The Colombian government, campesinos, indigenous groups and Afro-Colombians have created a dialogue table that seeks to improve the living conditions of rural and minority communities. With more than 650 participants from the National Agrarian Summit, a leftist coalition of social organizations, political parties, and unions, the table is meant to be a "space of dialogue" between the groups and the government, according to press release on the Agriculture Ministry's website. Among the items up for discussion are access to land, productive projects, and human rights. The heads of the Ministry of Interior, Agriculture, Finance, and Mining are among the government officials who are attend the dialogues.

A team of 12 independent human rights experts from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Sept. 29 announced the contents of a letter written to the government and the congress of Colombia calling for reconsideration of Senate Bill 85, 2013, which would restructure and expand the jurisdiction of military courts. According to the rights experts, Bill No. 85 would give Colombian military courts extensive jurisdiction covering inter alia homicide, breaches of international humanitarian law, breaches of information and data protection and crimes against public security. The letter protested the potential for military courts to hear matters that would usually fall under the jurisdiction of civilian courts. The experts urged the government to limit the jurisdiction of military tribunals to charges "of a strictly military nature and allegedly committed by active members of the armed forces." The legislative process in Colombia is comprised of seven steps, and Bill No. 85 was originally introduced in September 2013.

Armed conflict and forced displacement persist as threats for Colombia's indigenous peoples, according to a new report by the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC). Threats, attacks, killings, forced recruitment, sexual violence and torture remain common in indigenous territories, the group said. One of the most disturbing figures in the report is that between May and June this year 2,819 members of the Dobida Embera community in the western department of Chocó were displaced due to clashes between the ELN guerillas and Urabeños paramilitary force. The UN had previously said that at least 300 locals were forced to flee due to the violence. The report charges: "Despite the orders given by the Constitutional Court of Colombia regarding the protection of at least 64 indigenous people they continue to be at high risk for physical and cultural extermination. This is due to the armed conflict and forced displacement. The nature of the violations reaffirms the ineffective protective measures of the national and international bodies involved."

Investigators from the Fiscalía, Peru's public prosecutor, exhumed 21 bodies from four mass graves in a remote area of Ayacucho region, the office announced Sept. 15. The find was made at the hamlet of Belen Chapi, in the Paccha area of Chungui district, in a zone of high jungle known as the Oreja de Perro which had been a stronghold of the Shining Path rebels in the 1980s. The victims were members of a peasant community who were summarily executed by security forces on July 14, 1984. The remains included those of nine children; a pregnant woman, whose fetus was counted among the 21 dead; four other women; and six men. Authorities will now begin the work of identifying the bodies, as well as naming the members of the army and National Police who were responsible for the massacre. The remains of nine other community members said to have been killed that day remain missing.

The president of Colombia's Ecopetrol, Javier Genaro Gutiérrez, announced Sept. 24 that the state oil company will process licenses for the use of fracking technology. Gutiérrez upheld Texas as an example of successful fracking, saying, "I invite you to see the fracking tower next to a hospital for the elderly" in the US state. In the Ronda Colombia 2014, the country's latest round of auctioning oil leases on public lands, 19 of the 98 bids sold were for the development of fracking sites. In March, a law was passed to expedite the process for allowing "non-conventional" drilling sites. Ecopetrol in a partnership with Canadian-based Talisman Energy acquired the country's two largest natural gas fields from BP in 2010. 

A record-breaking cocaine bust on Peru's Pacific coast points not only to the country's booming production, but also the increasing role of the Mexican cartels in the Andean narco economy. Peru's Interior Ministry announced the haul in a Sept. 1 statement, saying National Police and DEA agents had uncovered an unprecedented 7.6 metric tons of coke hidden in a shipment of coal at a warehouse in the northern fishing port of Huanchaco, Trujillo region. "This is the largest drug seizure ever in Peru," said Interior Minister Daniel Urresti, speaking at a Lima press conference below a banner reading "Historic Blow to Illegal Drug Trafficking" at the hanger where the shipment had been flown for incineration. "It's historic."

On Thursday Sept. 25, Peru's President Ollanta Humala will be honored at a $500-per-plate dinner by the free-trade-boosting Americas Society "in recognition of his extraordinary accomplishments as president of the Andean country." Sponsors of the event include mineral and oil giants Barrick Gold, Freeport-McMoRan and Pluspetrol. The event comes amid ongoing deadly attacks on indigenous leaders defending their traditional lands in Peru. Local New York activists will be protesting the event with the following demands:

US-based Newmont Mining is facing a new controversy concerning the pending Conga mega-mine, to be developed by its majority-owned subsidiary in Peru's Cajamarca region. Milton Sánchez, leader of the Interinstitutional Platform of Celendín, charged that the Yanacocha mining company is preparing to start removal of water from Laguna El Perol to an artificial reservoir in order to facilitate turning the site of the lake into an open-pit mine. He further charged that Peru's National Water Authority has changed the director of its local administrative region, VI Marañón, in order to allow this work to move ahead. Sánchez said the new regional director, Carlos Enrique Gastelo Villanueva, was brought in after his predecessor refused to sign off on "relocation" of the lake. Sánchez said his followers are prepared to begin a sit-in at the regional offices of the Water Authority if approval is given for the water transfer. (Celendin Libre, Sept. 11)