are currently facing criminal prosecution in the Northern District of Indiana. "BP Corporate Security has been fully cooperative in the investigation and has provided invaluable assistance to ICE," according to an ICE news release. (ICE news release, Dec. 10)