Full Coverage: Latin America & Caribbean

30.03.2006 Over 20,000 people from all over the world have joined the international campaign to ensure that the case against former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori - currently detained in Chile - is resolved promptly, it was announced at a public meeting today.

29.03.2006 Le CAPMA, Collectif pour l'Autonomie du peuple Mapuche (capmamtl@riseup.net), veut informer qu'actuellement 13 prisonnierEs politiques MAPUCHE sont incarcérées en permanence dans différentes prisons du Chili, accuséEs injustement par différentes lois, principalement par la loi anti-terroriste (18.314), une loi au service de l’oppression et de répression de l'État chilien.

29.03.2006 Roadblocks on the international bridges connecting Argentina and Uruguay, carried out by the Argentine environmental movement to protest the construction of two large cellulose factories, demonstrates the social limitations of the neoliberal model and is jeopardizing the regional alliance between two governments that possess, fundamentally, the same political and ideological orientations.

28.03.2006 O movimento internacional de camponeses A Via Campesina comemora a decisão tomada hoje, 24 março, pelo grupo de trabalho da Convenção em Biodiversidade na COP-8 (8ª Conferência das Partes da Convenção de Diversidade Biológica), em Curitiba, Brasil, que manteve e fortaleceu a moratória de fato para a tecnologia Terminator.

28.03.2006 Many believe that the recent mass rallies across the United States in support of immigrants' rights led a Senate committee to promote an immigration reform bill Monday that--in sharp contrast to a House bill passed in December--would put migrant workers on a path to citizenship. Hispanic media outlets paved the way for the impressive show of people power.

25.03.2006 WASHINGTON, Mar 25 (IPS) - Two days after the coup d'etat that brought a brutal military junta to power in Argentina, then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered his subordinates to "encourage" the new regime by providing financial support, according to a previously classified transcript released here by the independent National Security Archive (NSA).

24.03.2006 The governor of Brazil's Parana state vows to keep his state GM-free, in defiance of the federal government’s positive stance towards GM farming.

24.03.2006 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered US support for Argentina's military regime immediately after its coup, newly-declassified documents from the National Security Archive show.

24.03.2006 According to a new UNICEF report, children in Haiti are more likely to die in their first years of life than in any other country in the Western Hemisphere. Citing a lack of basic services, environmental degradation and rampant violence, UNICEF applauds the newly elected president's public commitment to social change and child welfare.

23.03.2006 A land-grabber who has destroyed swathes of Amazon forest and a Swiss multinational illegally growing genetically engineered crops near a protected nature reserve - both targeted by Greenpeace - now face action by the Brazilian government for environmental crimes.

23.03.2006 This year's World Health Day--April 7th--will celebrate all those who protect and promote the health of others. Campaigners will also call on politicians to provide greater support to those working in the healthcare sector so they can continue to do their jobs effectively.

22.03.2006 As fast food chains begin to take root and grow throughout Latin America, so do many Latinos’ waistlines. McDonalds and others are being accused of false advertisement and fudging nutritional facts, amplifying the problem.

22.03.2006 More than 100 child activists gathered in Mexico City Tuesday on the eve of World Water Day to draw attention to the water crisis and its effects on children in underdeveloped countries worldwide. Access to safe and clean water affects every aspect of their lives, the children say.

22.03.2006 Indigenous farmers in Peru - birthplace of the potato - have pleaded with agribusiness Syngenta International to abandon its patent on "terminator" technology which they say could endanger more than 3,000 potato varieties in the region and undermine efforts to reduce poverty.

22.03.2006 CARACAS, Mar 22 (OneWorld) - The right to safe water must be enshrined in international law and policed by the United Nations if millions of people are to be spared death from want of water or from water-borne diseases, activists told governments and business at international talks ending Wednesday.

17.03.2006

17.03.2006 An increasingly progressive Latin America is leaving behind the strict prescriptions of the "Washington Consensus" and threatening the global strength of the IMF and U.S. influence in the Southern Hemisphere, says foreign policy analyst Mark Engler.

17.03.2006 MEXICO CITY, Mar 16 (IPS) - "Access to water is a basic right": while this is the message voiced by the organisers of the 4th World Water Forum, beginning Thursday in Mexico City, civil society activists take a dim view of this international event, as they believe it will promote the privatisation of water resources.

16.03.2006 That something interesting and unusual is taking place in Venezuela first really struck me when, in response to a sarcastic comment about an anti-war meeting of the 2006 World Social Forum taking place in an Air Force base.

15.03.2006 We are representatives of organizations of peasants, family farmers, indigenous peoples, landless peoples, artisanal fisherfolk, rural workers, migrants, pastoralists, forest communities, rural women, rural youth, and defenders of human rights, rural development, the environment, and others. We come from the whole world, to participate in the "Land, Territory and Dignity," to defend our land, our territory, and our dignity.