Celebrations broke out across Ecuador Oct. 13 after President Lenin Moreno agreed to overturn Decree 883, which would have eliminated fuel subsidies. Moreno's capitulation followed 10 days of nationwide protests that left at least eight dead, hundreds injured and more than 1,000 detained. After suspension of the decree was announced, thousands of indigenous activists, local residents and student volunteers took to the streets of Quito to clean up the city. Teams worked their way through El Arbolito park, epicenter of the protest movement, which was still littered with burning tires and pavement slabs that had been used as barricades. Moreno and protest leaders are to open a dialogue to find alternative means to cut Ecuador's public spending.

Ecuador's government declared a "state of exception" Oct. 3 after protesters opposed to a fuel price hike blocked streets and disrupted transport nationwide. A national paro, or general strike, was called after President Lenín Moreno announced his decision to end a 40-year-old subsidy for fuel—widely perceived as a move taken in response to belt-tightening demands made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) following a recent  $4.2 billion loan package. At least 350 have been arrested in the "paquetazo" protests, whch have been led by transport unions, indigenous organizations and student groups. (TeleSur, Al Jazeera, NPR, BBC News)

President Martín Vizcarra of Peru ordered Congress to dissolve Sept. 30, prompting opposition lawmakers to vote to suspend him and plunging the nation into a crisis. Vizcarra and the right-opposition bloc in control of Congress have long been divided over the ongoing political scandal in Peru.  Vizcarra finally made his move after lawmakers appointed a new member to the top court, the Constitutional Tribunal, which would be the arbiter in a legal dispute between Congress and the Executive. Opposition lawmakers responded to Vizcarra's decision by accusing him of staging "a coup," and immediately voted to suspend him for 12 months, to be replaced by the vice president, Mercedes Aráoz. Vizcarra maintains the vote has no legitimacy because it came after Congress itself had been dissolved.

Top FARC leaders Iván Marquez and Jesús Santrich appeared in a YouTube video on Aug. 29, alongside some 20 other veteran fighters, all in battle fatigues, to announce they are returning to guerilla insurgency and will launch "a new stage of armed struggle." Reading the manifesto, Marquez, standing beside notorious FARC rebel leaders such as "El Paisa," charged that "the state has betrayed the Havana Accords," the 2016 peace deal under which the FARC has laid down arms. "We announce to the world that the second Marquetalia has begun," he said, referring to the village in Tolima department where the FARC was founded in May 1964. He said they would seek to join forces both with the FARC "dissidents" who have remained in arms despite the peace deal, as well as the rival National Liberation Army (ELN).

A lawsuit brought by a Peruvian farmer and mountain guide against a European utility over the imminently threatening impacts of climate change in the high Andes has been stalled for months in the evidentiary stage, partially due to the lack of an inter-governmental legal assistance agreement between Germany and Peru. Earlier this year, the Higher Regional Court of Hamm, in North Rhine-Westphalia, made a request to the government of Peru to be allowed to inspect the alpine lakes that are the subject of the lawsuit. This is expected to take at least one year to arrange. Meanwhile, signs mount of the glaciers above the lakes becoming destabilized by warming, portending a regional disaster.

Peru's Ministry of Energy & Mines (MINEM) on Aug. 9 officially suspended the license of the giant copper mine planned for Tia Maria, in the agricultural Tambo Valley of Arequipa region. The project had been the focus of years of protest mobilizations by local residents, and a new general strike, dubbed the Paro Macro-Regional, had been declared after MINEM finally issued a construction permit to the project's developer, Southern Copper Corporation, on July 8. In revoking the permit, MINEM implicitly invoked the protests, saying the "spaces for dialogue had not been generated" before the license was granted. Although the suspesion is indefinite, MINEM chief Francisco Ismodes said a review process for the social impacts of the project should take three months. Before the suspension, the Tambo Valley had been girding for a new wave of repression; days earlier, the Public Ministry issued an order allowing the use of military troops against protesters in the area. (AP via SinEmbergo, Aug. 11; Diario Uno, Diario Uno, Aug. 10; Reuters, Aug. 9; Peoples Dispatch, July 23)

The United States government is "committed" to "dismantle" Colombia's remaining significant guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), federal prosecutor Zachary Terwilliger said Aug. 8. The US attorney for the Eastern District of Virgina made the comment after he and six other federal prosecutors met with President Ivan Duque on a visit to Bogotá to discuss cooperation "to fight narco-terrorism," as Terwilliger put it in a tweet. Terwilliger said the Colombian government "counts on the full support of the United States Department of Justice in the common cause to destabilize, decimate and ultimately dismantle the ELN." The guerilla group has been active since 1964 and is currently believed to have 4,000 fighters. The ELN was engaged in peace talks with Duque's predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos, but the talks were suspended by Duque when he took office a year ago.

The Colombia office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Aug. 11 urged the government to effectively protect the lives and physical and cultural integrity of the Nasa indigenous people amid a wave of assassinations in their territory in the southern department of Cauca. The statement noted attacks on members of the Nasa Indigenous Guard over the past 24 hours, in which two were killed—Gersain Yatacué in the community of Toribio and Enrique Güejia in the community of Tacueyo. These brought to 36 the members of the Nasa people killed so far this year, according to Alberto Brunori, the UN human rights officer for Colombia. That is nine more than in the same period last year, which Brunori said points to an "alarming situation" in Cauca. (Prensa Latina, Aug. 11)