Latin America: Week in Review, Peru
Peru Tries to Block Spain’s Claim On Shipwrecked Treasure
February 24, 2012 By Staff
Today in Latin America
Top Story — The Peruvian government on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block Spain from receiving a shipment of valuable coins discovered in a Spanish galleon sunk by the British in 1804. The gold and silver coins, worth an estimated $500 million when they were found, were discovered off the coast of Portugal in 2007 in a deep-sea diving expedition by Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration, which then brought the coins to the United States before losing multiple legal bids to keep the treasure. Peru claims that the coins were made with gold mined, refined, and minted in Peru and should therefore be returned to the Andean nation, which was a Spanish colony at the time. The Peruvian government has asked the Supreme Court for more time in federal court to argue its case, but Spanish military planes are expected to fly the coins back to Spain on Friday from MacDill Air Force base in Tampa.
Read more from the AP.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- A U.S. judge ruled that BP and Anadarko, a company that partially owned the Macondo oil well, are liable for billions of dollars in fines for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
- Hundreds of Huichol Indians in northern Mexico made a pilgrimage to Cerro del Quemado to protest a $100 million mining project on the mountain.
Caribbean
- A $20 million initiative funded by the Canadian government seeks to provide homeless Haitians with $500 each to move out of tent cities via a public lottery.
- A pro-government crowd surrounded the home of Cuban dissident Laura Pollán during a gathering of the Ladies in White to mark the two-year anniversary of the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
- San Juan mayoral candidate Sen. Hector Ferrer was arrested after getting into a verbal altercation with his wife and damaging his home.
- A researcher claims that Holocaust victim Anne Frank was posthumously baptized into the Mormon church by the Santo Domingo Temple in the Dominican Republic.
Central America
- A Florida judge ruled that Salvadoran General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova can be deported to El Salvador to face charges for torture and murder committed by soldiers under his command.
- Mexican and British journalists now believe that a mild drought may have called a collapse of the Classic Maya civilization, according to a new report.
Andes
- All seventeen prisoners who fled a Peruvian prison on Sunday have been apprehended, but one of the inmates is now dead.
- An Ecuadorian judge fled the country after claiming that government officials tried to bribe her to rule against El Universo newspaper in a government libel case.
- A Colombian judge ruled that former Colombian Peace Minister Luis Carlos Restrepo, who fled the country, should be sent to jail for his involvement in a false guerrilla demobilization.
- Disabled Bolivian protesters clashed with police as they protested for an increase in their disability pensions.
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will fly to Cuba on Friday for surgery to remove a likely malignant recurring tumor.
Southern Cone
- The Argentine government and train company Trains of Buenos Aires are blaming each other for the deadly train crash on Wednesday that killed at least 50 people.
- Brazil’s Carnival celebration in São Paulo ended in a riot after a man ripped up the judges’ official results of the annual samba school competition.
- Brazilian archaeologists say that they have discovered a 10,000 year-old rock carving, so far the oldest known in the Americas, in Minas Gerais state.
Image: woody1778a @ Flickr.
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