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)

There is real possibility for peace between the Colombian government and the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), according to Antonio Navarro Wolf, a former rebel who is now governor of the southern department of Nariño and a leader in the center-left Democratic Alternative Pole. Following the FARC's release of two hostages on Jan. 10, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frias has pushed for the Colombian government to advance the peace process by designating the FARC a "belligerent force" rather than "terrorists."

Simón Trinidad [nom de guerre of Ricardo Palmera Piñeda], the FARC's well-known prisoner-exchange negotiator, was today sentenced to 60 years in prison in Federal District Court in Washington, DC. Several months ago, Trinidad was found guilty of conspiracy to take three [US] military contractors as hostages, a crime occurring back in 2003. The sentence was determined in a separate proceeding held today.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez told a Caracas press conference Jan. 26: "I accuse the government of Colombia of devising a conspiracy, acting as a pawn of the US empire, of devising a military provocation against Venezuela. A military aggression is being prepared." He warned that Venezuela would cut off all oil exports in the event of a military strike. "In that scenario, write it down: The price of oil would reach US$300, because there wouldn't be oil for anyone. The invaders would have to step over our dead bodies."

Hundreds of representatives of Venezuela's grassroots social movements met in the Southern Caracas barrio of El Valle this weekend, to hash out plans for the formation of the Revolutionary Grassroots Front of the South [Frente Popular Revolucionario del Sur]—a new united movement through which they hope to combat the growing bureaucracy within the Chavez government, and to push their own grassroots agenda.