Indigenous leaders in Ecuador announced the temporary lifting of their protest campaign against the pending national water law on May 13. The announcement came as Ecuadoran lawmakers failed to reach a deal on putting off debate on the contested water bill, leaving the legislation with an uncertain future. Unrest over the past week had left 20 injured and 30 detained. Delfín Tenesaca, president of the indigenous organization ECUARUNARI, said, "The mobilizations are suspended for now, to give a turn to the popular assemblies" to decide the next move.

At least six people were killed—three of Serbian nationality and three Bolivians—and one was kidnapped in an assault perpetrated by suspected drug traffickers in Bolivia's eastern department of Santa Cruz on May 15. The victims were stopped at a false police checkpoint and were tied up, tortured and executed, authorities said. The gunmen kidnapped Bolivian national William Rosales Suárez, who police identified as "the ringleader of a drug-trafficking gang in Santa Cruz," with a price of $1 million on his head. (LAHT, May 15)

Colombia's presidential election on May 30 is developing into an unexpectedly tight race between Juan Manuel Santos—incumbent hardliner Alvaro Uribe's former defense minister who pledges to continue the current aggressive military campaign against leftist guerillas—and Antanas Mockus, reformist, anti-corruption candidate of the Green Party (Partido Verde). In February, President Uribe was constitutionally barred from running for a third term, leaving Santos as his heir-apparent and presumed shoe-in. But polls are showing Mockus' potential as an upset victor.

Indigenous communities in Colombia's southwestern department of Cauca issued a statement May 11 calling upon all armed fighters to leave their territory, following the intensification of clashes between FARC guerillas and the army that left many civilians injured, displaced, or dead. "We have been left alone in the midst of the bullets of legal and illegal armed groups," said Miller Correa, indigenous governor of the resguardo of Tacueyó, Toribío municipality.

Anti-labor violence is again reaching a peak in Colombia, with four education workers affiliated to the Teachers' Association of Córdoba (ADEMACOR) assassinated in the northern coastal department since Jan. 28. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), together with its Colombian affiliates, has strongly condemned these murders, noting that they have been simultaneous with a wave of threats and attacks against the leaders of the Teachers' Association of Antioquia (ADIDA).

Through a closed-circuit satellite link from a US federal prison in Virginia, where he is facing drug trafficking charges, former Colombian paramilitary chief Salvatore Mancuso asserted to a panel of his country's Supreme Court in Bogotá April 29 that his illegal forces supported Álvaro Uribe's election in 2002. He is now the fourth paramilitary chief to make the claim. Mancuso also declared that he participated in a plot against former Supreme Court magistrate Iván Velásquez, who was the leading judge investigating the Uribe government's collaboration with paramilitary groups.

Two Colombian soldiers, Sgt. Pablo Emilio Moncayo and Pvt. Josué Daniel Calvo, returned to their hometowns on April 15 following their release by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and more than two weeks of rest and medical tests in Bogotá. Calvo, who was freed by the FARC on March 28 after 11 months in captivity, was greeted by family, friends and the departmental governor in Popayán, capital of southwestern Cauca department, while Moncayo, released on March 30, arrived at Sandoná in the southwestern department of Nariño accompanied by his parents and other family members.

Peru's Sendero Luminoso guerillas, thought to be confined to a small pocket of high jungle known as the Apurimac-Ene River Valley (VRAE), on April 27 launched an attack on a government coca-eradication team in the Upper Huallaga Valley, a region to the north of the VRAE that had been the rebels' principal stronghold in the 1990s. One National Police officer and two eradication workers with Special Control and Reduction Project (CORAH) were killed in the ambush at Alto Corvina, Huánuco region. National Police say the VRAE faction, led by a commander code-named "José," has now been joined by a Huallaga Valley column, led by a commander "Artemio." (El Comercio, Lima, May 1; Prensa Latina, April 27)