Bolivia was re-admitted to the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs Jan. 11—with a special dispensation recognizing the traditional use of coca leaf as legal within its borders, to officially take effect in one month. Official celebrations are planned for the victory in La Paz and Cochabamba next week. Fifteen countries objected to Bolivia's dispensation—far short of the 62 needed to have blocked it, a third of the 183 signatory states. The dissenting governments were the United States, UK, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Israel and Ireland. An official US statement said the administration continues to believe that coca legalization "will lead to a greater supply of cocaine and increased cocaine trafficking and related crime."

Peru's Minister of Mines and Energy, Jorge Merino, assured international investors Dec. 21 that his government will make every effort to see the controversial Conga and Tía María mining projects move forward in 2013. The two projects, in Cajamarca and Arequipa region, respectivamente, have both been suspended after campesino protests.  The pledge is part of the Ollanta Humala government's plan to attract $10 million in mining investment in 2013, $10 million more than this year. Merino also vowed to build new compression plants to expand the capacity of the trans-Andean Camisea gas pipeline from 1,200 cubic feet to 1,600. (El Comercio, Dec. 21)

On Dec. 19, some 6,000 campesinos and their supporters filled the streets of Chiclayo, capital of Peru's northern Lambayeque region, demanding the repeal of the National Water Authority's resolutions  089-2012 and 090-2012, which authoritize La Zanja mining company to begin dumping waste water in the canyons of La Pampa and El Cedro, inland across the border in Cajamarca region. These canyons empty into the Río Chancay, which flows back into Lambayeque (where it joins with the Río Reque to meet the sea near Chiclayo). The rally concluded at the Lambayeque regional government headquaters, where representatives of different organizations making up the Lambayeque Unitary Struggle Command (CULL) delivered a message to regional president Humberto Acuña Peralta, demanding that he take immediate action to protect the waters of the Río Chancay.

Total area planted with coca in Bolivia dropped by up to 13% last year, according to separate reports by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Bolivia stepped up efforts to eradicate unauthorized coca plantings, and reported an increase in seizures of cocaine and cocaine base—even as the Evo Morales government expanded areas where coca can be grown legally. "It's fascinating to look at a country that kicked out the United States ambassador and the DEA, and the expectation on the part of the United States is that drug war efforts would fall apart," Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, told the New York Times. Instead, she said, Bolivia's approach is "showing results." 

Traditional authorities at the Aymara community of Mallku Khota in Bolivia's Potosí department declared two technicians from Canadian mining company South American Silver to be fugitives from justice for failing to to follow through on pledges to provide a payment of two thousand abode bricks each as a fine after they were found to be "spying" on community meetings. "We lament that they have not complied, despite their commitment, and despite guarantees from the national authorities," said community leader Leonardo Montaño. "This implicates that the Political Constitution of the State is not being complied with."

Félix Becerra, a leader of the Aymara indigenous organization CONAMAQ, has called upon Bolivia's judicial authorities to widen the investigation of the current corruption scandal to include Presidency Minister Juan Ramón Quintana, Government Minister Carlos Romero and UN Ambassador Sacha Llorenti. Noting longstanding CONAMAQ claims that the Evo Morales government is setting up state-controlled "parallel" organizations to divide the indigenous movement, Becerra implied that the same cabinet figures who have pursued this strategy could be involved in the scandal.  "We have seen that Ramón Quintana, Carlos Romero and Sacha Llorenti have always been preparing to armar paralelos, and these maximum authorities should be investigated to see if they are implicated in acts of corruption," he said. A total of 10 officials have been detained in the case so far, although none at the cabinet level. (Erbol, Dec. 21; ANF, Dec. 17)

Seven men who were detained in March in Quito's southern district of Luluncoto on "terrorism" and "subversion" charges were freed Dec. 20, after a panel of three judges of the metropolitan province Pichincha found that they had been detained in violation of constitutional guarantees against arbitrary arrest. Three women who were arrested along with them remain detained and on hunger strike at Quito's El Inca women's prison. The seven men also went on hunger strike at Quito's Provisional Detention Center three days before their release. The so-called Luluncoto 10 were arrested in an operation code-named Red Sun, and accused of being part of an urban guerilla cell called the Popular Combat Group (GCP), which was supposedly planning attacks in the capital. (El Universo, Guayaquil, Dec. 20; El Comercio, Quito Dec. 17; El Comercio, March 6)

Residents and officials in Ecuador's port city of Guayaquil are protesting a planned gas pipeline that would run from Monteverde, in Santa Elena province on the coast to the west, to El Chorrillo, a town just north of the city—through densely populated areas. Hundreds have marched in protest of the line, and won the support of Guayaquil's municipal government. The city's development director José Nuñez asserts that the government's impact study for the project fails to provide adequate guarantees for the safety of some 300,000 residents in Guayaquil's outlying working-class districts. The city also charges that protests remain ongoing over non-payment of compensation to residents who were relocated by the Libertad-Pascuales pipeline, built some 10 years ago along a similar route, and fear it will be the same with the new line. But Petroecuador's pointman for the new pipeline, Rommel Tapia, insists the project is safe and necessary for Ecuador's energy security. (El Universo, Guayaquil, Dec. 18; El Universo via Ecuador Times, Dec. 17; La Linea de Fuego, Ecuador, Dec. 16; Andes, El Universo, Dec. 14; Andes, Dec. 13)