Police in Peru fired tear gas to disperse protesters blocking a highway near Pisco Aug. 15. The protesters were denouncing government inaction on helping the southern town rebuild from a 2007 earthquake that destroyed some 75,000 homes. Two years later, many people in the region still live in tents and shacks. Protesters burned tires and snarled traffic on the Pan-American highway for hours. (Reuters, BBC News, Aug. 15)

Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez announced Aug. 8 he is sending his ambassador back to Bogotá—while not formally re-establishing relations or backing down from opposing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's plan to open the country's military bases to a bigger US presence. "The decision to freeze relations with Uribe's government remains," Chávez told reporters. "We have plenty of reasons to be highly concerned." Chávez told Ambassador Gustavo Marquez to return 11 days after he was ordered home. (AP, Aug. 10) However, the next day, Chávez accused Colombian soldiers of crossing into his country. "We are not talking about a patrol with a few soldiers that strayed over a border," Chávez said on his weekly television show Aug. 9. "These troops crossed the Orinoco River in a boat and carried out an incursion into Venezuelan territory... When our troops got there [the Colombian troops] had already gone away." (AlJazeera, Aug. 10)

After meeting in La Paz with his Colombian counterpart Álvaro Uribe Aug. 5, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced he will request the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) reject the opening of foreign military bases on the continent. "We will take the UNASUR meeting a draft resolution to not accept the presence of any foreign armed soldier in the region," Morales said. The UNASUR summit is to open Aug. 10 in Quito, Ecuador. (Prensa Latina, Aug. 5)

The 18,000-year-old Chacaltaya glacier overlooking La Paz has vanished six years earlier than scientists predicted, ending the world's highest ski run—and threatening water supplies to the Bolivian capital. The World Bank says water could be diminished imminently to the 2 million people in La Paz and neighboring El Alto. Chacaltaya—"bridge of ice" in the Aymara language—has been a barren slope devoid of permanent snow for some six months as the Southern Hemisphere's summer came on. Scientists had forecast for its disappearance for 2015. The World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich says that from the Andes to the Alps, glaciers have retreated for 18 years—and twice as fast now as a decade ago. (Bloomberg, Aug. 5)

Five agents were killed Aug. 2 when some 50 Shining Path guerillas attacked a base of the Peruvian police National Directorate of Special Operations (DINOES) at San José de Seque, Huanta province, Ayacucho region, in the Ene and Apurimac River Valley (VRAE). (RPP, Aug. 2) Legislator Elizabeth León (Bloque Popular) protested the recent closure of a nearby military base, charging that the government is withdrawing support for Plan VRAE. (RPP, Aug. 3)

Bolivian President Evo Morales spoke out Aug. 3 in defense of his colleagues Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, saying the charges of their links to Colombia's FARC guerillas are an "montage to discredit revolutionary presidents." Last month, he likewise defended Guatemala's Álvaro Colom against charges of involvement in the murder of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg, saying the country's "oligarchy" of scheming to "invent a death" to create conflict. (EFE, Aug. 3)

The Bolivian government has started implementing provisions outlined in the new constitution that give indigenous people the right to govern themselves. On Aug. 2, President Evo Morales enacted a decree setting out the conditions for indigenous communities to hold votes on autonomy. These referenda will take place in December, along with presidential and congressional elections. The provisions allowing for votes on indigenous autonomy were presented in a ceremony in Camiri, the eastern region of Santa Cruz. Morales called it "a historic day for the peasant and indigenous movement."

A judge sentenced 15 members of Colombia's military to between four and 30 years in prison for killing two civilians they tried to disguise as guerillas killed in combat, prosecutors said Aug. 1. An officer, three of his subordinates and six rank-and-file troops were found to have overseen or participated in the plot to kill the two young men in Medellín in May 2006. Five other troops were found to have covered up details in the case, for which they were sentenced to four years. The young men were restaurant workers who went missing on their way home from work; their bodies turned up the following day, labelled as killed in combat by an infantry battalion. The case was one of the highest profile of a series of so-called "false positive" scandals. (AFP, Aug. 1)