Ecuador's government announced [Feb. 1] that it was revoking Ascendant Copper's mining concessions for the controversial Junin Project. Mining and Petroleum Minister Galo Chiriboga told reporters that the government decided to revoke a total of 587 mining concessions for reasons that include companies' failure to pay proper fees on concessions.

The New Voice of Ecuador's Indigenous Movement

Marlon Santi" class="image thumbnail" height="100" width="99">Marlon Santi

by Marc Becker, Upside Down World

Colombia's top cocaine lord Wilber Varela, kingpin of the notorious Norte del Valle Cartel, was found shot dead in Venezuela, authorities in Caracas announced Feb. 1. The bullet-riddled body of Varela, known by the nicknames "Jabon" (soap) and "Detergente" (detergent), was discovered Jan. 30 along with that of another man in a tourist cabin at Loma de Los Angeles, Mérida state, in western Venezuela.

Testimony in the trial of Peru's ex-strongman Alberto Fujimori charges that his administration negotiated amnesty for an army death squad in exchange for keeping secret the government's involvement in two massacres in which 25 were killed. The claim comes from Pedro Supo, a former leader of the "Grupo Colina" death squad, run by the Army Intelligence Service (SIE).

In an interview published in [Bogota's] El Tiempo on December 22, [j]ournalist Yamid Amat asked: "What was it that the Attorney General's office discovered and is investigating in the Chocó?" and [Colombian] Attorney General Mario Iguarán replied: “The tragedy of the communities in the Jiguamiandó, Curvaradó [and] Domingodó river basins. In the '80s they suffered through the presence of the FARC and in the '90s that of the self-defense groups and the Castaño family. There are accusations that the self-defense groups threw people off their lands to eradicate the guerrilla groups. But there are indicators that these expulsions were not exactly to get rid of the guerrilla, but to take control of land that was owned by the community. After receiving hundreds of testimonies, carrying out judicial investigations at the palm oil companies, in banks, notaries and in the Registry public offices, the Attorney General's office just opened a formal investigation into the representatives of these companies." Read the full interview in Spanish here.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Jan. 27 urged his allies to form an "anti-imperialist" military alliance to defend Latin America from potential attack by the United States. Speaking on his weekly TV program Aló Presidente, he called upon Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua to unite with Venezuela and "work to form a joint defense strategy and start joining our armed forces, air forces, armies, navies, national guards, and intelligence forces. Because the enemy is the same, the empire... Anybody who messes with one of us will have to mess with all of us because we will respond as one."

As of Jan. 27 Chilean activist Patricia Troncoso Robles had rejected an Interior Ministry offer to ease her prison conditions if she would end the hunger strike she started 109 days earlier to demand the release of 20 indigenous Mapuche prisoners and an end to the military's presence in Mapuche territories. Troncoso's father, Roberto Troncoso, and a mediator, Conference of Bishops president Alejandro Goic, said the government offered a transfer to a prison work and study center, with Sunday releases after six months at the center. But Troncoso Robles demanded an immediate easing of conditions for Mapuche prisoners Jaime Marileo and Juan Millalen and a resolution of the prisoners' situation by March.

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia on Jan. 24 and 25, meeting with right-wing president Alvaro Uribe in Medellín at the end of the trip. The high-level delegation, including US legislators, was intended to show support for Uribe and to push for ratification by the US Congress of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA, or TLC) between the two countries. In Medellín, Rice also met with former right-wing paramilitaries who had demobilized under a plan sponsored by Uribe; she visited a flower cultivation business where ex-paramilitaries are employed. At a meeting between the delegation and Colombian unionists, Carlos Rodriguez of the Unitary Workers Confederation (CUT) said 40 leaders of the union federation had been murdered in 2007, bringing the number of unionists murdered in the last 22 years to 2,574. Many were killed by paramilitaries. (La Jornada, Jan. 26 from AFP, DPA, Reuters)