On Jan. 25 Colombian judge William Andrés Castiblanco sentenced Jaime Blanco, a former contractor for the Alabama-based Drummond Co. Inc. coal company, to 37 years and 11 months in prison for masterminding the March 2001 murders of two union leaders in the northern department of Cesar. The court found that Blanco, who supplied food services for Drummond's La Loma mine, had arranged with right-wing paramilitaries, including one known as "Tolemaida," for the killing of Valmore Locarno and Víctor Hugo Orcasita, leaders of the mine's union. Blanco's assistant, Jairo Charris, was convicted in 2009 in the same murder plot and was sentenced to 30 years.

Norma Enríquez, a leader of the Permanent Assembly of Civil Society for Peace, an umbrella of Colombian NGOs and popular organizations, on Feb. 10 called on the government to include the National Liberation Army (ELN) in the talks now underway in Havana with the FARC guerillas. Enríquez told the Mexican news agency Notimex that failure to include the ELN "would be to risk marginalizing one of the expressions of the conflict from the peace dialogue." Initial contacts between the government and the ELN, brokered by the Catholic Church, apparently broke down in November, when the guerilla group took hostage two German nationals in Santander department. (Notimex, Feb. 11; Sexenio, Mexico, Feb. 10)

Peru's Yanacocha mining company—that seeking to develop the controversial Conga project in Cajamarca region—is appealing a ruling of  the National Water Authority (ANA) barring expansion of its existing mine into new lands within its concession area. The lands, at a place called La Quinua Sur, lie within the headwaters of the Río Grande, which supplies water to the city of Cajamarca. Technically, the expansion, dubbed Yanacocha Oeste, was approved late last year by the Ministry of Energy and Mining (MINEM), but ANA denied approval to discharge effluent into local waterways that drain into the river. This effectively bars plans to develop a new open-pit mine at Quinua Sur. 

Bolivia's Aymara indigenous alliance CONAMAQ issued an open letter Jan. 27 to President Evo Morales, the official rights watchdog Defensoría del Pueblo, and the independent Permanent Human Rights Association of Bolivia (APDHB),  charging that the ruling Movement to Socialism-Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS-IPSP) is seeking to divide their organization. The statement warned of the possibility for violence at CONAMAQ's upcoming Mara Tantachawi, or annual gathering. "The MAS-IPSP government of Evo Morales...in the different suyus [regions] is organizing and mobilizing groups of confrontation led by ex-authorities suspended by CONAMAQ...to sabotage [hacer fracasar] this event and take over by force the CONAMAQ council for political ends," the statement reads.

Informal miners in Peru's southern Arequipa region declared an open-ended paro (civil strike) Feb. 6, briefly blocking the Pan-American Highway at various points before being cleared by the National Police. Hundreds of miners armed with sticks gathered at several villages along the highway, erecting barricades to press thier demands for "formalization" of their mineral claims and a system of social security including a pension plan. The largest protest was in Ocoña, Camaná province, where some 2,000 marched. The srtike is being coordinated by the National Confederation of Artisenal Miners of Peru (CONAMI). (Sin Patrones, Feb. 6)

Villages in the area to be impacted by the controversial Conga gold mine in Peru's Cajamarca region announced last week that they will hold a referendum on the project—with the support of the regional government but not Lima. The vote will be held in Celendin and Bambamarca provinces in July, said a statement from the Cajamarca Unitary Struggle Command (CUL). "A consultation will be held on the Minas Conga project in order to see what the population thinks," said the CUL's Marco Arana. The consultation is being organized by traditional village authorities, and seems not to have been endorsed by the provincial governments. The mayor of Huasmin district in Celendín, José Eriberto Marín Agusti, is backing the referendum.

The Peruvian Press Association on Jan. 26 noted the 30th anniversary of the massacre of eight journalists and their local guide at the village of Uchurachay, Ayacucho department, where they themselves had been investigating reports of massacres. But a commentary in the left-leaning Lima daily El Popular decried that the violence against Uchurachay's campesinos was "more invisible." Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR) found that in the months around the slaying of the journalists, 135 members of the community of 470 were killed—hanged, hacked or stoned to death, their bodies thrown into canyons to be eaten by dogs. Most of the killings seem to have been ordered by village authorities in an effort to purge sympathizers of the Shining Path guerillas. (La Republica, Feb. 1; La Republica, La Republica, Jan. 29; El Comercio, Jan. 26; El Popular, Jan. 21)

A lawyer with Colombian prosecutor's office, the Fiscalía, who specialized in the paramilitary demobilization process, was transferred Jan. 20 after working in the same department in Medellín for more than six years—raising fears that years of insight into the area's paramilitary activities could be lost. According to conflict-monitoring website Verdad Abierta, local magistrates expressed concern over the transfer of Patricia Hernández Zambrano, who was responsible for prosecuting the "Mineros Bloc" of the United Colombian Self-Defense Forces (AUC) in the northeastern department of Antioquia. As Prosecutor 15 for Justice and Peace, Hernández handled all court hearings related to top AUC leaders like "Don Berna" and "Gordo Lindo"—both now in US prisons for drug trafficking.