An independent union of Argentine transit workers, the Union Association of Subte and Premetro Workers (AGTSyP), held job actions on Sept. 9 and 10 in the Buenos Aires transit system in a push to win official recognition. In the Sept. 9 action the workers opened the turnstiles for two hours, letting commuters ride for free. On the second day, they shut much of the system down for two hours, affecting about 160,000 riders, according to Metrovías, S.A., the company that has managed the capital's subway and commuter lines since they were privatized in 1994. A unionist jumped on the tracks at the Pueyrredón station to block the trains, while a group of workers blocked the C Line tracks at the Avenida de Mayo station.

Jaime Mendoza Collío, a 24-year-old Mapuche activist, was shot by the police while taking part in an occupation of land claimed as indigenous territory Aug. 12 at Angol in the southern Chilean region of Araucanía. His slaying marks the third indigenous activist killed since the restoration of democracy in 1990, when the Mapuche launched a strategy of land occupations aimed at recovering their ancestral territory.

A judge in Chile has charged a former soldier in the 1973 murder of internationally renowned Chilean folk singer Víctor Jara. Up to now, the only person prosecuted in the case was the commanding officer at the temporary prison camp where the songwriter was killed shortly after the Sept. 11, 1973 coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

A Lebanese man held in Brazil for three weeks for posting anti-US comments on the Internet is not a member of al-Qaeda, as one Brazilian newspaper reported, federal prosecutors said May 27. The man, identified only as "K," is a self-employed computer technician with permanent residency in Brazil, where he lives with his Brazilian wife and daughter, officials and his lawyer said. He was released on May 18 this week after being arrested three weeks ago in Sao Paulo.

A district attorney in Argentina filed a request with a judge to order an international arrest warrant for a Colombian suspected of involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, the government news agency Telam reported May 20. The prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, asked the federal judge, Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, to issue an order to capture the suspect, Samuel Salman El Reda. Nisman said El Reda is part of the "most radicalized nucleus of the Muslim community" in Argentina and "the maximum reference on a local level" for the group that masterminded the attack. Telephone calls El Reda made in the two weeks before the attack link him to Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, according to Nisman. The July 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), which left 85 dead and some 300 wounded, was the country’s deadliest terrorist attack. (NYT, CNN, JTA, May 21; Clarin, Buenos Aires, May 20)

A Brazilian cattle-ranching company is seeking permission from Paraguay's government to destroy forest inhabited by one of the world's last uncontacted tribes. The company, Yaguarete Pora S.A., has applied to Paraguay's Environment Ministry for a licence to work in an area where uncontacted Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians live. Yaguarete own the land, but its licence to work there was withdrawn last year after the publication of satellite photos showing its destruction of the forest, and pressure from local organisations. Yaguarete also prevented an investigative team from the Environment Ministry from entering the area.

In Latin America, as in much of the world, the traditional International Workers Day marches this May 1 focused on the global economic crisis and especially on increases in the unemployment rate, which is approaching 10% in many areas.

Chilean judge formally charged three retired military officers in Santiago on April 20 with the murder of 14 prisoners in Antofagasta in northern Chile on Oct. 19, 1973, near the beginning of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 military dictatorship. The deaths of the 14 prisoners, mostly members of the Socialist Party, occurred on the "Caravan of Death," in which a military group headed by Gen. Sergio Arellano Stark executed more than 90 political prisoners as it traveled through the country.