Peruvian agricultural producers ended three days of mobilizations on Jan. 17 after Enrique Málaga, president of the National Users Council of the Irrigation Districts of Peru (JNUDRP), met with Prime Minister Yehude Simón and Agriculture Minister Carlos Leyton. "The strike has been suspended in consideration of our having reached an agreement for approval of the General Law of Water, which we were demanding," Málaga told the media. "This law is going to be promulgated next week." Málaga indicated that the agreement also included the formation of a commission for the solution of small agricultural producers' debt problems. (24 Horas Libre, Peru, Jan. 17; Univision, Jan. 17 from AFP)

Brazil agreed Jan. 15 to provide assistance to Bolivia to combat drug trafficking, taking up slack following the ouster of the US DEA from the Andean country last year. Meeting in the vast wetlands along the Bolivia-Brazil border, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva said he would grant Bolivian leader Evo Morales' request for helicopters and other support to patrol the porous frontier that is a major cocaine-trafficking route from the Andes. "I want us to fight drugs together," said Morales.

On Jan. 7, the Colombian government authorized Senator Piedad Córdoba to participate in the release of six hostages from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The mission will be headed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). (President Uribe indicated previously that he didn't want Córdoba involved.) (Latin American Herald Tribune, Jan. 8)

On Jan. 8 the National Security Archive, a Washington, DC-based research group, released declassified US government documents showing that US diplomats and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) knew at least since 1994 that the Colombia security forces "employ death squad tactics in their counterinsurgency campaign," in the words of a 1994 CIA report. The military had a "history of assassinating left-wing civilians in guerrilla areas, cooperating with narcotics-related paramilitary groups in attacks against suspected guerrilla sympathizers and killing captured combatants," the CIA report said. The release of the documents came six days before Colombian president Alvaro Uribe was to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US president George W. Bush. (Latin America Herald Tribune, Jan. 9)

Leonidas Vargas, one of Colombia's most notorious drug lords, was shot dead in his Madrid hospital bed Jan. 8, Spanish authorities said. At least one gunman entered the room in Madrid's Doce de Octubre Hospital where Vargas was being treated for a serious illness, and shot him four times. The Spanish press reported the assassin asked another patient who was sharing the Colombian's room if he was Vargas. When the man said no, he took out a gun fitted with a silencer and shot Vargas, who was asleep.

Ten years after the fact, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CIDH) found the Colombian government guilty of the assassination of Jesús Maria Valle Jaramillo, an attorney and human rights defender of Medellín, in the northwestern department of Antioquia. The ruling—issued Nov. 25 and announced on Christmas Eve—is the first handed down by the special tribunal of the Organization of American States (OAS) against Colombia for the murder of a human rights activist. Valle was assassinated on Feb. 27, 1998, when he presided the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Antioquia, a post he assumed after the killing of his three predecessors, Héctor Gómez, Luis Vélez Vélez and Carlos Gónima.

The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced in a Dec. 21 letter to the Colombians for Peace organization that it is planning to release six hostages unilaterally in the near future: three police agents, one soldier, former Meta governor Alan Jara and former legislative deputy Sigifredo López. The FARC said it intended to release the prisoners to opposition senator Piedad Córdoba. Right-wing president Alvaro Uribe announced on Dec. 22 that he wanted to avoid a "political spectacle" and that the hostages should be turned over to the International Red Cross. (Adital, Dec. 22)

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a US-based interfaith peace organization with an affiliate in Colombia, is charging that Colombian government agencies have intercepted more than 150 e-mail accounts of nonviolent groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, along with Colombian nongovernmental organizations. FOR says Colombia's police intelligence agency was intercepting groups' e-mail from December 2006 until as recently as November 2008. In a letter to US ambassador William Brownfield, 14 US-based groups noted that in 2006 the US State Department gave the police intelligence agency a $5 million contract to provide "internet surveillance software." "As a result," the letter says, "US taxpayers were apparently paying for Colombian agencies to spy on legitimate US and Colombian humanitarian organizations."