Nine US human rights activists are holding a vigil at the Tolemaida military base near Bogotá with a 12-foot banner that reads "U.S. MILITARY OUT OF COLOMBIA." The Tolemaida base is one of seven in Colombia to which the US military has been granted access for 10 years under the US-Colombia Defense Cooperation Agreement signed in October 2009.

Colombian union sources report that Alejandro Betancur, president of the Union of Mining Industry Workers (SINTRAMINEROS) in the northwestern department of Antioquia, received a death threat by telephone on July 26 in connection with his union activities. According to Carlos Julio, president of Colombia's Unitary Workers Central (CUT), Betancur was threatened because of his efforts on behalf of about 100 miners employed by companies belonging to Industrial Hullera, which is now in liquidation. The dispute, which has gone on for 13 years, concerns labor rights and pensions. (El Mundo, Medellín, July 31; Adital, Brazil, July 29)

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on Aug. 2 issued a statement strongly condemning the murder of Colombian indigenous leader Luis Alfredo Socarras Pimienta. The IACHR, an autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), "urges the State of Colombia to investigate the crime committed against the indigenous leader Socarras Pimienta and to prosecute and punish those who perpetrated and planned the crime." The statement adds that "the IACHR also urges the State to attend to the needs for protection and security of those who defend the rights of the indigenous peoples of Colombia, to ensure that crimes such as this one do not happen again."

Peru will cancel the operating license of the US company Doe Run for a large smelter complex at La Oroya, Junin region, as the company failed to meet a deadline for submitting a new environmental protection plan, President Alan García announced July 28. The law will be enforced and the permit canceled, said García during his address to the nation on Peru's Independence Day.

A report released July 29 by the interfaith peace group Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) details how US aid to the Colombian military has been supporting army units whose members have killed hundreds of civilians. Drawing on extensive data from the offices of Colombia's Prosecutor General (Fiscalía), Inspector General (Procuraduría) and armed forces, as well as the US State Department and 20 human rights organizations, the report shows that billions of dollars provided under the rubric of Plan Colombia have abrogated US human rights law and contributed to the killing of thousands of civilians by the Colombian army.

The government of Peru declared a state of emergency across 17 of the country's 25 regions as winter temperatures plunged to record lows over the weekend. At least 200 people have died in the worst cold spell in 46 years, with temperatures falling at night to well below freezing in highland areas. The most affected regions include Áncash, Apurímac, Arequipa, Cusco, Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Huánuco, Junín and Lima. (TeleSUR, BBC News, DPA, July 24) Extreme weather has resulted in social unrest over the past year in Peru, amid growing concerns about climate change in the Andes.

The Colombian government is denying reports of a mass grave found in the Meta department on the eastern plains, charging that the allegation is a strategy to derail the Andean nation's free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU). A group of NGOs and activists headed by Sen. Piedad Córdoba reported last week that a grave containing 2,000 bodies had been found in the Meta municipality La Macarena, next to an army installation. The finding was corroborated by an international human rights commission led by six members of the European Parliament.

Hugo Rodas Morales, author of Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, socialismo vivido, a new biography of the Bolivian socialist leader who "disappeared" in the military coup d'etat of July 1980, says that the martyred activist's remains are buried under the central flagpole at the headquarters of the armed forces high command in the Miraflores district of La Paz. Rodas cites a confession by School of the Americas graduate Col. Édgar Franco Montenegro that Quiroga Santa Cruz was buried below the high command flagpole after the coup. "We know that the remains are hostage of the armed forces," said Rodas. "The recognition of this reality is documented, there is no doubt that the remains are there."