In a report published on July 19, the Argentine branch of the environmental group Greenpeace charged that operations by the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation in the Andes at the border with Chile had already significantly damaged three small glaciers. Citing a 2005 technical study, Greenpeace said the surface of the Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza glaciers "diminished by between about 56% and 70% because of the activities carried out by Barrick" even before mining operations had begun. The regions on either side of the border are arid, and farmers in the valleys largely depend on Andean glaciers as a source of water.

Tens of thousands of Chilean students and supporters marched through downtown Santiago on the central Alameda avenue on July 14 in their fourth massive demonstration demanding a reversal of the system of privatized education instituted under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. As in previous days of action, there were also large marches in other major cities.

Chileans celebrated LGBT Pride in Santiago on June 25 with a march from the central Plaza Italia to the La Moneda presidential palace. Organizers said 30,000 people joined the march, while the police gave a crowd estimate of 12,000. Participants carried signs with such slogans as: "Marriage and civil union law for all couples" and "Antidiscrimination law for everyone." The march came one day after New York became the largest state in the US to allow same-sex marriage. Rightwing president Sebastián Piñera announced on May 28 that he would send Congress a proposal for a law to legalize civil unions for the country's more than two million couples, including same-sex couples, but he insisted that the law wouldn't permit same-sex marriage. Chilean LGBT activists are pushing for full marriage equality. (AFP, June 25, via Terra.com)

With chants of "An educated people will never be deceived" and "We want a free, quality education," tens of thousands of Chilean students, parents and teachers took to the streets on June 30 in the latest protest against the privatized education system set up under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Giorgio Jackson, president of the Federation of Catholic University Students (FEUC), estimated that 200,000 people took part in the demonstration in Santiago, while Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) president Camila Vallejo put the number at more than 300,000. By most accounts the Santiago protest was twice the size of a June 16 march that local media had called the largest since the return of democracy 21 years ago.

On June 20, the Court of Appeals in the city of Puerto Montt, Chile, ordered a halt to all construction and permitting processes for the controversial HidroAysén five-dam mega-project while a case against the project is pending. The case, jointly filed on June 9 by citizens and congress members, charges that HidroAysén’s environmental review, which was approved by authorities last month, was arbitrary, illegal, and violated constitutional rights of local inhabitants. The case would normally be heard by the Court of Appeals in Coyhaique, the capital city of the Aysén Region—where the dams are slated to be built, where the approval was granted, and where the appeal was filed. However, several of the justices who sit on the appeals court there recused themselves from the case due to conflicts of interest, and the case was moved to the neighboring region of Los Lagos. (See map.)

Tens of thousands of students, teachers and supporters protested Chile's education policies with a huge demonstration in Santiago on June 16 that the local daily La Tercera said was "the most massive march since the return of democracy" in 1990; the University of Chile radio station called it "historic." The Carabineros militarized police gave a crowd estimate of 80,000, while organizers said 100,000 people had attended. Thousands more held marches in the cities of Concepción, La Serena, Temuco and Valparaíso. The nationwide protest followed several days of student strikes at dozens of high schools and universities.

On June 9 four Mapuche activists imprisoned in Chile's central Araucanía region decided to end a liquids-only hunger strike they started on March 15 to protest their convictions in what they considered an unfair trial. The prisoners—José Huenuche Reimán, Jonathan Huillical Méndez, Héctor Llaitul Carillanca and Ramón Llanquileo Pilquimán—stopped the fast after relatives, human rights organizations and members of the Catholic church made an agreement to form a Commission for the Defense of the Rights of the Mapuche People to promote and defend indigenous rights.

As of May 23 negotiations were continuing between the Argentine federal government and representatives of the indigenous Qom community of the Toba ethnic group over disputed land in the northern province of Formosa. The government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner finally agreed to negotiate seriously on May 2 after 16 Qom community members started an open-ended hunger strike in Buenos Aires and well-known activists like Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, 1980 Nobel peace prize winner, took up the cause.