The Second Civil Court of the Special Circuit for Land Restitution in the northern Colombian town of Carmen de Bolívar issued an historic ruling Oct. 16, ordering the return of 65 hectares to 14 families who had been forced from their lands in the "Massacre of Mampuján," a paramilitary attack carried out on March 11, 2000. The ruling, the first under Colombia's new Land Restitution Law, calls on the government's Victims Reparations Unit to oversee the return of the predios, or private collective land-holdings, to the residents of Mampuján, a caserío (unincorporated hamlet) in María la Baja municipality, Bolívar department. The residents had been forced to flee when the caserío was attacked by the María la Baja Bloc of the United Colombian Self-Defense Forces (AUC). Bloc commander Uber Enrique Banquez Martínez AKA "Juancho Dique" was sentenced to 22 years in prison in July after confessing to massacres in the region. Subsequently, the displaced residents returned to Mampuján from the exile hamlet they had established, "New Mampuján."

In a ceremony at the Quemado Government Palace in La Paz, Bolivia's President Evo Morales on Oct. 15 signed a new Law of Mother Earth and Integral Development for Living Well—MTDIVB, by its Spanish acronym—enacting several measures that had long been demanded by the country's popular movements. The law will extend Bolivia's agrarian reform program, calling for the complete "elimination of the latifundia," with women, indigenous peoples, Afro-Bolivians and "intercultural communities" to be given preference for redistributed lands. It creates a Defender of Mother Earth office to hear public complaints related to ecological issues, and a Climate Justice Fund to oversee remediation of lands impacted by the Andean climate crisis. It tightens Bolivia's ban on genetically modified seeds, entirely prohibiting GMO seeds from the country—their importation, use, or release into the environment. The measures together are intended to bring about the country's "integral development in harmony and balance with Mother Earth," the law states.

Two were killed and over 100 injured—including 50 police officers—in riots that caused damage worth millions of dollars in the Peruvian capital Lima Oct. 25. The riots broke out when police blocked the entry of delivery trucks into the city's giant wholesale market, La Parada, which was ordered closed by the administration of Mayor Susana Villarán for not meeting safety and hygiene standards. Violence spread to the nearby industrial zone of Gamarra, where a police post was attacked with Molotov cocktails and ransacked, and shops and factories quickly closed their gates and halted operations. Some 5,000 police have flooded the district.

On Oct. 16 in Lima, a delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) met with Ydelso Hernández, president of the Unitary Struggle Command in Peru's northern region of Cajamarca, who is seeking an order from the IACHR halting the controversial Conga mining project. Hernández said a group representing rondas campesinos (peasant self-defense patrols) in Cajamarca will travel to Washington DC at month's end to testify before the IACHR about rights violations associated with the project.

United Nations independent human rights experts on Oct. 22 urged Colombian authorities to reconsider proposed constitutional reforms affecting the military criminal law. Eleven experts, comprising the Special Procedures mandate-holders of the Human Rights Council of the UN, wrote an open letter to the government of Colombia expressing their concern that the proposed reforms could prove harmful to administering justice for alleged violations of human rights by allowing military or police institutions rather than independent investigators to be the first to determine the existence of elements of crimes:

Campesinos in Cajamarca, Peru, continue to organize round-the-clock vigilance at the proposed site of Yanacocha company's Conga gold mine, in response to reports of construction work at the concession bloc despite official assurances that the project is suspended. Organized in rondas (self-defense patrols), the campesinos are monitoring activities at the high-altitude lakes that would have to be destroyed for the project to proceed. Idelso Hernández of the Cajamarca Unitary Struggle Front said Oct. 12, "Now there are 1,200 people mobilized to protect the lakes. The comuneros have decided to maintain a permanent presence in the zone to block any effort by Yanacocha to transfer workers or equipment there." Some 600 National Police troops have also been deployed to the site.

Creditors of the troubled Doe Run Peru company voted to sell the controversial metal smelting complex at La Oroya, Junín region, to Citibank, Peru's Energy and Mines Ministry (MEM) announced Oct. 11. The New York financial giant will have responsibility for reorganizing the smelter's debts and environmental management plan, as well as those of another scandal-ridden project that will be transferred, the Cobriza gold and copper mine in neighboring Huancavelica region. After three years of being idled by government order over pollution concerns, the decrepit Oroya smelter, which has been dubbed "Peru's Chernobyl," resumed limited operations in July. The local dispute over the issue bitterly divided the local community, pitting campesinos who oppose the smelter against residents employed by Doe Run, who were laid off when the plant was ordered shut. Last year, Doe Run Peru was cited by MEM for resuming construction of a tailings containment area at Cobriza without approval. The mine is still officially halted pending an environmental impact review. (Diario 16, Oct. 13; La Republica, Andina, Oct. 12; MineWeb, July 30; El Comercio, Oct. 18, 2011)

On Oct. 10, the US Justice Department announced the seizure of more than $31 million in funds allegedly "connected to an international money laundering scheme run by a drug trafficking organization operated by members of the Sánchez-Paredes family," a Peruvian clan deemed by US law enforcement to be a drug trafficking organization (DTO). The funds were held in nine US banks, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase, none of which have been charged with any wrongdoing. Additional moneys in three Peruvian bank accounts have also been frozen. The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York found that the family was using its gold mining interests as a front for cocaine trafficking: