Colombian guerilla leader Jorge Enrique Rodríguez Mendieta AKA "Ivan Vargas" was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a District Court in New York March 19 for conspiring to import cocaine into the US. Mendieta, who was extradited in 2007, pleaded guilty in December to the charges, admitting that he was commander of the FARC's 24th Front from 1998 to 2004.

On March 15, Jhonny Hurtado, 59, president of the local Human Rights Committee in the community of La Catalina, La Macarena municipality, Meta department, was killed while working in outlying fields. Witnesses said he fled when he heard gunfire, and was shot while running. The independent Human Rights Commission of the Bajo Ariari zone said in a statement: "There is fear throughout the region of the Río Guayabero, because the zone is militarized, and military unites...have threatened social leaders and human rights defenders." (DH Colombia, March 16)

The Conservatives tabled the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Ottawa's Parliament last week, reviving a deal opposed by labor and human rights activists. "International trade is critical to our economic recovery," said Minister of International Trade Peter Van Loan in a press release. "As we move beyond stimulus spending and diversify opportunities for Canadian business abroad, this free trade agreement will help Canadians prosper."

The governor of Bolivia's Chonchocoro prison has been sacked after a number of violent incidents at the facility, as well as revelations that former military ruler Luis García Meza was being housed in a luxury cell. Investigators searched the facility after several prisoners were injured in a turf war between inmates that involved a grenade attack and a shooting. They found that García Meza's quarters included a gym, sauna, tennis table, dining room and barbecue grill. He is serving a 30-year term for abuses dating back to his period in power in the early 1980s. Interior Minister Sacha Llorenti said prison governor Col. Gilmar Oblitas and other police officers would face penalties. (BBC News, March 16)

According to a report in the Peruvian daily La República on March 5, Jesús Sosa Saavedra, a former agent of Peru's Army Intelligence Service (SIE), has confessed to prosecutor Alicia Chamorro Bermúdez that he participated in the 1988 "Operation Lucero," in which the SIE captured and executed alleged Ecuadorian spy Enrique Duchicela and Lt. Marco Barrantes, a Peruvian officer also accused of espionage. Sosa Saavedra said Col. Oswaldo Hanke Velasco, then the head of the SIE, ordered the operation. According to La República, this testimony may bring Hanke Velasco to trial; he had avoided prosecution in the past.

The Bolivian Armed Forces has completed the declassification of files from the years of military dictatorship. According to Defense Minister Ruben Saavedra, Chief of Staff General Ramiro de la Fuente handed over the files to Public Ministry officials three days before schedule last month. The files are mostly from the regime of Gen. Luis García Meza (1980-1981), and will be placed at the disposal of judicial authorities to investigate the disappearance of opposition figures under his rule.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on March 14 called for Internet controls and demanded that authorities crack down on a website he accused of spreading false information. "The Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done. No, every country has to apply its own rules and norms," Chávez said during a televised speech, singling out Noticiero Digital, a Venezuela news site he said falsely reported the assassination of one of his ministers.

Venezuela on March 13 tested six training and light attack jets bought from China for defense and anti-drug flights in a deal that dodges an embargo banning sales of US weapons parts to the left-populist government of Hugo Chávez. Caracas ordered a total of 18 K-8 jets from China after a plan to buy similar jets from Brazil's Embraer fell through, apparently because they include US electrical systems. Said Chávez during a televised display of the jets' capabilities: "Thank you, China. The empire wanted to leave us unarmed. Socialist China, revolutionary China appeared and here are our K-8 planes."