This year’s “Diverse Chile” event was celebrated in the context of Chile’s recently-approved Anti-Discrimination Law, which Chile’s Congress passed in a 25-3 vote last Wednesday after nearly a decade of debate. “Diverse Chile” also coincided with Chile’s new 2012 Census, the first to gather data on same-sex households in Chile.

Participants in “Diverse Chile” paid homage to the memory Daniel Zamudio, the young gay man who died in March of a brutal beating said to be motivated by his sexual orientation. Public outcry over Zamudio’s death pushed Chilean lawmakers to speed the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Law, which some Chileans refer to as the “Zamudio Law” in his honor. Iván Zamudio, Daniel’s father, thanked supporters in the Plaza de Armas and received a standing ovation as he addressed the crowd from the podium.

Various organizations presented their proposals and demands onstage, including an effort to collect signatures to remove transexuality as a pathological disease and another initiative that would legalize abortion in Chile under special circumstances. Both demands remain controversial, though neighboring Argentina’s senate voted last week to allow transgender citizens to change their gender identity without bureaucratic obstacles. Currently, abortion is illegal in Chile without exception.

“We are here to celebrate the new Anti-Discrimination Law and the groundbreaking 2012 Census, which surveys same-sex households,” said Rolando Jiménez, President of MOVILH. “Chile is changing, Chile is no longer the same and now we’re fighting for complete social and legal equality.”

Read more from the AP.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• Banners hanging in northern Mexico attributed to the Zetas drug cartel  say the gang was not involved in the murder of 49 people whose mutilated bodies were left on a highway in Nuevo Leon.
• Alabama legislators passed a revised version of the state’s controversial immigration bill on Wednesday.
• Mexican soldiers have detained two Mexican generals suspected of ties to drug trafficking rings.
• A 200 year-old shipwreck was discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a press release from NOAA.

Caribbean

• The U.S. Treasury Department has tightened restrictions on non-Cuban American travel to Cuba for educational purposes, making it more difficult for U.S. tourists to visit the island.
  
• Puerto Rico’s first astronaut, Joseph Acaba, joined a Russian crew on a trip to the International Space Station after blasting off from Kazakhstan.
• Investors from the Clinton Global Initiative are looking to build a new soccer stadium they plan to call the Phoenix Stadium in Haiti’s impoverished Cité Soleil.

Central America

• Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina said that the country’s homicide rate for the first four months of 2012 dropped 18 percent from the same period last year, but other statistics seem to refute his claim.
• Women in the municipality of San Julián, El Salvador, have begun a food sovereignty program to help make their communities self-sustaining in the event of drought or floods.
  
• The children of a Nicaraguan immigrant woman living in the U.S. have sued a California funeral home for mixing up their mother’s body with that of another person and burying her in Califonia, rather than Nicaragua, against her wishes.
  

Andes

• The Colombian government has offered an award of $500 million pesos (US $279,500) for information about the bomb assassination attempt that killed two people in Bogotá on Tuesday.
  
• Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro has stepped in to handle Venezuela’s affairs while President Hugo Chávez receives cancer treatments in Cuba, generating speculation that Maduro will be chosen as Chávez’s successor in the event Chávez can’t run for president.
• The Pakitzapango hydroelectric dam project in Peru, currently stalled in Peruvian Congress,  is expected to flood the Ene river valley, displacing the Ashaninka indigenous people.
• The Ecuadoran government has requested that the U.S. return over 3,000 Ecuadorian archaeological artifacts that were in storage at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Southern Cone

• Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is under pressure from international environmental groups, business leaders and the country’s agricultural sector as she decides whether or not to veto revisions to the Brazilian Forest Code that would diminish environmental protections for the Amazon rainforest.
• Sergio Schoklender, a former official for Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, was charged with embezzling more than $156m from the venerable human rights group. He allegedly used the money to buy property, planes and a Ferrari.
  
• After over a year of protests for educational reform in Chile, Chileans still pay more out of pocket for higher education than most other countries including the U.S., according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
  

Image: clasesdeperiodismo @ Flickr.

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Rousseff, who endured torture as a political prisoner during the dictatorship, has made it clear that she intends to present the Truth Commission as a multi-partisan effort with broad support in Congress and across social sectors. The commission was created after the Inter-American Court of Human Rights charged Brazil will the task of clarifying the fates of the disappeared in a 2010 case brought by family members of the disappeared. In November, Brazil’s Congress passed a law that authorized the creation of the commission.

Former Brazilian presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Fernando Collor and José Sarney  will be present alongside Rousseff on Wednesday for the ceremony in Brasilia.

While the formation of the Truth Commission has been applauded by the UN, OAS and human rights organizations around the world, conservative members of the Brazilian military have resisted the creation of any investigative body designed to examine Brazil’s period of state terrorism, alleging that the findings will encourage a climate of “revenge”.

Rio de Janeiro’s Navy Club said it would form its own “shadow commission” to counter the findings that emerge from the Truth Commission. “Of course there were terrible things that happened in this period but there were victims on both sides and they only want to tell one side of the story,” said Navy Club chairman and retired Vice Admiral Ricardo Antonio da Veiga Cabral.

However, the Truth Commission’s findings will not result in prosecutions, due to a 1979 amnesty law passed while the country was still under military rule and upheld by Brazil’s Supreme Court. The law remains an obstacle to prosecutions for human rights violations committed during Brazil’s dictatorship.

Families and survivors’ groups have expressed frustration that the commission cannot prosecute. “With the resources and powers given to the commission, I doubt very much they will be able to come up with anything groundbreaking,” said the president of the group Tortura Nunca Mais (Torture Never Again), Victoria Grabois.

But the Truth Commission will have the power to subpoena government employees and members of the military for testimony. Among the responsibilities of the commission is the task of investigating the disappearances of a at least 150 people opposed to the military regime who were never seen again. At least 400 Brazilians were killed or disappeared during the dictatorship, and thousands more were tortured.

Image: Fora do Eixo @ Flickr.

Read more from the New York Times.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• Latin American literary great Carlos Fuentes died in Mexico City on Tuesday at age 83.
• Rev. Alejandro Solalinde, a priest who runs the “Hermanos en el Camino” shelter for migrants in southern Mexico, has temporarily left his post due to death threats.
• Four demonstrators in Chicago were arrested Tuesday during a protest against immigration policy and economic injustice in anticipation of the NATO summit to be held in Chicago this weekend.
• A plumber digging a swimming pool in Florida discovered pottery shards and two skulls dating from between 1200 and 1400 that are said to have originated in Peru.

Caribbean

• Laurent Lamothe was voted in by Haitian Parliament as Haiti’s new Prime Minister on Monday.
• Cuba’s National Statistics Office reported Monday that university admissions in Cuba dropped 26 percent in the 2011-2012 academic year.
•  A bank robber featured on “America’s Most Wanted” was detained by authorities in Puerto Rico after arriving at the airport from Venezuela.

Central America

• Honduran police and U.S. DEA agents in a helicopter killed two men and two pregnant women in a boat on the Patuca River on Friday in what authorities say was a botched attempt to kill drug traffickers.
• Six Guatemalan taxi drivers were killed in six days as violence and extortion targeting transit workers is on the rise.
• Guatemala extradited a man to face charges in California for kidnapping, raping and robbing his ex-wife in 2002.

Andes

• The Ecuadoran government said that a crashed Mexican plane that contained two dead men and three dogs also contained $1.3 million in cash and is thought to be linked to a drug traffickers.
• Unlicensed mining in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia is having devastating effects on the Amazon rainforest as the price of gold continues to climb.

Southern Cone

• Spanish oil and gas company Repsol sued Argentina on Tuesday for seizing control of Repsol’s majority stake in state energy company YPF.
• The Brazilian Sports Minister denied rumors that construction on a World Cup stadium in Salvador, Bahia won’t be ready for next year’s Confederations Cup.
• Much of Paraguay’s national soccer squad will be sidelined due to injury in Paraguay’s World Cup qualifier against Bolivia.

Image: Knight Foundation @ Flickr.

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Read more from the Miami Herald.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• René Orta Salgado, a Mexican journalist reported missing by his family on Saturday, was found dead in the trunk of a car in the state of Morelos.
• Mexican presidential candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota on Sunday blamed the rising violence in Mexico on the policies of the governing PRI party.

Caribbean

• The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by Puerto Rico to have a voting  representative in Congress.
• An eight year-old boy died when heavy rains washed him down a river in the Dominican Republic.

Central America

• The 18 year-old Panamanian hotel worker whose two friends died at sea while he survived a 28-day ordeal will sue Princess Cruise Line for failing to assist him and his friends while they were adrift.
• Guatemalan officials said the U.S. government is refusing to return a girl who was stolen at age two and given up for U.S. adoption because the two countries had not signed the Hague Abduction Convention when the abduction occurred.
• Mexican authorities seized 136 tons of chemicals used for synthetic drugs in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas that was bound for Honduras.

Andes

• The Colombian army reported that 7 FARC guerrillas surrendered on the Colombia-Ecuador border with 1.25 tons of explosives and other material.
• Venezuela demanded that the U.S. extradite former Venezuelan judge Eladio Aponte, who may be helping the U.S. build a drug case against the Venezuelan government.
• The U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals that silver coins awarded to the Spanish government and discovered in a sunken Spanish galleon could be claimed by Peru, where the ore reportedly originated.
• Two men and a dog were found dead in an airplane filled with  cash that crashed in Ecuador.

Southern Cone

• Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff announced that she will expand her predecessor Lula da Silva’s cash transfer program, Bolsa Familia, by extending additional benefits to poor families with children six and under.
• An Argentine prosecutor said that Argentine Vice President Amadou Bodou should be investigated for illegal enrichment in addition to other corruption allegations.
• Chilean police arrested a woman who allegedly stole a baby from a Santiago hospital on Mother’s Day.

Image: Adam Jones, Ph.D. @ Flickr.

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Read more from Fox News Latino.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• Nine bodies were found on Friday hanging from a highway overpass in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, the same day that 14 heads were discovered in a cooler near Nuevo Laredo’s City Hall.
• Mexican authorities said Monday that they had arrested suspected 26 year-old assassin Maria Jimenez, who allegedly carried out at least 20 murders for the Zetas drug cartel.
• Authorities in Oaxaca have arrested five suspects in the slaying of a couple who went missing on December 13 and whose bodies were later discovered on December 27.
• The U.S. federal government has begun to set up temporary shelters to house a rising number of unaccompanied children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without documents.

Caribbean

• Jamaica’s Labor Party and the People’s National Party are investigating claims that David Smith, now serving 30 years for wire fraud and money laundering, contributed large donations to both parties.
• Haiti’s large delegation to the Caribbean Hotel & Resort Investment (CHRIS) Summit in Miami shows that the island is seeking to rebrand itself as a tourism destination.

Central America

• Peasant groups and grassroots organizations in Guatemala are demanding the end to the state of siege declared by Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina in Huehuetenango after the murder of community leader Andres Francisco Miguel provoked a riot.
• The body of Honduran journalist Erick Martínez was discovered in eastern Honduras on Monday. Martínez worked for an LGBT organization and had been missing since Saturday.
• Three members of the Mara-18 gang in El Salvador have formed a rap group inside Quetzaltepeque prison in order to promote peace and prolong the truce between the Mara-18 and MS-13 gangs.

Andes

• Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón rejected demands by the FARC that the release of captured journalist Romeo Langlois be conditioned upon a discussion of the role of the press in covering Colombia’s armed conflict.
• An Ecuadoran court gave Luis Guaman a 25-year sentence for murdering a woman and her two year-old son in Massachussetts in 2011.
• More gunfire erupted at Venezuela’s La Planta prison on Tuesday as police fired teargas in an effort to put down a riot at the overcrowded facility.
• Scientists in Peru say there is no conclusive evidence yet that links the massive die-offs of pelicans and dolphins along the Peruvian coast.

Southern Cone

• Vandals torched a Volvo belonging to the rector of the University of Santiago in the school’s parking lot just after he walked into the building. The rector was one of only two in Chile who openly supported Chile’s student protests.
• Argentina’s Olympic committee entered damage-control mode after an ad commissioned by the Argentine government and shot in the Falkland Islands caused an international outcry.
• The Brazilian Senate’s Ethics Committee unanimously decided Tuesday to suspend Senator Demostenes Torres, who is suspected of involvement in a gambling racket.

Image: USFWS/Southeast @ Flickr.

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