On the evening of Dec. 12 Melanie del Carmen Salgado Lopez was assaulted by an unknown man near the entrance of her home in Mexico's Federal District (DF, Mexico City). He pushed her against the wall, grabbed her by her hair and hit her head against the wall, giving her a cut on the face. "Don't be a jerk," he warned her. Salgado Lopez is a student at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) and a member of the Cerezo Committee Mexico, which works for the legal defense of the brothers Alejandro, Antonio and Hector Cerezo Contreras and for other cases of suspected human rights abuses.

On Dec. 10 some 400 police broke up a demonstration by the unemployed in Mexico's southern state of Tabasco. Some 300 people were blocking an avenue in Villahermosa to demand benefits that PRI governor Andres Granier Melo had promised to those who lost their jobs because of severe flooding in the state in October and November. Payments had started on Nov. 30, but they were suspended on Dec. 9 and 10, supposedly for technical reasons. Five people were reportedly arrested in the incident, which Gov. Granier Melo blamed on "agitators who are trying to disturb the peace." (LJ, Dec. 11)

Some 1,000 members of the Federation of Socialist Campesino Students of Mexico (FECSM) blocked the Sun Highway in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero for more than an hour on Dec. 11 to protest plans by state education secretary Jose Luis Gonzalez de la Vega to assign teachers based on an exam administered by the National Evaluation Center. Students from Guerrero teaching colleges and their supporters have been demonstrating since Nov. 14 around demands for 75 additional teaching positions for teaching college alumni and for retention of the degree in primary education.

At a Dec. 9 ceremony hosted by outgoing Argentine president Nestor Kirchner in the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, the heads of six South American countries signed an agreement formally creating the Bank of the South, a development bank to be financed by South American countries to promote infrastructural projects and to aid companies from the region. Bolivian president Evo Morales, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa, Paraguayan president Nicanor Duarte Frutos and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez attended the signing. Argentine president-elect Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was also present; she was to succeed her husband on Dec. 10. Uruguayan president Tabare Vazquez decided to skip the Dec. 9 ceremony and wait until Dec. 10 to sign the accord; his absence reflected strains between Argentina and Uruguay over the Botnia paper mill being built in Uruguay.

After a 10-year trial, on Dec. 12 Bolivian judge Angel Arias sentenced three former officers to 30 years for their involvement in the 1980 military coup in which Luis Garcia Meza overthrew President Lidia Gueiler. Socialist leader Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz and legislative deputy Carlos Flores Bedregal were murdered soon after the coup in an assault on the offices of the Bolivian Workers Central (COB). Judge Arias convicted Felipe Froilan Molina Bustamante, Franz Pizarro Solano and Javier Hinojosa Valdez of armed uprising and the organization of irregular groups. The judge did not find them guilty of murder, leading to shouts of "murderers" and "neither forgetting nor forgiving" from friends and relatives of Flores Bedregal and Quiroga Santa Cruz in the courtroom. Another 14 defendants were found guilty of coverup and false testimony; they received sentences of two to four years. Former dictator Garcia Meza began serving a 30-year sentence in 1995; charges against him included sedition, genocide and the theft of the diaries of Argentine-born guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara. (La Jornada, Mexico, Dec. 13)

On Dec. 15, tens of thousands took to the streets of La Paz to cheer President Evo Morales and celebrate Bolivia's new constitution. Simultaneously, tens of thousands took to the streets of the eastern lowland cities Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando to celebrate declarations of local autonomy—in defiance of Morales. These departments announced signature drives to get the legal 8% quorum to approve referendums on the local rule. The governors of Cochabamba and Chuquisaca have also announced such proposals. Bolivia's three remaining western highland departments—La Paz, Oruro and Potosi—stand firmly behind Morales. In La Paz, Morales warned that "the armed forces...are here to make sure that the country never disintegrates."

The White House is hoping Congress will pass the Bush administration's request for an initial $550 million for narcotics enforcement in Mexico and Central America before the fast-approaching holiday recess. The proposed aid package, known as the "Merida Initiative," has been hailed by the Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderón as "a new paradigm" of bilateral cooperation in the war on drugs and terrorism. Some 40% of the $550 million is slated to pay for eight new helicopters and two new airplanes for Mexico. The funds are attached to a $50 billion supplemental military funding package the administration is seeking to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008.

On Dec. 10, some 150 people marched to the federal building in Hartford, CT, to demand an end to immigration raids. Activists were upset about the arrest of 21 Brazilian immigrants in early November in the city's Parkville neighborhood in a joint operation between local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Local police said they had asked ICE to help them search for a Brazilian man being sought on attempted murder and robbery charges. They didn't find the suspect, but ICE picked up 21 other people suspected of being in the US without permission.