What is happening today with regards to the drug war in Mexico has important precedent elsewhere in the hemisphere, namely, in Colombia. There is a legitimate focus on how events in Colombia preceded what is taking place in the “drug war” in Mexico. Key to the importance of Colombia from 2000 onwards in understanding Mexico today is Plan Colombia and the multi-billion-dollar investment the US government made in the war on drugs there.

Throughout Latin America, people are opposing a model that destroys the environment and limits the possibilities for communities to continue cultivating the land and living the way they choose. Conflicts over mining, fumigations, and genetically modified organisms are among the most frequent.

“Although the rulers do not like it, we will continue defending our territory because this is where we come from, and we are not leaving despite their repression and corruption" say the ejidatarios of San Sebastián Bachajón, who denounce the murder with impunity of their leader Juan Vázquez Guzmán, and request the intervention of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation to protect their rights and the integrity of their territory.

Ecuador has achieved what most Latin American societies have been dreaming of for decades: a stable leftist government. Yet things did not turn out the way social movements had imagined them. In particular, the list of people accused of terrorism expands each day and things are about to worsen significantly.

The upcoming February 2014 elections, however, will be the make-or-break factor in determining whether this case is just a blip in Salvadoran history or whether this truly signals a rupture with previous institutionalized misuse of public funds. Under an ARENA or a Unidad government, unfortunately, the latter scenario is highly unlikely.

On September 28, community leader Mynor López was walking by the church in Santa Cruz Barillas, Huehuetenango, when he was suddenly seized by men dressed in civilian clothing, taken in a pickup to a waiting military helicopter, and flown to Guatemala City. The response of the population was both immediate and massive. In communities across the region residents took to the streets in peaceful protest, blockading highways and demanding Mynor’s release.

For the first time, a Canadian mining company will appear in a Canadian court for actions committed overseas. Hudbay Minerals, Inc, will be standing trial for murder, rapes and attacks committed against Indigenous Guatemalans by security personnel working for Hudbay’s subsidiary, Compañía Guatemalteca de Níquel (CGN).

The new military police are better armed than the civilian police they will replace in this mission. For example, they will be armed with Israeli Galil ACE 21 assault rifles carrying 35-round magazines, capable of firing 700 rounds per minute. The prospect of these boots on the ground treating neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula as battlefields should be troubling, even to those who applaud this latest move in the name of increasing security, including the US State Department, which Liberal party congress member Jose Azcona said in July had encouraged the formation of such a force during the previous presidential administration.