In a series of raids last month, some 1,000 soldiers and national police troops evicted more than 3,000 Q'eqchi Maya campesinos from lands claimed by an agribusiness firm in the Polochic Valley of Alta Verapaz department, Guatemala. During the eviction, the security forces torched or bulldozed the campesinos' homes. One person was killed and nearly a dozen injured during the principal operation on March 15. After the evictions, private security guards of the Chabil Utzaj sugar mill destroyed the community's crops, despite a court injunction blocking the company from taking actions that fall within the jurisdiction of the security forces. A complaint by the Committee for Campesino Unity (CUC) said the evicted campesinos had been been living and working on the land for 30 years. (IPS, March 29)

US President Barack Obama and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on April 7 agreed to a deal on the Andean country's appalling labor conditions, clearing the way for the pending Free Trade Agreement. "This is going to be a win for the US," Obama said while speaking in the Oval Office with Santos. The plan sets out a timeline for Colombia to address concerns about violence against union members, with Bogotá agreeing to "dramatically expand" protection for workers by April 22, come up with a plan by May 20 to build up the capacity of its regional judicial offices, and revise its criminal code by mid-June to make threats against workers' rights punishable by up to five years imprisonment. The action plan is considered a "precondition" for the trade agreement to go into effect, though some of those measures are expected to be taken after congress acts on the FTA.

On March 22, Bernardo Rios of San José de Apartadó peace community in the Colombian region of Uraba was gunned down by a group of men known locally as paramilitaries, less than a mile from a military checkpoint. In an April 4 press release, the peace community accused the government of turning a blind eye to the ongoing violence. "They try to end us in different ways, today they want to displace us, but our stubbornness for life will not let us give it up," declared the community. The statement said local police forces did nothing as paramilitaries continued to threaten them, accusing them of supporting guerrillas and telling them that they will pay dearly if they do not leave the area. Since the peace community was founded in 1997, some 195 members have been killed, yet only a handful of low-ranking army officers and paramilitary fighters have been convicted. (Fellowship of Reconciliation, Colombia Reports, April 4)

Ecuador's government on April 6 declared US ambassador Heather Hodges "persona non grata" and expelled her from the country in response to a cable released by the Wikileaks whistle-blower web site. Hodges refused to repudiate the July 2009 confidential cable that bore her signature and was published by Spanish newspaper El País. In the document addressed to the State Department, Hodges said embassy officials believed President Rafael Correa was aware of supposed corrupt practices by former national police chief Jaime Hurtado, but that the president named him to the post anyway because it would make him more easily manipulated.

Ecuador's national indigenous organization announced last week that is filing a legal complaint against the government, including President Rafael Correa, for complicity with "genocide" against indigenous people in the Amazon. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) argues that expanding oil exploration and mining is imperiling the lives of "uncontacted" indigenous groups that have chosen voluntary isolation. Especially named are the Tagaeri, Taromenane, Oñamenane and Iwene ethnicities, all sub-groups of the Waorani nationality who are believed to live in the area of Yasuni National Park. The legal complaint argues that industrial exploitation of the Amazonian rainforest in Ecuador is causing a "cultural and physical disappearance" of these indigenous peoples, "which amounts to the crime of ethnocide or genocide." The move by CONAIE is unprecedented in Ecuador. (Mongabay, April 6; AFP, March 30; CONAIE, March 29)

Andrés Taipe Chuquipuma, 22, on April 4 became the first fatal casualty in the ongoing civil strike (paro) at Islay village in Peru's Arequipa region against the planned Tía María copper mining project. He died in the hospital hours after receiving a bullet in the stomach in a confrontation with the National Police. Two more protesters at Islay were killed April 7. The following day, Peru's government announced that the project was cancelled, with the mining ministry saying the environmental impact assessment presented by the Southern Copper Corp. was "inadmissible." (BBC News, April 9; Dow Jones, April 8; RPP, April 4)

AlJazeera on April 9 reports from a refugee camp in Tunisia, where African migrants who have fled Libya tell both of being threatened and expelled from the country by rebel forces—and being press-ganged by Qaddafi's military and forced to fight under pain of deportation. The interviewed migrants are from Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Ghana. One worker from Ghana said he was abducted by the Libyan military when soldiers stormed his house in Sirte: "They asked us why we were trying to leave the country and that we must stay to fight for when the Americans come." Some of the interviewed migrants had deserted Qaddafi's forces, while others were forced to flee by rebels under accusation of being Qaddafi collaborators.

Israeli actor and political activist Juliano Mer-Khamis, who ran a theater project in the West Bank's Jenin refugee camp, was shot dead by unknown masked men on April 4 outside the theater he founded there. Khamis, 52, had received threats for his work in Jenin, but continued to divide his time between the camp and his home in Haifa. Khamis appeared in a number of Israeli films after his first film role in the 1984 production of the John Le Carre novel The Little Drummer Girl, about Mossad's hunt for a PLO bomber. Born to a Jewish mother and an Arab Christian father, he established the Freedom Theater group in Jenin during the first Intifada to promote co-existence.