from Weekly News Update on the Americas:

On Nov. 28, a standoff in Bolivia's Senate ended when the rightwing National Unity (UN) party's only senator joined two senators from the rightwing Democratic and Social Power (Podemos) in returning to the session, allowing a quorum. The Senate had been shut down since Nov. 22, when the opposition bloc withdrew its 14 senators, depriving the 27-member body of a quorum. The opposition was stunned by the betrayal of the three senators from the opposition stronghold departments of Beni and Pando. Opposition senators tried to get the dissident senators to withdraw, but only succeeded in removing one of them—not enough to break the quorum.

Voters Reject Traditional Parties in Elections Marred by Violence

by April Howard, Toward Freedom

A soldier running from angry protesters died instantly when he fell off of a cliff, town offices were burned down, and one mayor escaped to Lima, claiming that his constituency was planning to lynch him. In spite of the Organization of American States' report of a normal election, Peruvian President Alan García called on the armed forces to quell violence across the country during and after regional elections held November 19, 2006.

Though García was re-elected as president representing one of the country's oldest and most institutionalized political parties just six months before, these regional elections showed a widespread rejection of such parties, and favor for "independent" parties. The election results challenge García's second presidency and demonstrate the deep social, economic and political divides that continue to run through present-day Peru.

Campesinos Mobilize for Agrarian Reform

by Benjamin Dangl, Toward Freedom

Silvestre Saisari, a bearded, soft-spoken leader in the Bolivian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), sat in his office in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The building was surrounded by a high cement wall topped with barbed wire. It looked like a military bunker. This made sense given the treatment Saisairi and other like-minded social and labor organizers received from the city's right-wing elite. In 2005, the young MST leader was attacked while giving a press conference on landowners' use of armed thugs to suppress landless farmers. To prevent him from denouncing these acts to the media, people reportedly tied to landowners pulled his hair, strangled, punched, and beat him. Sitting in his well-protected headquarters, Saisari explained, "Land is a center of power. He who has land, has power... We are proposing than this land be redistributed, so their [elites] power will be affected."

What is Behind Bush's Andean "Anti-Terrorist" Strategy?

by Julian Monroy, WW4 REPORT


Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe Velez—the Bush administration's main ally in the hemispheric war on terrorism and drugs, as well as in the pursuit of free trade policies—was in Washington DC on November 13-4 to meet key legislators. His agenda was to secure continued military aid and the extension of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA), which was to expire at the end of 2006.

His visit took place in the midst of a huge scandal without precedent in Colombia. On November 8, the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court of Justice ordered the capture of Senator Alvaro Garcia Romero and Representative Elkin Morris from the Colombia Democratica Party and Senator Jorge Merlano from Uribe's Partido de la U (for "unity"). All of them are government bigwigs and close friends of the Colombian president.

State Terror and the Struggle for Ecopetrol

by Bill Weinberg, WW4 REPORT

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuador's president-elect Rafael Correa met in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Dec. 21, where they spoke in support of a regional integration that goes beyond trade. "This integration must be based on a new model, on complementary coherence, replacing the absurd model imposed by the North of competing with one another," Correa said, repeating his request that Venezuela return to the Andean Community of Nations and said one goal should be the fusion of that organization with Mercosur, the South Common Market. (Periodico 26, Cuba, Dec. 21)

Salvatore Mancuso, top chieftan of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) began testimony Dec. 19 before a special tribunal about the paramilitary newtwork's role in massacres and assassinations. Under a peace deal with the government, the AUC leaders will serve limited prison sentences and receive protection from extradition to the US on drug charges. Some 30,000 fighters have officially laid down arms. (VOA, Dec. 19)

According to the "Joel Sierra" Regional Human Rights Committee Foundation, "armed opposition groups" are believed responsible for a number of recent murders of civilians in Colombia's eastern department of Arauca. The killings include the Nov. 29 murder of campesinos Edgar Marin Munoz, Pablo Tulio Bautista Jimenez and Fernando Vega in the rural community of El Vigia in Tame municipality; the Dec. 10 murder of Elsa Yaneth Martinez Miranda in the rural community of Brisas de Caranal, in Arauquita municipality; and the Dec. 12 abduction and murder of campesino Hector Villamizar Becerra from the rural community of El Botalon, in Tame. On Dec. 10, 11-year-old Natalia Munoz Ramos was wounded by a bullet in the urban center of Arauquita; it is not known who was responsible for the shooting. (Fundacion Comite Regional de Derechos Humanos "Joel Sierra," Dec. 14)