President Rafael Correa was condemned by Ecuador's national indigenous peoples' organization CONAIE over his policy towards uncontacted Amazon tribes Jan. 29. "Correa's regime is promoting oil production on land inhabited by uncontacted tribes," read the statement from CONAIE. The statement was made in an open letter to the World Social Forum being held in the Amazon town of Belem, Brazil, which President Correa is attending. It comes after the recent announcement by government ministers they intend to protect Ecuador's uncontacted peoples from illegal loggers.

Illegal gold-miners shot dead a Yekuana indigenous leader and injured his son Jan. 21 in the Brazilian state of Roraima. Yekuana man Vicente Carton and his son Ronildo had refused to take the miners up the dangerous rapids of the Uraricoera River into the Yanomami indigenous reserve. The miners shot them, and Vicente died immediately while Ronildo escaped by jumping into the river. He hid in the forest and eventually made his way back to his village.

Indigenous people from across Latin America led more than 1,000 protesters, gathered in Belem, Brazil, for the World Social Forum, in formation of a human banner Jan. 27. Around the giant outline of a warrior taking aim with a bow and arrow, indigenous leaders and activists spelled out the message "SALVE A AMAZONIA," or "save the Amazon" in Portuguese. Some indigenous participants were themselves armed with bows and arrows.

An Anglo-French oil company hoping to drill for oil on uncontacted tribes' land in the Peruvian Amazon may be forced to abandon the project after the government threatened to withdraw investment in it. The project depends on the construction of a billion-dollar pipeline to transport the oil from the remote Amazon to the Peruvian coast. Perupetro, the state oil company, is currently "reevaluating" investing in the project after the recent fall in global oil prices. "Everything seems to indicate that [the pipeline] has to be reevaluated," said Peru's Energy Minister Pedro Sanchez at a news conference.

Four employees of Minera Afrodita and two people who were traveling with them in the Peruvian Amazon were held hostage for a sixth day on Jan. 20, by protesters angry over mining development. The group, which includes two administrative workers, two security guards, their boat captain and his helper, was seized last week in the remote community of Huampami, Cenepa district, Condorcanqui/Bagua province, Amazonas department. The company said its workers were there to invite local leaders to a meeting to talk about mining projects.

An Anglo-French oil company is poised to send more than 1,000 workers into a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon inhabited by uncontacted indigenous tribes. The company, Perenco, has just been given the go-ahead from the Peruvian government to drill for oil in the region. It is estimated to be the biggest oil discovery in Peru in 30 years.

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.

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.