Brazilian federal police on Dec. 28 announced the arrest of José González Valencia, one of the top leaders of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)—the criminal machine that in recent years has risen to challenge the Sinaloa Cartel for control of Mexico's narco trade. Valencia, known as "Chepa" or "El Camarón" (The Shrimp), was arrested at Aquiraz, a resort near the coastal city of Fortaleza, where he was spending the Christmas holidays with his family. Authorities said Valencia had been living in Bolivia for two years after fleeing Mexico, and had entered Brazil as a tourist on a Bolivian passport.

For the second year in a row, Brazil has witnessed a deadly prison riot on the first day of the year. A death toll of nine is reported from the central state of Goias. One inmate was decapitated. The violence began New Year's Day afternoon at the rural penitentiary in the outskirts of the state capital, Goiania. Rival criminal factions clashed, broke the barriers of the compound and escaped, by the BBC News account.

Back in September, Brazilian army troops were deployed to quell fighting between rival drug gangs in Rocinha, the most notoriously violent of Rio de Janiero's favelas—the informal urban settlements in the north of the city, virtually abandoned by the government for anything other than militarized anti-drug operations. On Dec. 6, authorities announced the apprehension of the fugitive gang leader who was said be behind that wave of violence but eluded capture at the time. Rogerio Avelino da Silva AKA "Rogerio 157" was detained in Arara, another favela.

Protests are breaking out in Lima following the Christmas eve "humanitarian pardon" of Peru's imprisoned ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori by President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK). The supposedly ailing Fujimori has been transferred from prison to a private clinic in Lima's Pueblo Libre district, where protesters are gathering, to be dispersed by police tear-gas. Demonstrators have also filled central Lima's Plaza San Martín. Angry protests have lkewise broken out in Cuzco, Arequipa, Chiclayo and other cities. The pardon came three days after PPK survived a congressional vote on removing him from office over his embroilment in the Odebrecht scandal. A right-wing bloc led by the dictator's son Kenji Fujimori abstained from the vote rather than following the majority of his own Fuerza Popular opposition party, led by his older sister Keiko Fujimori, in voting to remove PPK. Kenji's defection was critical in Congress failing to win the 87 votes necessary to sack PPK.

Members of the Gavião, Gamella, Krenyê and Tremembé indigenous peoples on Nov. 22 blocked the main road through São Luís, capital of Brazil's Maranhão state, to press demands for long-delayed demarcation of their ancestral lands. The action, which halted traffic on the artery for several hours, came as some 100 indigenous activists had been camping for three weeks outside the São Luís headquarters of the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), which also houses the office of the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI). Last week, FUNAI announced creation of a working group to demarcate many of the lands in question, but protesters are keeping up the pressure, and also demanding social services for their villages, such as healthcare and education. Quilombola (Afro-Brazilian) community leaders are participating in the indigenous encampment in solidarity.

Brazil's ongoing favela wars have taken a dramatic turn for the bloody—prompting the government to send military troops into Rio de Janiero's notorious Rocinha. This is the most violent of the city's sprawling favelas—informal urban settlements virtually abandoned by the government for anything other than militarized anti-drug operations. The army on Sept. 22 deployed nearly 1,000 troops in Rocinha, responding to a request from the Rio state government, Defense Minister Raul Jungmann told local TV. Rio Times reports that the violence in Rocinha is the deadliest since the launch of a "pacification" program in 2011 to push warring narco-gangs out of the city's favelas.

Peru's Transport and Communications Ministry on Sept. 7 signed a contract with Chinese state-owned engineering giant SinoHydro to build the Hidrovía Amazónica, a mega-project aimed at turning the Amazon's major rivers into arteries for delivering the resources of the rainforest basin to foreign markets. Peruvian firm Construcción y Administración SA (CASA) is also to be a partner in the deal, announced earlier this year by the government's foreign investment arm, ProInversión. With a projected cost of $95 million, the Hidrovía calls for dredging 2,687 kilometers of Amazon waterways to make them navigable year-round. It encompasses stretches of the rivers Marañón and Amazonas (from Saramiriza to Santa Rosa), Huallaga (from Yurimaguas to the Marañón) and Ucayali (from Pucallpa to the Marañón). These rivers usually are too low for commercial navigation during the July-October dry season). Proinversión claims to have carried out a "prior consultation" with impacted communities along the rivers, having won 40 agreements to proceed with work. (Gestion, Sept. 7; El Peruano, July 17; BBC Mundo, July 7)

Prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation after reports that illegal gold-miners on a remote Amazon river massacred at least 10 members of an "uncontacted" indigenous band. If confirmed, this means up to a fifth of the entire band have been wiped out. Two gold-miners have been arrested in the case. The killings allegedly took place last month along the Rio Jandiatuba in the Vale do Javari Indigenous Territory, a huge area  in Amazonas state bordering Peru. The region is known as the "Uncontacted Frontier," as it shelters more isolated peoples than anywhere else on Earth. Reports of the massacre only emerged after the miners started boasting about the killings, showing off "trophies" in the nearest town.