After protesting for several weeks with no answer to their demands, on May 18 more than 1,000 Chilean high school students demonstrated in Santiago to press for free public transportation, free university entrance exams and improvements in the quality of public education. Agents of the militarized Carabineros police arrested at least 560 students and used tear gas and water cannons to evict a group of students who had taken refuge in the University of Chile law school. Another 244 students were arrested in similar protests in other cities, including Arica and Calama in the north, Valparaiso and Concepcion in the central region, and Temuco and Puerto Montt in the south. (Clarin, Argentina, May 18; Cadena 3, Argentina, May 19) More than 50 students were arrested in a previous protest in Santiago on May 12, and a young Argentine citizen was expelled by the Chilean government. (Pulsar, May6 12 via Resumen Latinamericano)

After 63 days on hunger strike, four jailed Mapuche rights activists agreed to temporarily suspend their protest on May 14 after reaching an agreement with Chilean legislators. In exchange for an end to the fast, the government promised to give urgent attention to a proposed law allowing supervised release, introduced by Socialist Party (PS) senator Alejandro Navarro. Navarro and fellow PS senator Jaime Naranjo helped broker the agreement, with mediation from Temuco bishop Manuel Camilo Vial and from lonko (Mapuche community leader) Jose Cariqueo.

Mapuche rights activists Juan Patricio Marileo Saravia, Florencio Jaime Marileo Saravia, Juan Carlos Huenulao Lienmil and Patricia Troncoso Robles (known as "La Chepa") have been on hunger strike since March 13 in prison in Angol, Chile's Region IX, demanding a review of their cases. The strikers were accused of setting a fire in December 2001 that burned 100 hectares of pine plantations belonging to the Forestal Mininco S.A. company on the Poluco Pidenco estate in Ercilla. The court characterized the arson as a terrorist act and invoked a special anti-terrorism law; the four activists were sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay the company restitution of 423 million pesos ($822,717). (Adital, Brazil, April 13; Mapuche International Link, April 20)

On Feb. 6 police arrested six leftist activists in the community of Antebi Cue, town of Sgto. Jose Felix Lopez (also known as Puentesinho), in San Carlos municipality in the northeastern Paraguayan department of Concepcion, near the border with Brazil. The six were in a Toyota SUV owned by the Campesino Organization of the North (OCN); police say they were carrying food, medicines, ammunition and explosives. Police confiscated the vehicle.

On Jan. 17, members of Paraguayan social and political organizations marched in Asuncion and burned US flags to protest the presence of US soldiers in their country, and to condemn the Paraguayan legislature's decision last year to let the troops in and grant them immunity from prosecution. The protests are being held on the 17th day of each month, with a larger national mobilization planned for this coming May, since a new contingent of US troops is expected to arrive in June. The protests are also being coordinated with activists in other countries. (Jaku'eke; ABC Color, Paraguay, Jan. 18)

Will Chile be the next to join South America's growing anti-imperialist bloc? Michelle Bachelet will certainly not prove a radical populist like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez or Bolivia's newly-elected Evo Morales. But she could prove a more moderate member of the bloc, like Brazil's Lula de Silva, Argentina's Néstor Kirchner or Uruguay's Tabare Vazquez. (Peru could be next, where candidate Ollanta Humala is cut from the more radical mold.) From the AP, Jan. 16:

From Reuters Dec. 9:

The founder of Argentina's leading human rights group was laid to rest yesterday, 28 years after she was abducted during the country's military dictatorship. Family and friends buried the ashes of Azucena Villaflor on a prominent Buenos Aires plaza that for many Argentines has come to symbolize the fight for justice by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The group of mothers, often seen wearing white handkerchiefs, have pressed for a full accounting of their sons and daughters, who went missing during Argentina's 1976-1983 military dictatorship known as the ''Dirty War." ''Azucena rest in peace, this is your place," said Marta Vazquez, one of the mothers. Villaflor was kidnapped by state security agents in December 1977. Forensic experts identified her remains in July after they were unearthed in a cemetery on the outskirts of the Argentine capital.

Some 30,000-40,000 people marched through a heavy rain on Nov. 4 in the Argentine seaside resort of Mar del Plata, in Buenos Aires province, to protest the presence of US president George W. Bush among the 32 heads of state in the city to attend the Nov. 4-5 Fourth Summit of the Americas. The march was led by Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Bolivian leftist presidential candidate and coca growers leader Evo Morales, and Hebe de Bonafini of the human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.