An Argentine court on Feb. 28 commenced the trial of former dictators Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone for allegedly overseeing a systematic plan to steal babies born to political prisoners during the nation's 1976-1983 "Dirty War." The two are accused in 34 separate cases of infants who were taken from mothers held in clandestine torture and detention centers, the Navy Mechanics School and Campo de Mayo army base. The case was opened 14 years ago at the request of Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, and includes as defendants five military judges and a doctor who attended to the detainees. The trial is expected to hear 370 witnesses and last up to a year. With the help of the Grandmothers' DNA database, 102 people born to vanished detainees have recovered their true identities.

In a significant setback for Chilean prosecutors, judges in Cañete in the central province of Arauco voted on Feb. 22 not to convict 17 indigenous Mapuche activists on "terrorism" charges relating to a fire and an attack on a prosecutor, Mario Elgueta, in Tirúa in October 2008. The judges acquitted most of the defendants of all charges, but they found four of the activists—Héctor Llaitul, Ramón Llenaquileo, José Huenuche and Jonathan Huillical—guilty of attempted homicide, a common crime, in the attack on Elgueta.

Protesters in the southern Chile region of Magallanes y Antártica Chilena have erected road blockades, halting traffic and leaving hundreds of foreign tourists stranded. The strike was triggered by a government plan to increase gas prices in southern Chile by nearly 17%. On Jan. 11, two young Chilean women were killed when a truck smashed through one of the blockades. Protesters have repeatedly clashed with police, who have used teargas to restore order. The crisis has prompted a cabinet shake-up, with energy minister Ricardo Raineri removed by President Sebastian Piñera for mis-handling talks with the protesters. (BBC News, LAHT, Jan. 15; BBC Mundo, Jan. 12)

Writers, academics and indigenous groups in Argentina are lobbying for Julio Argentino Roca, an army general who served as president from 1880-86 and 1898-1904, to be recognized as a political criminal who exterminated indigenous peoples and doled out their lands to cronies. In recent weeks, two cities—Santa Cruz and Tucumán—have renamed Julio Argentino Roca avenues after Néstor Kirchner, the former president who died in October. Other initiativess call for removing Roca from the 100-peso note and replacing his statue in Buenos Aires with a bronze figure of an indigenous woman. A leading writer and historian, Osvaldo Bayer, said he felt ashamed every time he passed Roca's statue.

Labor ministry inspectors from the Argentine national government and the Buenos Aires provincial government said they found 199 farm workers in conditions close to slavery during raids carried out at the end of December and the beginning of January on estates in the area of San Pedro, about 100 kilometers west of the national capital. The inspectors said 130 of the laborers, including some 30 children and adolescents, were producing for the Dutch-based multinational Nidera, and 69 were producing for the Argentine company Southern Seeds Production SA; the workers appear to have been subcontracted through temporary agencies.

Police in Argentina sealed off the Villa Soldati area of Buenos Aires Dec. 14 following a week of violence between squatters, authorities and local residents in which at least three have been killed. Some 1,000 people, mostly of Bolivian and Paraguayan origin, had pitched tents in the local Indoamericano Park after being evicted from a shantytown. A Paraguayan and a Bolivian were killed Dec. 7 when city police, executing a court order secured by the Buenos Aires municipal government, attempted to remove the squatters. Two days later, clashes between residents and the okupas, as the squatters are known, resulted in the death of another Bolivian. Four men are still in the hospital. Prosecutors in Buenos Aires are investigating the clashes.

Voters chose Dilma Rousseff of the leftist Workers Party (PT) to be Brazil's 36th president in a runoff election on Oct. 31. Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) president Ricardo Lewandowski said in a press conference in the early evening that Rousseff's victory was now mathematically certain. With 93.25% of the ballots counted, Rousseff had won 55.43% of the valid votes to 44.57% for José Serra of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB); the two candidates had led in the first round on Oct. 3. More than 93 million Brazilians participated in the Oct. 31 voting.

Thousands of Argentines rallied in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires on Oct. 21 to protest the killing of the student Mariano Ferreyra during a demonstration the day before. Ferreyra, a member of the Trotskyist Workers Party (PO), was shot in the chest in what appeared to be a clash between armed members of the Railroad Workers Union (UF) and temporary workers demanding that laid-off workers get permanent employment with the Roca Railroad, which was privatized in the 1990s. Three others were wounded in the incident, one seriously. There were reports that the police did nothing to stop the supposed UF members when they attacked the protesters.