From AP, Oct 19:

Glass Monument to Che in Venezuela Shot
CARACAS, Venezuela — A glass monument to revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara was shot up and destroyed less than two weeks after it was unveiled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government.

From SOA Watch, Oct. 12, via Upside Down World:

We are very excited to share that President Evo Morales announced Tuesday that Bolivia will gradually withdraw its military from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School for the Americas (SOA). Bolivia is now the fifth country—after Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela—to formally announce a withdrawal from this brutal military training school.

Local Colombian officials have accused two US soldiers, Michael J. Cohen and César Ruiz, of sexually assaulting a 12 year-old girl on Aug. 25. The soldiers are stationed at the Tolemaida Airbase near Melgar, Tolima, as part of Plan Colombia. According to witness statements collected by local authorities and published in El Tiempo [Oct. 8], at 4 AM, the soldiers entered the base with a young girl they had met at the "Ibiza" nightclub in Melgar earlier that evening. The girl claims that Ruiz assaulted her in the car on the way to the base and later lent his apartment to Cohen, who reportedly raped her. The pair later left the girl in the central park in Melgar in front of several witnesses.

On Oct. 12 Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez joined Colombian president Alvaro Uribe in Ballenas, in the northern Colombian department of La Guajira, to inaugurate the 224 km Trans-Oceanic Gas Pipeline, which will bring as much as 500,000 cubic feet of natural gas from Venezuela to Colombia each day. The three leaders also signed a "memorandum of understanding" to complete a network for gas supply between the three countries.

At least 21 Afro-Colombian barequeros, or small-scale miners, are dead and 28 others injured after a hillside collapsed Oct. 13 following several days of heavy rains on the banks of the Rio Cauca, near Suarez, Cauca department. The open-pit mine was alongside electrical generators of La Salvajina hydro-electric dam, built by the parastal Valle del Cauca Autonomous Regional Corporation (CVC) in 1985 and since privatized to the Pacific Energy Corporation (EPSA). The landslide was said to be caused by local deforestation, and erosion related to the operation of the hydro-dam. One of the tubes that carry the water to the generators imploded, bringing down the hillside. (Terra, Spain, Oct. 14; El Tiempo, Bogotá, Oct. 13)

An Oct. 13 New York Times story, "Energy Crunch Threatens South American Nations," poses the problem in terms of "growth...outpacing fuel supplies"—but actually sheds much light on the continent's political fault lines, which persist despite the predominance of populist or left-of-center governments. The analysis reveals a centrifugal aspect to the populist program which ostensibly pits a united continent against the Behemoth to the North...

From the Colombia Support Network (CSN), Oct. 12:

The Colombia Support Network (CSN) has received word from the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó that two members of the Peace Community, Arley Tuberquia and Martha Basquez, were detained by the Israeli secret service in the Tel Aviv airport. They had arrived to participate in the Grace Peace Pilgrimage from Eilat, over Bethlehem to Jerusalem. These members of the Peace Community, itself a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, apparently are being treated by the Israelis as terror suspects. They are, of course, in no sense terrorists. They have been the sister community of Dane County, Wisconsin for many years. The San Jose Peace Community is totally committed to peace and rejects arms.

In several radio interviews Oct. 9, Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe charged the country's Supreme Court offered benefits including a reduced sentence to imprisoned paramilitary commander José Moncada in exchange for testifying that the president ordered the killing of another incarcerated paramilitary boss, Alcides de Jesús Durango, in 2003. Uribe released a letter he received from Moncada in which he claimed he was bribed into making the charge. Uribe said he called a Supreme Court justice to discuss the matter and asked his prosecutor general to investigate. Supreme Court president Cesar Valencia dismissed Moncada's accusation and said Uribe was "obstructing the court's investigative work" and trying to "delegitimize" the institution.