In a statement released on the Internet, Colombia's two rebel guerilla armies, the FARC and ELN, announced they intend to unite. "Our only enemy is North American Imperialism and its oligarchic lackeys," the statement said. The head of the Colombian armed forces, Gen Freddy Padilla, dismissed the news. "This alliance is impossible," he said. "They dispute territory to control drug-trafficking and have killed one another in the south [of the departments of] Bolívar and Arauca." (BBC News, Dec. 17)

The US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN) reported on Dec. 10 that for the last several weeks Colombian human rights attorney Jorge Eliécer Molano-Rodríguez had "received worrisome visits to his apartment building by individuals who refused to give their names to the building watchman, and his companion has been stalked by strange men.... Molano's legal work has involved him in some of Colombia's most controversial cases, representing, among others, families of victims of the Palace of Justice murders; of the Feb. 21, 2005 massacre of members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó; and of the Army's 'false positives' kidnapping and murder of civilian youths in San José de Guaviare, and in Bolivar and Cesar departments."

According to former employees of the Stella D'oro Biscuit Co. in New York City, CITGO, the US subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA) oil monopoly, attempted to buy the company's Bronx plant in early October to save the jobs of 136 unionized workers but the Connecticut-based private equity firm that owned the company ignored the offer. The facility was closed on Oct. 8.

A US government investigation has found evidence of a massive drug smuggling operation out of Venezuela, linking a powerful trafficker who is accused of supplying arms to Colombian guerrillas with a fugitive Venezuelan businessman, according to a report in Miami's El Nuevo Herald. At the center of the investigation is Walid Makled, whose family controlled Venezuela's leading airline and operated one of the largest cargo facilities at Puerto Cabello, the country's second largest port.

Washington's embassy in Ecuador Dec. 11 denied any US involvement in Colombia's 2008 raid on a FARC camp at Angostura in Ecuadoran territory. A new report by Ecuador's government says US military personnel stationed at the Pentagon's forward operating location (FOL) at Manta air base helped with intelligence to plan the attack. The embassy statement said "these accusations were made before... [T]he embassy strongly rejects them. Manta's FOL was not involved by any means, neither with the Colombian raid in Angostura nor giving intelligence information." (Xinhua, Dec. 11; NYT, Dec. 10)

Leaders of local peasant organizations marched on the offices of the judicial authorities in Piura in northwest Peru Dec. 10 to demand justice in the deaths of Vicente Romero Ramírez and Cástulo Correa Huayama, shot by police Dec. 2 in the hamlet of Cajas Canchaque, Huancabamba province. Police were apparently attempting to arrest local comunero Lorenzo Rojas García, suspected in a Nov. 1 attack on the "Henry's Hill" mining camp, run by Rio Blanco Copper, local venture of the Chinese Zijin Consortium with the UK's Monterrico Metals. Two security guards and the mine site manager were killed in the armed attack. The site has been the focus of repeated violent protests over land rights and environmental impacts, which have left two other local campesinos dead since 2004. (CNR, Dec. 10; UDW, Dec. 7; LAHT, Dec. 3)

Colombian officials are continuing to investigate three Chiquita Brands officials suspected of involvement in the payment of paramilitary death squads in the name of the banana company. According to a report by Bogotá's El Tiempo Dec. 7, Colombian prosecutors requested that the US Department of Justice notify Chiquita Brands executives John Paul Olivo, Charles Dennis Keiser and Dorn Robert Wenninnger that they are under investigation by the Colombian government for having financed paramilitary operations in the region of Urabá totaling $1.7 million between 1997-2004.

According to exit polls by three different firms, Bolivian president Evo Morales appears to have won a second five-year term in general elections on Dec. 6 with 61-63.2% of the vote. Right-wing former Cochabamba governor Manfred Reyes Villa was projected to get 23-25%, followed by center-right business owner Samuel Doria Medina with 7%.