Hundreds of Mexican campesinos, accompanied by 40 tractors, marched in Ciudad Juarez, in the northern state of Chihuahua, on Jan. 18 to launch the "Chamizal to the Zocalo" caravan, a 2,000-km ride to protest the elimination of tariffs on staples under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Organized by the Francisco Villa Campesino Resistance Movement, the caravan's route goes from El Chamizal Park, Juarez—at the border with El Paso, Texas—to Mexico City's main plaza, the Zocalo, where the protesters are to join a Jan. 31 demonstration against NAFTA planned by a broad range of groups.

Thousands of members of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM) participated in an eight-hour national strike on Jan. 16 in support of workers at Grupo Mexico's giant copper mine at Cananea, in the northwestern state of Sonora. Police and soldiers had forcibly removed strikers from the mine on Jan. 12, one day after the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JFCA) ruled that the miners' five-month-old strike over safety conditions was illegal under Mexican labor law. The union won a temporary injunction on Jan. 12 allowing the strike to continue, but unofficial sources reported that the Sixth District Labor Court would probably terminate the injunction. Grupo Mexico insisted that at least 400 of the 1,300 workers had returned to the mine.

Guatemalan human rights activist Amilcar Mendez and his wife, Miriam Dardon, began an open-ended hunger strike on Jan. 12 in Guatemala City to protest impunity for the 21,509 homicides that took place in the four-year administration of outgoing president Oscar Berger. One of the victims was the couple's son, José Emanuel "Pepe" Mendez Dardon, who was murdered on Aug. 17, 2007, on his way home from work in Guatemala City.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met with Cuban president Fidel Castro Ruz on Jan. 15 during a 24-hour visit to Cuba and met twice with interim president Raul Castro, who has headed the government since the summer of 2006, when Fidel Castro withdrew from public functions because of undisclosed intestinal problems. The visit included the signing of financial and commercial agreements, such as credits for food purchases and the expansion of the Che Guevara nickel plant, and offshore oil exploration. Brazil is Cuba's second largest trading partner in Latin America, after Venezuela; annual trade is worth about $450 million.

Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on a visit to Colombia Jan. 18 that the US is concerned about a Venezuelan military buildup, pointing to "what Mr. Chávez has done militarily in recent years and his acquisitions—both those he's made as well as those he states he's making for the future—high performance airplanes, modern submarines." President Hugo Chávez is negotiating with Russia to buy five diesel submarines that he says Venezuela needs to protect its extensive offshore oil drilling facilities. (AFP, Jan. 18) Days after Mullen's remarks, Miami's El Nuevo Herald cited anonymous Colombian intelligence officials as saying that the country's FARC and ELN guerillas are receiving ammunition manufactured in Venezuela. The officials said the 7.62mm AK-47 ammo recently captured from the FARC is produced by the state-owned Venezuelan Anonymous Military Industries Company (CAVIM). (Nuevo Herald, Bloomberg, Jan. 21)

In the wake of his successful negotiation of the release of two hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has launched an initiative for the FARC and its junior counterpart, the National Liberation Army (ELN), to be recognized by the international community as legitimate "belligerents"—not terrorists. Chávez says the FARC is an "insurgent" force with legitimate political aims and that the terrorist label "has just one cause: pressure from the United States."

Two dozen heavily armed special police from the Venezuelan Interior Ministry searched the Hebraica community center in Caracas last month, ostensibly looking for weapons or evidence of "subversive activity." There were no arrests or seizure of property. The Venezuelan Jewish community's umbrella organization, the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela (CAIV), protested the raid as an "unjustifiable act" aimed at creating tensions between the community and the government of President Hugo Chávez. "It seems that the only interpretation is that this was an intimidation by the government," CAIV president Abraham Levy Benshimol told New York's Jewish weekly The Forward, noting that the raid came on the eve of the referndum on Chávez's proposed constitutional reform. "We're facing the first anti-Jewish government in our history," added Hebraica president Simon Sultan.

Tijuana Cartel gunmen and fought a three-hour battle with Mexican federal police and army troops in the border city Jan. 17, using machine guns and grenades and firing on a helicopter. One gunman was killed and four police officers were wounded in the fight; one officer died in the hospital the next day. Authorities later found six more bodies in the house where the gunmen made their stand, believed to be local kidnapping victims.