Blog, Latin America: Week in Review
Chile: Jailed Mapuche Leaders Ready to Confront State
January 17, 2012 By Staff
Today in Latin America
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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