Presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador warned of possible "contagion" in their countries by the autonomy movement in the eastern Bolivian province of Santa Cruz. "The central plan by the CIA and its lackeys in Venezuela is to take control of regional governments to carry out illegal referendums like the one held (Sunday in favor of autonomy) in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. But we will defeat that plan!" said Chávez.

From ElSalvadorSolidarity.org via Upside Down World, May 8:

On Friday May 2, Hector Antonio Ventura was assassinated in the community of Valle Verde, Suchitoto. Ventura was the youngest of the 14 political prisoners captured in Suchitoto on July 2, 2007. According to preliminary reports, Ventura was stabbed to death. Another victim, who was with Ventura, was attacked but survived. Reports say that the assailants were at least two men, who entered the back room of the house where Ventura and his friend slept and attacked them.

At an emergency food-security summit held May 7 in Managua, 14 Latin American and Caribbean nations convened under the umbrella of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega called the food crisis an "epic problem" caused by the "tyranny of global capitalism." At the conclusion of the summit, all but two participating nations signed a joint resolution that incorporated specific language supporting ALBA. Costa Rica and El Salvador abstained from signing. (CSM, May 8)

Colombia's military committed "crimes against humanity" when it shot three people in the back and killed a man with a blow to the head during the March 1 raid on a guerilla camp in Ecuador, Quito's Interior Minister Fernando Bustamante told the Gamavision TV news program. The forensic evidence showing that the three were shot in the back is "undeniable," he said.

Colombia has for the first time extradited an imprisoned paramilitary leader to the US to face drug-trafficking charges. Bogotá agreed to the extradition of Carlos Jiménez Naranjo AKA Macaco because he was found to be continuing to run his criminal network from inside his prison cell—in violation of an agreement he had signed with the Colombian government, and the terms of the Justice and Peace Law.

Brazilian federal police May 5 occupied the indigenous reserve of Raposa/Serra do Sol, in the Amazonian state of Roraima, after 10 indigenous people were shot in an attack a day earlier. Three of the wounded were in serious condition and had to be taken to hospitals in the state capital, Boa Vista. The incident happened as the Brazilian supreme court was reviewing a government decision to expel invaders from the reserve.

A Brazilian court sentenced the accused killer of American missionary Sister Dorothy Stang, to 28 years yesterday—but acquitted rancher Vitalmiro Moura, known as "Bida," who was accused of having ordered the killing. Rayfran das Neves Sales confessed to the 2005 shooting of Stang at Anapu, in the Amazonian state of Pará. Stang had been campaigning on behalf of the landless rural farm-workers and against the pillaging of the forest by illegal cattle ranches.

Protesters blocked New York's Queensboro, Triborough, Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and the Holland and Queens-Midtown tunnels May 7 to express outrage at the acquittal of three police detectives in the fatal 50-bullet shooting of unarmed Sean Bell at his his bachelor party at a Queens nightclub in November 2006. Hundreds were arrested. Protest leader Rev. Al Sharpton, speaking of the expected arrests, declared, "If you are not going to lock up the guilty in this town, then I guess you'll have to lock up the innocent." He was arrested later that day as he knelt to pray on the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge. Arrested with Sharpton were two survivors of the shooting, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, and Bell's fiancée, Nicole Paultre. Small solidarity marches were held in Chicago and Atlanta.