According to the US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN), the Northern Block of the Black Eagles, a rightwing paramilitary group, has threatened three activists in Tiquisio, a community in the northern Colombian department of Bolivar. The threat names Father Rafael Gallegos, Marta Lucia Torres and Said Echevez, members of Citizens Process for Tiquisio, and mentions their opposition to the "democratic security" policies of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Velez. The government is promoting development of the area around Tiquisio by AngloGold Ashanti, a South African-based multinational gold mining company. CSN charges that the paramilitaries are seeking to force campesino communities off their lands "to make them available for the multinationals to extract gold."

Chile's lower-house Chamber of Deputies April 17 approved a resolution calling upon Exterior Minister Alejandro Foxley to "condemn the violence and repression in Tibet and request that the Government of China open direct conversations with the Dalai Lama to find a peaceful solution" to the conflict. It passed 35-8, with one abstention. (MapuchExpress, April 19) The government of President Michele Bachelet opposed the resolution. Her spokesman to the National Congress, Presidency Minister José Antonio Viera Gallo, warned lawmakers the move could invite similar criticisms of their own country. Noting outstanding conflicts with indigenous peoples in Chile's south, he said: "I don't know if we would like it if a foreign parliament opined on situations like that of the Mapuche." The Chilean pro-indigenous website MapuchExpress commented: "The government of Bachelet and Viera Gallo know that they have their own Mapcuhe Tibet."

The governments of Brazil and Venezuela are leading efforts to create a NATO-style South American Defense Council, which could be formed by the end of the year. The regional body would coordinate defense policies, deal with internal conflicts and presumably wane Washington's influence in its "backyard."

Diego Alexander Pulgarín, press-ganged into the Colombian military through the "Campesino Soldier" anti-guerilla militia program on Jan. 5, was released from the Rionegro Battalion military base in Antioquia department April 14, after declaring himself a conscientious objector. Pulgarín was held at the base against his will after refusing to take part in military training. The Medellín anti-militarist group Red Juvenil (Youth Network) held a demonstration in his support outside the base where he was held in the town of La Union March 27. (Red Juvenil, April 2, 14)

Venezuela's government announced April 9 it will nationalize the country's largest steel maker following months of tense negotiations between the foreign-owned Sidor and its workers, who have been demanding better salaries and benefits. Days earlier, President Hugo Chávez announced a state takeover of leading cement companies.

Residents from the southern Ecuadorian province of Azuay used rocks and burning tires to block a stretch of the Panamerican Highway on April 2 to protest a planned industrial-sized goldmine, which they say will contaminate the local water supply. Canadian gold giant Iamgold has been eyeing entry into the region.

On March 30, local campesino leader Gerardo Antonio Crio was assassinated near his home in the community of Vereda El Jordán, Cocorna municipality, in easter Antioquia department. The killers apparently used a gun with a silencer, as nobody in the community heard the shot. Local rights leaders call this evidence that the killing was a pre-planned assassination. Crio was a leader of the Eastern Antioquia Association of Small Producers (ASOPROA), which works to secure land rights and farm aid for campesinos displaced by the conflict. Local rights group Corporación Jurídica Libertad has for two years been calling for international action to defend the lives of ASOPROA's leaders following mounting threats from paramilitaries. (Corporación Jurídica Libertad, via DHColombia, April 2)

The Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) said the medical mission sponsored by the French government is inappropriate and will not be granted access to ailing hostage Ingrid Betancourt, in a communiqué issued by the guerilla General Staff April 9. The communiqué said that if President Uribe had agreed to rebel demands and pulled the army from the municipalities of Pradera and Florida (Valle del Cauca department) for 45 days earlier this year, Betancourt and other hostages would have been released. The medical mission has been waiting in Bogotá for FARC approval to fly into the jungle where Betancourt is held. French Exterior Minister Bernard Kouchner responded by accusing the FARC of a "great deception" for denying access to Betancourt, and pledged that France "will not abandon Ingrid." (EFE, April 10; Prensa Latina, April 9)