On May 19, four Mapuche rights activists resumed their open-ended hunger strike at the Hernan Enriquez hospital in Temuco, in southern Chile's Region IX (Araucania). Mapuche activists Juan Patricio Marileo Saravia, Florencio Jaime Marileo Saravia and Juan Carlos Huenulao Lienmil and non-Mapuche supporter Patricia Troncoso Robles began their fast on March 13 in Angol prison; they suspended it on May 14 in the Temuco jail after Chilean legislators promised to consider a bill to allow their supervised release. As part of the deal, the four prisoners were transferred from the Temuco jail to the hospital. The four are serving 10-year prison sentences imposed under the terms of a widely criticized anti-terrorism law.

After protesting for several weeks with no answer to their demands, on May 18 more than 1,000 Chilean high school students demonstrated in Santiago to press for free public transportation, free university entrance exams and improvements in the quality of public education. Agents of the militarized Carabineros police arrested at least 560 students and used tear gas and water cannons to evict a group of students who had taken refuge in the University of Chile law school. Another 244 students were arrested in similar protests in other cities, including Arica and Calama in the north, Valparaiso and Concepcion in the central region, and Temuco and Puerto Montt in the south. (Clarin, Argentina, May 18; Cadena 3, Argentina, May 19) More than 50 students were arrested in a previous protest in Santiago on May 12, and a young Argentine citizen was expelled by the Chilean government. (Pulsar, May6 12 via Resumen Latinamericano)

Boogie for your right to defy gringo imperialism, y'all. From Reuters, May 23:

CARACAS - Among the shabby high-rise tenements overlooking Venezuela's capital, hip-hop beats rather than the usual gunfire kept the Caracas neighborhood of Pinto Salinas awake one night recently.

From Upside Down World, May 24:

The nullification of Occidental Petroleum’s oil-drilling contract by the Ecuadorian government has generated mixed reactions in the Americas. Ecuador's oil minister revoked the California-based oil giant’s contract last week for allegedly not informing the government that the company sold off 40% of its Ecuadorian holdings to Canadian-based EnCana. However, it had long been known that Oxy’s presence in Block 15—a 464,000 acre chunk of Northeast Ecuador--invoked militarization, an environmental catastrophe and sparked off a social unrest in indigenous communities that the government could not contain.

A year after he was arrested on immigration charges, Posada Carriles is being investigated by a federal grand jury--but the media are no longer paying attention. From our sibling journal Upside Down World, May 24:

Convicted terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is being investigated by an El Paso-based grand jury [Prensa Latina, May 22]. Carriles just celebrated a year of incarceration in El Paso’s Federal Immigration Detention Center. The investigation seems to be centered around how Carriles entered the US without a visa in March 2005.

Another restive ethnic group in Iran is making demands for culture and autonomy felt—and meeting with harsh repression. Following the Arabs of Khuzestan and the Kurds of Kordestan, now the Azeris—who, like the Kurds, had a short-lived independent state under Soviet protection in northern Iran during World War II. Note the irony that the riots were sparked by an offensive anti-Azeri cartoon that appeared in the Iranian press! From IranMania, May 24:

A statement from the New York-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy:

Just as it did before its invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration is manufacturing a climate of fear in order to prepare public opinion for another act of aggression -- this time against Iran. Three years ago it was the specter of Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction; today it's the threat of a possible Iranian nuclear bomb. Washington's immediate goal is to get the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran and, in all probability, to justify a military attack on Tehran's nuclear facilities -- a job that may be outsourced to Israel. The White House even insists on keeping the catastrophic "nuclear option" on the table -- that is, using tactical nuclear weapons to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, many of which are located in or near civilian population centers. Although a full-scale invasion of Iran is highly unlikely at the moment, there can be little doubt that the neoconservatives in the Bush administration have a grand strategy that includes, eventually, "regime change" in Tehran as a way of further enlarging U.S. imperial power.

This one is really funny. The ultra-conservative hyper-interventionist Islamophobes at the oddly named Human Events managed to score an interview with Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran and pretender to the throne. But this self-promoting monarchist restorationist, it turns out, is insufficiently bellicose and reactionary for the likes of his interviewers! They keep trying to goad him into supporting military action, and he (to his credit!) won't take the bait. Who'd have thought it would come to this—the scion of the Shah is more progressive (at least in word) than either the ruling mullahs or the beltway neocons who seek to overthrow them!