Some 130 inmates awaiting federal immigration hearings staged a protest to complain about conditions at the Monmouth County jail in Freehold, NJ. The inmates refused to eat or participate in activities to press their demands for more food, more Spanish-speaking officers and a television to be fixed. Officials say the protesters met with the warden, and ended their protest shortly afterward. However, no measures to address their demands have been decided on. (AP, NYT, March 19)

In a move reminiscent of the struggle over Liberation Theology in the 1980s, the Vatican has issued a stern warning to Jon Sobrino, a dissident Jesuit priest in El Salvador, sending a formal notification claiming two of his books "may cause harm to the faithful." The ruling from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—the Vatican’s ideological watchdog, formerly headed by Pope Benedict when he was Cardinal Ratzinger—finds various "flaws" in works by Sobrino.

Fired opposition lawmakers in Ecuador vow to break a police cordon around the Congress building and reclaim their seats, keeping up the pressure on populist President Rafael Correa. The 57 lawmakers were fired for trying to block a referendum on establishing a body to rewrite the constitution. "Either we all enter Congress or no one will," said Washington Vallejo, one of the fired lawmakers. "We will defend Congress." (Reuters, March 19)

Colombian officials announced they will consider seeking the extradition of senior executives of Chiquita Brands International after the company pleaded guilty in US federal court to making payments to paramilitary groups. Chiquita, one of the world's top banana producers, agreed to pay a fine of $25 million last week to the US Justice Department to settle the case. Chiquita admitted that from 1997 to 2004, its Colombia subsidiary paid $1.7 million to the paramilitaies. Chiquita said it voluntarily informed the Justice Department of its payments to the paramilitary groups in 2003, after their classification as terrorist organizations. The company said that the payments had been motivated by concern for the safety of employees, and that similar payments had been made to left-wing guerillas.

The annual US State Department report on global human rights, released March 6, notes improvements in the rghts climate in Mexico but says a "culture of impunity and corruption" persists. (La Jornada, March 7)

On March 14, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) handed a report to the Senate demanding that killings and other rights abuses in the conflicted southern state of Oaxaca over the past months be punished. "There were threats, persecution, physical aggression and acts of intimidation," the report says. "They should be cleared up and those responsible presented to the courts."

Chiapas state authorities have declared a "Huitepec-Alcanfores Natural Protected Area" in exactly the location where a "Zapatista Communitarian Ecological Reserve" had been declared weeks earlier. The Zapatistas say the Huitepec area, just outside the highland city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, is coveted by corporate interests for its resources—both its timber and its watershed, for a local Coca-Cola bottling plant. The local environmental group Maderas del Pueblo (Timber for the People) called the government's move a "provocation." (La Jornada, Frayba, March 14; Narco News, March 13)

The leader of the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC), Pedro Chulin Jimenez, and at least 25 of his militants were arrested by state authorities in Chiapas, Mexico, March 8 following reports of attacks on three journalists, including Hermann Bellinghausen of the national daily La Jornada. However, Bellinghausen denied having been attacked or deprived of his freedom. Reports that the journalists were attacked and illegally detained by OPDDIC militants came following a march by the OPDDIC in Ocosingo demanding state recognition of their land claims.