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.”

Top Story — The Chilean government will unseal the last will and testament of deceased dictator Augusto Pinochet on Wednesday in an effort to determine the size of Pinochet’s fortune and the amount he owes the state. The will was drawn up in 2006, the year Pinochet died, and was sealed by his immediate family. However, the Defense Council of the State is seeking to recover public funds it says were diverted by Pinochet, who may have amassed a fortune of up to $21 million before he died, according to a study by the Chilean Supreme Court. The study said that Pinochet should have only accumulated $3 million with his military salary. Pinochet ruled Chile from 1973-1990 and was the face of a military dictatorship that killed and disappeared thousands. Though Pinochet was put under house arrest in 2004 for tax fraud and passport forgery, he claimed in 2005 that his wealth was from “lifetime savings”.

Read more from the Boston Globe.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• A 48 year-old U.S. citizen from Rhode Island has filed a lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after she was detained on suspicion of being in the country illegally.
• Enrique Pena Nieto, Mexico’s leading presidential candidate, has pulled ahead of his rival candidates with 40.1 percent of voters expressing support.

Caribbean

• About 3500 former Haitian soldiers and their followers are refusing to disband despite numerous orders from the government to clear out of old military bases they are occupying in protest.
• Dominican health officials reported that at least 6 people have died and 17 remain hospitalized in a cholera outbreak in a northern village.
• Puerto Rican nationalist Norberto Gonzalez Claudio is negotiating with prosecutors ahead of his trial for allegedly helping rob $7 million from a Wells Fargo armored car depot in Connecticut in 1983.

Central America

• Honduran General René Osorio criticized the U.S. government for not offering “the necessary support” to break up drug trafficking groups in the country.
•  Gunmen killed Honduran TV personality Noel Alexander Valladares and two others on Monday.
• Costa Rican Vice President Luis Liberman said that government wages would be frozen for two years to contain Costa Rica’s $2 billion fiscal deficit.
• Panamanian and U.S. authorities are helping a California family search for an American woman who has been missing in Bocas del Toro, Panama for the last five months.

Andes

• Venezuelan Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said that former Supreme Court judge Eladio Aponte had received money from drug traffickers and that the U.S. is now harboring a Venezuelan fugitive.
• Miners at a two-day march organized by the Bolivian Workers Central to secure higher pay exploded dynamite in an effort to break through a police cordon, reportedly wounding four officers.

Southern Cone

• Brazilian journalist Decio Sa, who reported for the northeastern newspaper O Estado do Maranhao, became the fourth Brazilian journalist killed this year when he was shot as he ate in a restaurant Monday night.
• U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that three U.S. Marines were “severely punished” for allegedly breaking the collarbone of a prostitute in Brasilia.
• Intense storms killed at least 17 people in Argentina early this month and were reportedly caused by increased heat and humidity.

Image: gerardo_chinchorro @ Flickr.

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Top Story — In a narrow 58-56 vote, Chile’s House of Deputies on Wednesday approved a long-awaited anti-discrimination law that was introduced seven years ago. Chileans outraged by the murder of Daniel Zamudio, a 24 year-old gay man who died March 27 after a brutal beating, called on the House to pass the law, which was approved by the Senate in November. After Zamudio’s death, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights urged Chile to pass laws against hate crimes and discrimination, and Chilean President Sebastián Piñera said that approval of the law should be accelerated. Some Protestant churches in Chile, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, expressed opposition to the law and said that it could pave the way for legalizing gay marriage. Some passages of the law must be finalized before it becomes official. Meanwhile, four suspects have been jailed for Zamudio’s killing, and prosecutors have asked for murder charges.

Read more from the AP.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard unveiled a free BlackBerry app created to warn residents of Mexico City up to 50 seconds before a major earthquake strikes.
• Mexico extradited Jesus Zambada, a suspected drug kingpin, to the U.S. on Wednesday to face charges in U.S. federal court.
• Opponents of Arizona’s immigration law traveled to Berlin to ask Daimler Motor Company executives to take a stand against the law after a German employee of the company was arrested, but Daimler said no.

Caribbean

• Mexican President Felipe Calderón will visit Cuba on April 11th and 12th, his first visit to the country while in office.
• Work crews in the Dominican Republic dumped 1,500 square feet of sand along Santo Domingo’s boardwalk to create a beach for Dominicans unable to afford travel during Holy Week.
• Haitian President Michel Martelly traveled to Miami for surgery on his shoulder.

Central America

• The arrest of alleged drug lord Horst Walther Overdick in Guatemala and other top kingpins may indicate that the traditional structure of drug cartels will be forced to change.
• The consortium building new $3.2 billion locks for the Panama Canal says that construction will be delayed by at least 3 months.

Andes

• U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Chevron would not have to pay a $28.1 million fine for time lost by Ecuadoran defendants in a previous injunction by the judge.
• A wildlife group in Peru said that it had discovered 615 dead dolphins beached along a 90-mile stretch of coast, a possible result of acoustic testing by oil companies.
• The ten FARC hostages released on Monday said that they’d tamed wild animals as pets to help survive their time in the jungle.
• Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said Wednesday that he would be returning to Venezuela from Cuba where he underwent a second radiation treatment.

 Image: jpcatepillan @ Flickr.

Top Story — Daniel Zamudio, the 24 year-old Chilean man who was attacked and brutally beaten by suspected Neo-Nazis, died of his wounds on Tuesday night while Chile continues to debate whether or not to enact an anti-discrimination law that would make hate crimes illegal. On March 3, attackers beat Zamudio in a Santiago park for over an hour, causing broken bones and head trauma that left him in a medically-induced coma for 25 days. Prosecutors called for murder charges against the four suspects who are now detained for Zamudio’s killing, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. The suspects allegedly carved Nazi symbols into Zamudio’s body and some already have criminal records for crimes against gays. Meanwhile, Chile’s lower house has yet to approve a bill that would make discrimination against vulnerable groups illegal, though the measure was introduced seven years ago and approved by the Senate in November.

Read more from the AP.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• Amnesty International USA released a report saying that U.S. border patrol officials discriminate against Latinos and Native Americans, resulting in human rights violations.
• Victims of human trafficking rarely report crimes due to a fear of deportation, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Office of Policy and Strategy.

Caribbean

• After leaving Cuba, Pope Benedict XVI met with Fidel Castro and made a speech urging “authentic freedom” on the island.
• Dominican police have accused five teenage beggars of killing a seven year-old boy and stealing $8 from him.
• The Club Caribe LLC distillery will become the third rum distillery to open in Puerto Rico and is expected to offset a $140 million loss after the Captain Morgan distillery moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands.
  

Central America

• Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes said that his government had not negotiated a truce between rival gangs that is credited with reducing the country’s homicide rate dramatically in a month.
• An 18 year-old Panamanian hotel worker lost at sea for 26 days returned home to Panama Tuesday after he was rescued off the Galapagos Islands and two of his friends died at sea.
• Inmates at a maximum-security prison in Guatemala allegedly made threatening phone calls to 5-star hotels and other businesses in El Salvador demanding money.

Andes

• A body thought to belong to missing Colombian land rights activist Manuel Ruiz was discovered near a bridge on Monday. His 15 year-old son is still missing.
• Bolivia’s Movement Toward Socialism party unanimously elected Bolivian President Evo Morales to run for re-election in 2014.
• Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez lashed out at a travel warning on the U.S. Department of State website that mentioned the “pervasiveness” of violent crime in Venezuela.

Southern Cone

• The Brazilian Senate approved a pension reform bill that would limit payments to retired government workers to about $2144 per month.
• Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro said that Uruguay would not support an economic blockade of the Falkland Islands and disputed reports that the country was sending a group of businessmen to the islands.
• The Brazilian Olympic Committee said that it would aim to double its medal count between the 2012 Olympic Games in London and the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Image: jpcatepillan @ Flickr.

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Top Story — Twelve Venezuelan police officers are being investigated in the Saturday shooting death of Karen Berendique, the nineteen year-old daughter of the Chilean consul in Maracaibo. Fernando Berendique, Karen’s father, said his daughter was in a car with her brother and another young person on Saturday night when they drove through an unmarked police checkpoint without stopping, prompting the police to open fire. Berendique said the three young people ignored an order to stop because the police did not identify themselves and they were afraid that the officers were robbers. Judicial police chief Jose Humberto Ramirez said that the officers had failed to set up cones identifying the traffic stop and that they would have to respond to the shooting in criminal court, but Venezuelans said that the shooting was indicative of a violent police force that shoots first and asks questions later. According to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, police homicide figures for 2011 totaled 19,000 killings.

Read more from The Washington Post.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• Mexican President Felipe Calderón said that Mexican state oil company Pemex will remain state owned on the 74th anniversary of Mexico’s expropriation of foreign oil.
• A new 608-bed immigrant detention center in Karnes City, Texas is seen as an example of the Obama administration’s effort to improve the conditions of facilities for detained immigrants.
  

Caribbean

• Cuban dissident Bertha Soler and dozens of others of Ladies in White supporters were detained in Havana early Sunday on one of their weekly protest marches.
• Voters in Puerto Rico seemed to favor GOP candidate Mitt Romney in elections on Sunday by a slim margin over rival Rick Santorum.
• Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Mexico and Cuba comes at a time when Catholicism in Latin America is on the decline and both countries are somewhat dissatisfied with the pope’s relationship to the region.

Central America

• Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes said that more than 2,600 former FMLN guerrillas over 70, nearly all of whom live in poverty, will receive a $50 a month pension from the government.
• The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said during a visit to Guatemala that he was concerned about new economic investment projects that could negatively impact the rights of indigenous people in Guatemala.
• Flight attendant and former “Mr. Panama” Harry Agustin Duncan Maslivar, who was arrested at Miami International Airport on charges that he is acting as a part-time drug mule, will have a bond hearing on Monday.

Andes

• Bolivian President Evo Morales threatened Sunday to close the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, accusing the U.S. of meddling in Bolivia’s domestic affairs.
• Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos called on the FARC fulfill its promise to release ten long-time hostages but did not address the rebel group’s request that activists be permitted to visit jailed rebels.
• Thousands of Venezuelan women have threatened to sue French manufacturer Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) for making defective breast implants unless they receive complimentary replacements.
• Ecuador’s new gambling ban went into effect officially over the weekend, prompting concerns that gambling will spread underground and encourage crime.

Southern Cone

• Uruguayan officials detained at least two nurses Sunday in an investigation into a spate of deaths at two hospitals that were allegedly caused by poison purchased in Brazil.
• A Brazilian court ordered 17 foreign oil company employees to surrender their passports and remain in Brazil during an investigation into an offshore oil leak at a Chevron and Transocean oil well.
• Argentine and Israeli authorities gathered on Friday to honor the 29 people killed in a 1992 car bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.
• Paraguayan Foreign Minister Jorge Lara Castro said that the Argentine government needed to “reflect” on  trade restrictions affecting Paraguay during a meeting of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) in Asunción.

Image: ervega @ Flickr.

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Top Story — Chilean Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter said Chile should hurry along anti-discrimination and hate crime legislation after 24 year-old Daniel Zamudio, a young gay man, was savagely beaten by assailants in Santiago on Saturday. Zamudio sustained multiple head injuries and a broken leg and is currently in a medically-induced coma. His attackers reportedly drew swastika-like shapes on his chest, but prosecutors said that there is still no firm evidence that Zamudio’s attackers were neo-Nazis, as his parents have claimed. Chile’s Congress is currently considering anti-discrimination legislation, and Hinzpeter said the attack provided “added urgency” to move the legislation along and consider passing an anti-hate crime law as well. The identities of Zamudio’s attackers remain unknown, but gay rights organization Movilh has started a publicity campaign asking witnesses of the attack to come forward.

Read more from BBC News.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• Mexican officials said that they found sixteen bodies in three clandestine graves on the outskirts of Monterrey, in an area where 51 bodies had been found in 2010.
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security granted a deferral for the deportation order of Daniela Pelaez, a high school valedictorian in Miami.

Caribbean

• Six people, including one thirteen year-old girl, were killed when police and gunmen exchanged fire in Kingston, Jamaica on Wednesday.
• Gunmen killed Haiti’s former Central Bank governor. His son pled guilty to bribery last month and is cooperating in an investigation targeting former government officials.
• Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos met with Cuban President Raúl Castro on Wednesday in Havana, but was doubtful that Cuba would be invited to the Summit of the Americas.
• The Dominican Republic’s First Lady, Margarita Cedeño, filed a complaint Tuesday alleging that a TV commentator falsified documents to accuse her of corruption.
• Florida Senator Marco Rubio is advocating that deceased Puerto Rican war veteran Modesto Cartagena receive a medal of honor posthumously for his service in the Korean War.

Central America

• U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said that he would seek  $107 million from Congress to help fund regional security in Central America in 2013, but Central American leaders said it was insufficient.
• The Belize Coalition to Save Our National Heritage mobilized 28,000 voters in Belize to participate in the February 29 “People’s Referendum” on offshore drilling, despite the fact that the referendum was not included in the official March 7 ballot.
  
• An Illinois teenager is training to represent El Salvador in boxing at the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Andes

• Colombian guerrilla group ELN said it would be willing to end attacks on oil companies and their employees if the government paid them a $10 per barrel social tax.
• Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will return home to Venezuela from Cuba next week.
• Ecuador’s Board of Judges dismissed Judge Nicolas Zambrano, who ruled on the iconic $18 billion decision against Chevron Corp, for failing to order preventative detention for a suspected drug trafficker.
  

Southern Cone

• Citing ill health, Argentine transport minister Juan Pablo Schiavi resigned after being harshly criticized in the wake of the Buenos Aires train accident that killed 51 last moth.
• A Brazilian truck drivers’ strike is threatening to cause a major fuel shortage in São Paulo by stopping deliveries of gasoline and ethanol.
• The U.S. State Department designated Argentina as a “major money laundering country”, along with Curação and St. Maarten.

Image: Movilh Chile @ Flickr.

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Top Story — Indigenous Mapuche activists jailed in the southern Chilean region of Araucania said Monday that they were prepared for a confrontation with the government in order to reclaim their native lands. In an interview with the AFP from his jail cell, Ramon Llanquileo, one of four Mapuche leaders belonging to the Arauco Malleco Coordination (CAM), also denied the Chilean government’s accusation that the CAM had intentionally set forest fires in Carahue and Quillon, killing seven firefighters and two civilians in early January. Llanquileo and three others were accused and sentenced for a violent attack on a prosecutor’s convoy in 2008, but charges of terrorism against the men were later dropped. ”The CAM recovers Mapuche land but we don’t attack people or provoke fires,” Llaniquileo said. However, the group does claim that it occupies land and has sabotaged some large forestry companies in the region.

Read more from the AFP.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• Mexico’s Tarahumara Indians are suffering from a long drought and food shortages in their home state of Chihuahua, with six people reportedly dying of malnutrition.
• Three women were detained outside of Guadalajara, Mexico, on suspicion of involvement in a child-trafficking ring, adding to the four women detained last week.
•  Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County said he would appeal a federal judge’s ruling blocking his employees from detaining people based on the suspicion that they are in the U.S. illegally.

Caribbean

• U.S. actor Sean Penn was named ambassador to Haiti by Haitian foreign minister Laurent Lamothe on Saturday.
• 26 shipwrecked Cubans landed on the Florida Keys on Friday and were taken in by the U.S. border patrol, and will be permitted to stay in the U.S.
• The wife of jailed Cuban dissident Wilman Villar said that her husband was in a coma and near death after a hunger strike.
• The Puerto Rican Baseball League has been reduced to four teams and no longer fields a team in the capital of San Juan.
•  Puerto Rico is installing a tsunami warning system in San Juan.

Central America

• Three young women were found murdered inside a shack on the outskirts of San Salvador, and may have been victims of drug gang violence.
• The FBI, U.S. Coast Guard and Canadian Navy recovered more than 6,700 kilograms of cocaine in a dive off the coast of Honduras, authorities reported Monday.
• 158 Peace Corps volunteers left Honduras on Monday a week after the U.S. government announced that the volunteers would be pulled out after operating in the country since 1963.

Andes

• Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said that FARC rebels have been reduced to selling off cattle in order to raise money.
• Venezuelan oil minister Rafael Ramírez said Sunday that Venezuela would leave the World Bank international arbitration body and settle disputes with its own judicial system.
• A man suspected of cutting women on the buttocks in Virginia was arrested in Peru on Friday.
• Homemade banana liquor apparently contaminated by pesticides has killed at least one person in Colombia, according to authorities.
• Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa celebrated five years in power on Sunday.

Southern Cone

• Eighty landless Uruguayan families have taken over a farm in the northern department of Artigas to call for lands promised by the government.
• FIFA’s general secretary urged Brazilian lawmakers to approve a bill granting FIFA exclusive rights at Brazil’s 2014 World Cup during a visit Monday.
• In a decision angering  both Argentina and Princess Cruises, the Falkland Islands turned away a cruise ship on Saturday, saying that passengers onboard with stomach flu would tax the islands’ medical resources.

Image: cÁmARa AccióN @ Flickr.

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Senator Isabel Allende. Photo by Socialdemokrater.

A Chilean state television program speculating that former Chilean President Salvador Allende was murdered during the Sept. 11, 1973 coup has angered members of Allende’s family, one week after the former president’s body was exhumed by an international team of forensic experts to determine the cause of his death.

Chile’s TVN aired a “Special Report” on Monday night dedicated to Allende, whose democratically-elected socialist government was forced out by a violent military coup that led to the country’s 1973-1990 dictatorship. The program featured two forensic experts who argued that President Allende had been hit by a smaller-caliber weapon in addition to the AK-47 with which he presumably took his own life. TVN asked the forensic experts to analyze a 300-page military review that was reportedly found when a house belonging to Chilean military prosecutor Col. Horacio Ried was demolished by last year’s earthquake. The document includes ballistics reports, photos and witness testimony, as well as the original autopsy report that has long been public.

Senator Isabel Allende, one of President Allende’s daughters, called TVN’s report on her father’s death “extremely imprudent” and said it was “shameful that a public television channel would conduct a completely speculative investigation, and not allow the judicial and scientific team that, for the first time, is doing a serious investigation about the death of my father, to work.”

On May 23, Allende’s body was exhumed by forensic experts to determine whether the former president had been murdered or if he took his own life during the military’s 1973 aerial bombing of the presidential palace, La Moneda. The investigation is expected to be completed within 90 days, and has not yet reached a conclusion. Many of those who were with Allende before his death have died or were disappeared during Chile’s dictatorship.

Senator Allende said Tuesday that she would pursue action against TVN in Congress, and had already complained to TVN’s director, Mauro Valdés, before the program aired.

Over time, Allende’s family has come to support the theory that the former president shot himself. “What we’ve said all these years: our conviction is that President Allende made the decision to die as a gesture of political coherence to defend the mandate given to him by the people”, Senator Allende announced in a public statement last week after the exhumation of her father.

Despite the Allende family’s objections, Eduardo Contreras, a lawyer and member of the Central Committee of Chile’s Communist Party, said the TVN program reinforced that there were still “legitimate doubts” about the causes of Allende’s death. “Allende doesn’t only belong to his family, but to all Chileans, all forces of democracy in the country and in Latin America,” he said.

The Allende family supports the investigation of President Allende’s death by Judge Mario Carroza, whom Senator Allende said has been investigating the military documents featured on TVN for some time. Carroza’s investigation has been ongoing since January as part of a larger investigation into 726 deaths that occurred during Chile’s dictatorship.

Photo: Socialdemokrater @ Flickr.

Today in Latin America

Top Story — Chile became one of the first countries to hand over highly enriched uranium (HEU) from its nuclear reactors to the United States for safe storage. The Associated Press reported the story yesterday, the same day that President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev signed a nuclear arms control treaty.

The U.S. will also hold a nonproliferation summit next Monday in Washington, where Obama is expected to ask countries to work with the U.S. in removing weapons-grade HEU from reactors, as Chile did.

“We are happy to see it go,” Fernando López of the Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission told The Associated Press. “Countries normally don’t want to be loaded with waste from other countries,” López added. “To put it in a safe place is valuable for everybody.”

U.S. and Chilean engineers worked last month to remove the 40 pounds of HEU before it was shipped out of Chile under U.S. Coast Guard supervision, through the Panama Canal, to Charleston Weapons Station in South Carolina.

The United States is the only country in the world to dispose of uranium and many countries, including Russia, rely on the U.S. for this process. This disposal process is part of Obama’s strategy of focusing concerns of nuclear nonproliferation to rogue states and terrorists and away from former Cold War adversaries.

“For the first time, preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism is now at the top of America’s nuclear agenda,” Obama said, according to the Associated Press.

For more information, view the AP video below.

Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch

• Beyond Borders: A local-federal partnership to enforce immigration law needs clarity, according to a recent study.
• From the Blog: Six people were killed in Peru on Sunday, as police disbursed a wildcat miners’ protest.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• A 5.3 magnitude aftershock struck near Guadalupe Victoria in Northern Baja California, Mexico, days after the region was hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake on Easter Sunday.
• Mexican authorities found the bodies of 12 people, allegedly killed by drug traffickers, near the town Xalisco in the border state of Nuevo León.

Caribbean

• The Obama administration lifted the prohibition against traveling to Cuba to provide aid to government opponents and pro-democracy activists.
• The Cuban government plans to use its May Day march as a show of support for the government, in order to deflect recent criticism over the country’s human rights record.
• Haiti’s signature rum producer, Rhum Barbancourt, is poised to resume shipping again, despite suffering about $4 million in losses from the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Central America

• Ecopetrol S.A., the Colombian oil company, might bid on exploration rights for areas in Guatemala.
• Costa Rican President Óscar Arias said the Catholic Chruch should end celibacy vows for priests, arguing that forbidding sexual relations goes against nature.
• Defender Deris Umanzor from Club Deportivo Águila of El Salvador was acquired by the Major League Soccer team, the Chicago Fire.

Andes

• Colombian police arrested Héctor José Buitrago, an alleged paramilitary leader who refused to surrender in 2005 when 30,000 paramilitaries demobilized. He was wanted on 21 warrants for alleged killings and drug-trafficking.
• Colombian presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos said that if he won next year’s elections he would foster better ties with neigboring Venezuela.
• Wildcat miners in Peru ended their roadblock Wednesday in response to a government promise to hold a joint commission to study the dispute over the effects of regularizing informal mining.
• 120 countries and international organizations confirmed that they will attend the World People’s Conference on Climate Change on April 19-22 in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Southern Cone

• In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, bodies continue to be dug from the debris resulting from landslides that ravaged the city in recent days.
• Ford Motor Co. announced Thursday it will invest $200 million in Brazil over the next five years to develop the EcoSport small SUV, already a top-selling vehicle in Brazil, for the global market. Ford will invest an additional $250 million in Argentina over the next two years for development and production of a new vehicle, which is intended for Ford’s Latin American markets.
• Argentina’s stocks and bonds sunk Wednesday after the U.S. declared the country’s Central Bank is indistinguishable from the government and creditors can seize assets for debt repayment.
• Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera wants to deepen free market reforms and encourage the country’s return to international bonds to help pay for damage from February’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake. The government is responsible for $8 to $10 billion of an estimated $30 billion of reconstruction costs.
• Presidents of Chile and Argentina said Thursday in Buenos Aires that ideological differences will not keep them from working together.
• Uruguay’s President José Mujica strengthened ties with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez when the two signed accords to strengthen trade and energy relations between the two countries. Venezuela will help Uruguay expand an oil refinery and supply it with crude oil.
• Uruguay’s unemployment rate rose sharply from 6.3 percent in January, to 7.5 percent in February.

Image: BlatantNews.com @ Flickr.

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