The Colombian Army's Third Brigade, based in Cali, was deeply penetrated by drug trafficking mafia, according to a recent criminal investigation. "What the prosecutors' investigation has shown as it progresses," reported Bogota's Semana magazine Aug. 4, "is that 'Don Diego' [a drug mafia kingpin] didn't just buy these officers in exchange for one-time favors, but that many of them belonged to his organization. They were part of the mafia and put their jobs in the Army at its service." Brigade commander Leonardo Gomez Vergara resigned Aug. 16 as a result of the investigation, and a dozen other officers have been arrested or are under investigation.

Israel Corp., one of Israel's major holding companies, is evaluating the acquisition of Peruvian utility Electroandes' four hydroelectric plants, the government paper El Peruano quoted the Israeli company's president Idan Ofer as saying. The US-based Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) controls Electroandes, and is seeking to divest it. Israel Corporation has already completed the 180MW Kallpa thermo plant, which recently went on line (at Chilca, 65 kilometers south of Lima). Israel Corp. took over the Kallpa project form the UK-based Globeleq. "The principal motivation for investing in Peru is the stability and transparency of the electric market," Ofer said. The holding company also is looking at Peru's biofuels and port sectors. (Business News Americas, July 25, via BBC Monitoring)

Bolivian President Evo Morales has announced he and his cabinet will donate part of their pay to families left homeless by the devastating earthquake that hit neighboring Peru last week. "Peru has always shown solidarity toward us, and the first contribution I'd like to announce is that the president and vice president will donate 50 percent of their salaries," Morales told a news conference in La Paz. Morales said all ministers and deputy ministers will donate 25% of this month's salaries and urged all Bolivians to contribute to relief funds.

In an operation dubbed "Hurricane," Peruvian national police arrested at least 20 suspected Shining Path guerillas linked to cocaine trafficking in a series of simultaneous raids in Lima and the eastern rainforest region Aug. 13. More than 200 agents took part in the sweeps targeting 48 suspects allegedly tied to a regional Shining Path boss known as "Artemio." Some escaped, but President Alan Garcia claimed it as a major blow against the Maoist guerillas. "Archaic communists who are anti-social and bent on ending the economic and social advancement of Peru have been knocked down once again," he said. (Reuters, Aug. 15)

Peru's President Alan Garcia, "afraid of foreign investors," is sitting idly by as a U.S. corporation devastates the city of La Oroya. Missouri-based Doe Run's toxic lead smelting operation has children breathing sulfur dioxide pollution up to 300 times the level permitted by the World Health Organization. [EarthJustice, March 21] In addition, newborn babies are being born with lead poisoning inherited from their mothers, local residents and company employees are dying prematurely, the air quality is tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, cadmium and lead, while parts of the water supply are contaminated by a toxic cocktail of chemicals. [The Observer, Aug. 12]

Colombia's Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos confirmed that Israeli military advisors are helping his government fight guerillas, the Bogota newsweekly Semana reports. According to Semana, "A group of former Israeli military officials is counseling the military's top brass on intelligence issues." The weekly said the Israelis were hired by the Colombian Defense Ministry to improve the army's intelligence capabilities and the command-and-control structure.

After deliberating for less than four hours, on July 26 a 10-member jury in US District Court in Birmingham, Alabama, found the locally based Drummond Co. Inc. coal company not liable in the 2001 murders of three unionists at its La Loma mine in northern Colombia. The unionists' families and their union, Sintramienergetica, had charged that Drummond supplied fuel, vehicles and shelter to the rightwing paramilitary group that murdered Valmore Locarno and Victor Orcasita in March 2001 and Gustavo Soler seven months later. The International Labor Rights Fund and the Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers (USW) filed the federal civil suit in March 2002 under the 1789 Alien Tort Statute. Terry Collingsworth, executive director of the International Labor Rights Fund, said the plaintiffs "will be swiftly appealing."

Some 1,700 indigenous people participated in a July 23-27 caravan to Bogota from Santander de Quilichao in the southwestern Colombian department of Cauca to demand peace, to call for popular unity and to oppose a "free trade" agreement (TLC, from its initials in Spanish) that the government of President Alvaro Uribe has signed with the US. Organized by the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), the caravan included 25 buses with representatives of the Nasas, Coconucos, Totoroes, Siapidaras, Eperaras, Pastos, Embera Katios and Yanaconas. Security was provided by 300 guards armed only with traditional "rods of authority." There were also four doctors, six nurses, a number of traditional doctors and three ambulances to handle any health problems along the way.