A School of the Americas graduate has been charged for last week's unsuccessful coup attempt in Ecuador. Col. Manuel E. Rivadeneira Tello, a graduate of the SOA's combat arms training course, is one of three police officials being investigated for negligence, rebellion and attempted assassination of the president.

On Oct. 4, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez announced the expropriation of a subsidiary of the British Vestey Group, and of Agroisleña, a major agricultural firm founded by Spaniards half a century ago. In a nationally televised telephone interview, Chávez said Venezuela would take complete control of hundreds of thousands of hectares, and some 130,000 head of cattle, owned by La Compañía Inglesa, which is controlled by the Vestey Group. Vestey has owned property in the country since 1909. Chávez said compensation had been negotiated with the company. Since 2001, the government has expropriated (with compensation) some three million hectares of land, and has issued permits to tens of thousands of families to work a total of two million hectares.

On Sept. 27 Colombian inspector general Alejandro Ordóñez Maldonado announced that he was removing Senator Piedad Córdoba from her position and barring her from public office for 18 years because of what he said were her links to the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Córdoba, a member of the centrist Liberal Party, has mediated in negotiations which led to the release of 14 prisoners held by the FARC. She is also a member of Colombians for Peace, formed in 2008 by politicians, intellectuals, artists, journalists and former FARC prisoners to seek solutions to the armed conflicts in the country.

Ecuador's military staged a rescue late Sept. 30 to free President Correa, who was holed up in a hospital for more than 12 hours by the police uprising. As TV cameras rolled and pro-Correa crowds at the scene cheered, some 40 special operations troops who arrived in two trucks entered the hospital, and hustled Correa out and back to the presidential palace. Sporadic gunfire could be heard and five soldiers were reported injured. A defiant Correa appeared minutes later on the balcony of the presidential palace, where he told the crowd: "It's a day of profound sadness that I never thought would happen during my government. The police have been infiltrated by well-known political parties that want to conspire."

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa declared a state of emergency Sept. 30 as the National Police launched a rebellion over austerity measures that cut their benefits, erecting roadblocks with burning tires on the highways, occupying their barracks in all the major cities, and seizing the landing strips at the Quito airport. When Correa approached a police barracks to attempt to negotiate, officers shoved him and fired tear gas at him. Video footage showed men, including uniformed officers, manhandling the president and attempting to yank a gas-mask from his face. Correa, who recently underwent knee surgery, was still walking with a crutch. "This is a coup attempt," Correa said in a TV phone interview from a hospital, where he was taken for the effects of gas inhalation. "They're trying to get into my room, maybe to attack me. I don't know. But, forget it. I won't relent. If something happens to me, remember my infinite love for my country, and to my family I say that I will love them anywhere I end up." Correa later appeared at an upper floor window, shouting to a crowd of supporters who had gathered below, "I'm not taking one step back!" Ripping his necktie loose to reveal his chest, he added, "Gentlemen, if you want to kill the president, here he is—kill him if you have the guts!"

The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, located in the Urabá region of northwestern Colombian department of Antioquia, wrote in communiqués dated Sept. 22 and 24 that right-wing paramilitaries were continuing to attack and threaten its members. The community, which for 13 years has rejected the presence of all weapons and armed groups in its territory, charged the authorities with "complacency" regarding the paramilitary activity.

Beginning Sept. 21, the city of Cusco, Peru, was shut down by a 48-hour general strike in support of an ongoing protest campaign by residents of Espinar province against the mega-scale Majes-Siguas II irrigation project, which they charge will deprive campesino communities along the Río Apurímac of water in favor of coastal agribusiness interests. Transportation in the city was at a standstill, schools were closed by a student walk-out, and there was violence as student protesters clashed with police. Campesinos in the surrounding countryside meanwhile erected roadblocks, halting traffic through the region. Train service connecting Cusco with Machu Picchu was cancelled, and thousands of tourists stranded. Protest leader Nestor Cuti of the Espinar Defense Committee charged that property damage in Cusco was the work of police provocateurs and demanded an investigation.

Top FARC commander Jorge Briceño Suárez AKA "Mono Jojoy" was killed Sept. 23 by Colombian government forces. President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed the death of the guerilla leader from New York City, where he is attending the UN General Assembly. The head of the FARC's Eastern Bloc and member of its Secretariat was killed in an air operation in La Macarena region in the central department of Meta. Some 20 other guerrillas were killed and five members of the security forces were injured in the operation, Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera said.