Across the Americas

November 20, 2008

Congresswoman
NANCY PELOSI
Speaker of the House of Representatives

The network of Colombian organizations that have signed this letter would like to express our thanks and recognition of your concern for and interest in Colombia, in particular in relation to human rights, as expressed by your decision to postpone indefinitely the debate in the US Congress around the Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

Translation of the Final Working Document from the Social and Community Minga in Colombia

November 21, 2008
Bogotá, Colombia

The Minga LIVES, may the MINGA LIVE! We call for a Colombia of the people without owners; all the wisdom, all the pain, all the experience, all the words, all our grandmothers and our memories guide us. We are going to live because we are forever tired of the pain, death and greed of those that
continue to rob us of a life of peace.

By Mario Murillo (Bogotá, Colombia; October 14, 2008)

As I write this, over 12,000 indigenous activists and representatives of other popular and social sectors of southern Colombia are urgently congregating in the "Territory of Peace and Coexistence" in La Maria Piendamó, in Cauca, confronting a massive presence of state security forces who have been ordered to dislodge them.

Faced with the situation generated by the declaration of a State of Emergency [lit. Interior Commotion], the CUT has met with trade unions and social organizations and as a result concluded that once again the Uribe Government seeks to take away the minimum democratic guarantees and, especially, strike down the trade union movement and other social organisations.

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Former hostage Ingrid Betancourt made an emotional appeal to EU lawmakers Wednesday to work for the release of other captives, saying nations must drop long-held taboos against talking with terror groups.

She said isolating such groups made no sense anymore and did little to address root causes of terrorism such as poverty.

Betancourt said that seeking "dialogue was indispensable" to ending conflict. "When I say we have to negotiate with terrorists, I say it's the best way to save lives."