Our June issue featured the story "Enough With the Hugo Chávez Hero Worship" by Nikolas Kozloff, in which he calls out the Venezuelan leader for supporting Beijing's position on Tibet and dismissing the protests against the Olympic Torch as an example of the US "empire" "going against China." Kozloff writes that it is "time for left to repudiate Chávez over China—while supporting the overall goals of Bolivarian Revolution." Our June Exit Poll was: "Should the left repudiate Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez over his public backing of China's crackdown in Tibet—while still supporting the overall goals of the Bolivarian Revolution?" We received the following responses:

Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba was held by US immigration authorities at New York's JFK airport June 27, to be interrogated about her alleged ties to the FARC—despite her diplomatic visa. "When I left customs, I was retained for two and a half hours," she told Colombia's Caracol Radio. "I think they wanted to send me back to Colombia. All my papers were photocopied. I had brought denunciations to deliver to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. They photocopied everything, my phones and personal belongings too."

In a national broadcast June 27, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe called for a referendum on holding a new presidential election after the country's Supreme Court of Justice called for a review of the constitutional change that allowed him to run for a second term in 2006. Uribe said Congress should quickly pass legislation he will submit to approve the referendum, but didn't say whether the election would be for a new full four-year term or to legitimize his remaining two years.

Iran has announced it is reviewing the launch of a joint development bank with Venezuela. "Iran and Venezuela have positive cooperation and are currently reviewing the launch of a joint bank after five meetings held on this issue so far," Venezuelan Planning and Development Minister Haiman El Troudi told Iran's Mehr News in Isfahan on the sidelines of a meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development.

Lt. Col. Héctor Herrera, president of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Civil-Military Front, decried a "new, unfounded accusation" by the US Treasury Department that a Venezuelan diplomat and Venezuelan travel agent, both of Lebanese decent, are financial supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah. Herrera, whose Civil-Military organization recently held military maneuvers with Venezuelan reservists to defend against a simulated foreign invasion, said the accusations "are more of the same," comparing them to those made about Venezuelan support for the FARC.

by James Suggett, VenezuelAnalysis

Plans for new coal mining in the Sierra de Perijá, the northwestern region of the state of Zulia, Venezuela, were suspended by President Hugo Chávez last year following anti-coal declarations by Chávez and several ministers. The Wayúu, Yukpa, and Barí indigenous communities who would have been displaced by the projects cautiously interpreted the suspension as a temporary sign of relief. But their struggle against coal mining has lasted a quarter of a century and will not conclude until mining concessions are repealed for good.

Little more than a week after the Canadian government announced the completion of free trade talks with Colombia, that country's national daily, El Tiempo, reports [June 14] that the Águilas Negras (Black Eagles), a violent right-wing paramilitary organization, has sent threatening emails to the Canadian Embassy in Bogotá.

Two weeks after completing the exhumation of the largest mass grave found in Peru's history, the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF) returned to Putis [June 18] to begin work on exhuming four additional graves from a December 1984 massacre. As the Peruvian government faces renewed pressure from the human rights community to divulge the names of those responsible for the massacre, EPAF returned to the remote site high within the Andes where 123 men, women, and children were shot more than two decades ago by the Peruvian military.