Two police officers were killed and four were seriously injured while evicting hundreds of peasant families from Bosque de Pómac nature preserve in northern Peru's Lambayeque region Jan. 20. Authorities said the peasants had been illegally occupying the reserve for more than a year, but advocates for the evicted families said many had been fraudulently been sold lands within the reserve and believed that they held legal title.

On Jan. 20, nation-wide protests over large-scale metal mining called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) brought out some 12,000 people from indigenous, campesino, environmentalist and human rights organizations across eleven provinces of the small Andean nation. Although large-scale metal exploration has been ongoing since the early '90s, no project has yet reached production. Mining activities are currently suspended until a new law is passed.

Peruvian agricultural producers ended three days of mobilizations on Jan. 17 after Enrique Málaga, president of the National Users Council of the Irrigation Districts of Peru (JNUDRP), met with Prime Minister Yehude Simón and Agriculture Minister Carlos Leyton. "The strike has been suspended in consideration of our having reached an agreement for approval of the General Law of Water, which we were demanding," Málaga told the media. "This law is going to be promulgated next week." Málaga indicated that the agreement also included the formation of a commission for the solution of small agricultural producers' debt problems. (24 Horas Libre, Peru, Jan. 17; Univision, Jan. 17 from AFP)

Brazil agreed Jan. 15 to provide assistance to Bolivia to combat drug trafficking, taking up slack following the ouster of the US DEA from the Andean country last year. Meeting in the vast wetlands along the Bolivia-Brazil border, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva said he would grant Bolivian leader Evo Morales' request for helicopters and other support to patrol the porous frontier that is a major cocaine-trafficking route from the Andes. "I want us to fight drugs together," said Morales.

On Jan. 7, the Colombian government authorized Senator Piedad Córdoba to participate in the release of six hostages from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The mission will be headed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). (President Uribe indicated previously that he didn't want Córdoba involved.) (Latin American Herald Tribune, Jan. 8)

On Jan. 8 the National Security Archive, a Washington, DC-based research group, released declassified US government documents showing that US diplomats and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) knew at least since 1994 that the Colombia security forces "employ death squad tactics in their counterinsurgency campaign," in the words of a 1994 CIA report. The military had a "history of assassinating left-wing civilians in guerrilla areas, cooperating with narcotics-related paramilitary groups in attacks against suspected guerrilla sympathizers and killing captured combatants," the CIA report said. The release of the documents came six days before Colombian president Alvaro Uribe was to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US president George W. Bush. (Latin America Herald Tribune, Jan. 9)

Leonidas Vargas, one of Colombia's most notorious drug lords, was shot dead in his Madrid hospital bed Jan. 8, Spanish authorities said. At least one gunman entered the room in Madrid's Doce de Octubre Hospital where Vargas was being treated for a serious illness, and shot him four times. The Spanish press reported the assassin asked another patient who was sharing the Colombian's room if he was Vargas. When the man said no, he took out a gun fitted with a silencer and shot Vargas, who was asleep.

Ten years after the fact, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (CIDH) found the Colombian government guilty of the assassination of Jesús Maria Valle Jaramillo, an attorney and human rights defender of Medellín, in the northwestern department of Antioquia. The ruling—issued Nov. 25 and announced on Christmas Eve—is the first handed down by the special tribunal of the Organization of American States (OAS) against Colombia for the murder of a human rights activist. Valle was assassinated on Feb. 27, 1998, when he presided the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Antioquia, a post he assumed after the killing of his three predecessors, Héctor Gómez, Luis Vélez Vélez and Carlos Gónima.