Ex-president Alejandro Toledo, a front-runner in Peru's presidential race, said Jan. 13 that the mining sector must "give back" a portion of rising profits to poor rural areas. In a speech outlining his policy proposals, Toledo called for "co-responsibility" between private companies and the state for social development: "Just as we respect the rules of the game and assure them contracts will be honored, they, the extractive sector, should respect the environment and give back part of their profits in the form of infrastructure and improve the quality of life of townspeople." (Reuters, Jan. 13)

Colombian authorities brought charges against a Maj. Juan Carlos Del Río Crespo and four other troops in the December 2002 slaying of three members of the Agudelo family in Campamento village, Antioquia state. Crespo is accused falsely presenting their bodies as those of FARC guerilla fighters who were killed in combat—a widespread practice in the Colombian military known as "false positives."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Jan. 15 raised the possibility of surrendering his special powers to rule be decree more than a year earlier than expected in response to accusations that he is becoming a dictator. In a televised address before the National Assembly, Chávez said he could put in place by May the decrees necessary to relieve the crisis caused by floods that have displaced 130,000 in western Zulia state. "To accuse me of being a dictator because the previous assembly voted for an Enabling Law—how is that a dictatorship?" Chávez asked.

Spanish prosecutors on Nov. 14 charged an alleged member of the Basque separatist group ETA with training members of the Colombian guerrilla group FARC in computer skills. Iraitz Guesalag was arrested in France days earlier and will be extradited to Spain. The FARC training allegedly took place in Venezuela, and was arranged by Arturo Cubillas, an ETA operative in the Venezuelan Ministry of Agriculture. Spain issued an extradition request for Cubillas in March 2010, charging the official for his ties to ETA, which the Venezuelan government denies. (Colombia Reports, Jan. 14)

A decade after the end of Peru's 1980-2000 counterinsurgency war was officially declared, the army broke its silence, to give its own version of events. The report, "In Honor of the Truth," based on officers' field dispatches, contradicts the findings of the official Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR) that nearly 70,000, mainly indigenous peasants, were killed or forcibly disappeared in the war against the Shining Path guerillas.

A March 2009 US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks reports that Peru's new military head was involved in narco-corruption, a charge that the general adamantly denies. The document, written by then-Ambassador Michael McKinley, stated that an unnamed source "saw signs that officers may have continued to cooperate with drug traffickers." The document referenced a 2007 meeting between Peruvian Gen. Paul da Silva and a local fishing industry boss, Rolando Eugenio Velasco Heysen, where the two allegedly discussed drug shipments. In October 2007, Velasco was arrested on charges that he attempted to export 840 kilograms of cocaine hidden in frozen fish.

Bolivia's state energy company YPFB last month awarded Argentina's Astra Evangelista SA a $160 million contract to build a natural gas processing plant at in Rio Grande in the eastern province of Santa Cruz. The plant, due to come online in 2012, will process will producing 380 metric tons of liquefied petroleum gas and 600 barrels of gasoline per day, mostly for export to Brazil. The original plan called for the plant to be built in 2009, but the project was stalled after a corruption scandal that led to the dismissal and subsequent jailing of YPFB chief Santos Ramírez.

Following a wave of angry protests across the country, Bolivia's President Evo Morales revoked a decree that lifted fuel subsidies and caused price hikes of up to 82%. In a message late Jan. 31, Morales said he had decided to rescind the decree after meeting with labor and indigenous leaders who convinced him that the price hike for gasoline, diesel and other fuels was "inopportune."