Nearly two million hectares of forest in Peru have been destroyed in order to grow coca, the country's Environment Minister Antonio Brack said in a Lima Dec. 28. "The traffickers invaded protected areas and cleared forests for land to grow coca," the minister said, adding that most of the damage has been done in the jungle regions of San Martín and Huanuco, and in the Valley of the Apurimac and Ene rivers, known as the VRAE region. Drug trafficking also hurt the environment by dumping chemicals into rivers. "The illegal trade has had a very strong impact on the environment," Brack told the official Andina news agency. "We can help restore forests and improve environmental systems in the drug zones, once they are pacified." (IANS, Dec. 29)

"Extreme right" opposition elements planned to assassinate Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, the government claims. News of the plot was revealed Dec. 23 by Government Minister Alfredo Rada, who said the assassination was due to be carried out at in a mass rally in Chaparé, one of the president's strongholds. Rada said "they planned to use a campesino to disorientate the security forces who guard the president."

Colombian authorities announced Dec. 19 the dismantling of a narco network linked to Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, with seven arrested by the elite Technical Investigation Group (CTI) in the cities of Calí, Palmira and Bogotá. Vehicles, "communications equipment" and four weapons were seized. The CTI said the ring smuggled cocaine, heroin and marijuana to Mexico from the southern port of Tumaco." (Xinhua, El Pais, Cali, Dec. 19)

From Dec. 15 to Dec. 17 Latin American and Caribbean countries held overlapping meetings of several regional groups in Costa do Sauipe, a luxurious tourist complex near Salvador in the eastern Brazil state of Bahia. The overall intention was to increase regional cooperation and integration in response to a growing world economic crisis and the waning influence of the US.

At 4 AM on Dec. 16, indigenous leader Edwin Legarda Vázquez was killed by the Colombian army as he was driving a pickup truck belonging to the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), in which his partner, Aida Quilcué often traveled in. CRIC leader Quilcué gained national stature for her role in the indigenous rights campaign that mobilized thousands throughout Colombia this fall.

Indigenous leaders from the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) ended a three-day meeting in La Paz Dec. 19 with a call for international unity in the struggle against neoliberalism. Delegates from Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia denounced the privatization of natural resources and their delivery to corporate transnationals, while expressing support for the pending constitutional reform in the host country.

A dynamite charge was set off in the early hours of Dec. 18 in front of Radio Atlántica, a station owned by Guido Guardia, an opposition senator in the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, leaving a sizeable crater and causing damage to the outside of the building. The station is located in the compound where Sen. Guardia lives. Threats were made against the senator in a note left near the site of the blast.

On Dec. 10 human rights organizations in Latin America celebrated the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by holding ceremonies, staging protests and issuing reports on the situation in their countries.