by Weekly News Update on the Americas

On Oct. 18, some 2,500 campesino coca producers (cocaleros) from San Gaban
in Carabaya province, Puno department, began blocking several points of a
highway leading to the neighboring department of Madre de Dios. The
cocaleros also blocked the main entrance to the San Rafael mine and
threatened to seize the San Gaban hydroelectric plant in nearby Shuane.
They were demanding that the government immediately suspend a coca
eradication operation being carried out by agents of the Anti-Drug
Department (Dirandro) in San Gaban.

According to Carabaya mayor Michel Francois Portier Balland, some 350

State elections in Mexico Oct. 3 saw more violence in the conflicted
southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, with several reported dead. Both
states--the poorest and most heavily indigenous in Mexico--have seen the
emergence of guerilla movements and anti-guerilla paramilitary groups over
the past decade, leaving many rural communities bitterly divided. In a sign
of returning normality, the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas announced that they
would allow polling in territories under their control. (La Jornada, Sept.
30) Ironically, the electoral violence in Chiapas took place outside the

The Oct. 10 presidential elections in Afghanistan provided George Bush with potent campaign trail propaganda. He repeatedly invoked the 10 million newly registered voters there, and the icing on the cake was the apparent victory by the US favorite, incumbent interim president Hamid Karzai. But the elections actually revealed how precariously Afghanistan is poised on the brink of ethnic war.

by Bill Weinberg

Colombia makes few headlines in the United States these days. But
Washington's involvement in the western hemisphere's longest, bloodiest war
is rapidly escalating, as the world's attention is elsewhere. And the
latest signal of increased US embroilment comes just as a vocal civil
movement is emerging in Colombia to demand an end to the military option.

Congressional approval last weekend of a doubling of the Pentagon's troop
presence in Colombia was closely followed by a national wave of protest
throughout the war-torn South American nation, as some 1.4 million

by Wynde Priddy

State Terror Against Anuak People Invisible to Outside World--as US
Military Involvement, Oil Operations Escalate

by keith harmon snow

GAMBELLA, ETHIOPIA -
Talk privately to any Anuak people in the Ethiopian state of Gambella and
it won't be long before they speak about "the problem." Others are
terrified into silence. To Anuak and other indigenous minorities of
southwestern Ethiopia, the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is a
ruthless military dictatorship. And almost everyone links "the problem" to
Gambella's oil.

Despite Court Ruling and Peasant Protest

by Andrew Epstein, WW3 REPORT Special Correspondent in Colombia

According to the United Nations report, Global Illicit Drug Trends 2003,
coca production in Colombia has been reduced by an impres sive 37%.
However, the US fumigation program, supposedly responsible for this
dramatic decrease, has also ironically been destroying US-funded
alternative development projects. Meanwhile, the Colombian drug economy has
diversified, with the expansion fro m coca leaf to opium poppy gaining pace.

A Growing Anti-Militarist Movement Demands Right to "Active Neutrality" in
Armed Conflict

by Bill Weinberg

Maria Brigida Gonzalez, with her long gray-streaked braids and nurturing
smile, comes across as the kindly grandmother that she is, even if she is
deft with a machete, and wears knee-high rubber boots to negotiate muddy
jungle trails. Her village, San Jose de Apartado, resembles many such
campesino communities carved out of the jungle throughout Latin America,
with pigs, chickens and turkeys rummaging freely in the lanes. And, like
all too many, it has recently been the scene of much hideous violence. But
Maria Brigida and her village are on the frontlines of a grassroots
citizen initiative to find a peaceful settlement -- or at least advance the
right to neutrality -- in the escalating and chaotic civil war that is
tearing apart Colombia.