Across the Americas

by Luis Ángel Saavedra
1/22/2009
Indigenous groups on both sides of the border need each other to protect their land and autonomy.

Members of the Awa indigenous people of northern Ecuador and southern Colombia say that despite the political border dividing them they need each other to fight a common threat: the appropriation of their lands.

During her confirmation hearing last week before the Senate, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the following about Colombia when questioned by Republican Senator Richard Lugar.

January 21, 2009

Please provide your views regarding President’s Álvaro Uribe’s desire to continue in power for a third consecutive term

Hillary Clinton: As you are aware, the Colombian Congress is in the process of addressing the question of re-election. I do not believe it is proper for the United States to attempt to dictate the result of any internal democratic process in the region.

Dec 19 2008
Kevin Young – Media Accuracy on Latin America (MALA)

U.S. news coverage of parallel political events in Colombia and Venezuela offers an opportunity to test the usefulness of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “propaganda model,” developed in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Pantheon, reissued 2002). The model predicts that the news media will look favorably upon the Colombian government of Álvaro Uribe, a close U.S. ally, while consistently vilifying the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez, whom the U.S. government frequently identifies as an antagonist. If the model holds, U.S. media outlets will be found to portray the Uribe government as relatively democratic, progressive, and peaceful, while casting the Chávez government as authoritarian, regressive, and militaristic.

By Chris Kraul
January 11, 2009

Rebels, drug traffickers, and soldiers may battle around them and encroach on their lands, but tribes hold on to their peaceful ways to resolve conflicts.

By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Jan 12 (IPS) - Declassified U.S. documents show that the CIA and former U.S. ambassadors were fully aware, as far back as 1990, that the military in Colombia -- the third largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt -- were committing extrajudicial killings as part of "death squad tactics."