Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse student protesters who turned out by the tens of thousands in Caracas Nov. 1 to protest constitutional reforms that would permit Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to run for re-election indefinitely. Chanting "Freedom! Freedom!," protesters marched on the National Electoral Council (CNE) to deliver a document calling for the referendum on the reforms, scheduled for Dec. 2, to be postponed. Authorities broke up the protest outside the CNE headquarters, where six police officers and one student were reported injured. Protesters said the 69 amendments drafted by Venezuela's Chavista-dominated National Assembly would derail democracy. But as the march passed through the poorer area of Parque Central, the protest was met with spontaneous cries from Chavez supporters of "Chavez is not going" and "They will not return"—a reference to the political leaders of the pre-Chavez era. (AP, Nov. 3; VenezuelAnalysis, Nov. 2)

Bolivian President Evo Morales is facing converging crises on multiple fronts—from South American neighbors, from the Colossus of the North, and from internal opposition. Peru is seeking the extradition of Walter Chavez, a top adviser to Morales' successful 2005 campaign, on terrorism charges related to accusations that he extorted businessmen on behalf of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). Chavez, a Peruvian former journalist, has lived in Bolivia since 1992 and was granted political asylum there in 1998. (Reuters, Oct. 26)

Ten prostitutes in the Bolivian highland city of El Alto sewed their lips together Oct. 24 as part of a hunger strike to demand that the mayor reopen brothels and bars ordered closed after angry protests by residents. Some 30 more are participating in the hunger strike, fasting inside a local medical clinic. "We are fighting for the right to work and for our families' survival," Lily Cortez, leader of the Asociación de Trabajadoras Nocturnas de El Alto (Association of Nighttime Workers of El Alto), told local television. "Tomorrow we will bury ourselves alive if we are not immediately heard. The mayor will have his conscience to answer to if there are any grave consequences, such as the death of my comrades." Prostitution is legal and government-regulated in Bolivia, but El Alto Mayor Fanor Nava says he is responding to a popular mandate in his move to shut the brothels. The sex workers are also demanding an investigation into recent arson attacks on bars and brothels in the city, and have threatened to march naked through the streets of La Paz, the nearby national capital. (Reuters; La Gaceta, Tucumán, Argentina, Oct. 25; AFP; La Razón, La Paz, Oct. 24)

The Colombian armed forces committed 955 extrajudicial executions between July 2002 and June 2007, according an investigation [online at Latin America Working Group] carried out by a coalition of 11 Colombian human rights organizations and released this month. Of these killings only two have resulted in a judicial conviction. The number of killings by Colombia's armed forces represents a 65% increase over the previous five-year period from 1997 to 2002.

From AP, Oct 19:

Glass Monument to Che in Venezuela Shot
CARACAS, Venezuela — A glass monument to revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara was shot up and destroyed less than two weeks after it was unveiled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government.

From SOA Watch, Oct. 12, via Upside Down World:

We are very excited to share that President Evo Morales announced Tuesday that Bolivia will gradually withdraw its military from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School for the Americas (SOA). Bolivia is now the fifth country—after Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela—to formally announce a withdrawal from this brutal military training school.

Local Colombian officials have accused two US soldiers, Michael J. Cohen and César Ruiz, of sexually assaulting a 12 year-old girl on Aug. 25. The soldiers are stationed at the Tolemaida Airbase near Melgar, Tolima, as part of Plan Colombia. According to witness statements collected by local authorities and published in El Tiempo [Oct. 8], at 4 AM, the soldiers entered the base with a young girl they had met at the "Ibiza" nightclub in Melgar earlier that evening. The girl claims that Ruiz assaulted her in the car on the way to the base and later lent his apartment to Cohen, who reportedly raped her. The pair later left the girl in the central park in Melgar in front of several witnesses.

On Oct. 12 Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez joined Colombian president Alvaro Uribe in Ballenas, in the northern Colombian department of La Guajira, to inaugurate the 224 km Trans-Oceanic Gas Pipeline, which will bring as much as 500,000 cubic feet of natural gas from Venezuela to Colombia each day. The three leaders also signed a "memorandum of understanding" to complete a network for gas supply between the three countries.