Inter Press Service: Latin America

MEXICO CITY, Aug 27 (IPS) - The Mexican government, Catholic Church and conservative groups lost a crucial battle Wednesday in their fight against abortion, which was legalised in the capital in April 2007.

BOGOTA, Aug 27 (IPS) - The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor ended a three-day visit to Colombia Wednesday, where he has been investigating who is ultimately responsible for the human rights crimes committed in this civil war-torn country.

LIMA, Aug 27 (IPS) - "They entered the village and called all the peasants together, tortured them to make them say who were terrorists, and killed them because they didn't talk," testified former soldier José Contreras, one of those involved in the 1985 killing of 69 people in the southern Peruvian village of Accomarca.

HAVANA, Aug 26 (IPS) - Cuba has had a rude awakening from a three-decade dream as undisputed Olympic games leader in Latin America and the Caribbean, turning in the worst performance since Mexico City in 1968.

TEGUCIGALPA, Aug 26 (IPS) - Honduras has joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), amid criticism from the business community and right-wing political sectors.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 26 (IPS) - Brazil's social and economic future may depend, according to experts, on the way it ultimately handles the sudden oil wealth discovered deep under the Atlantic ocean off the country's southeastern coast.

MANAUS, Brazil, Aug 26 (IPS) - Cuban instrument-maker or luthier Raúl Lage came for six months, but has already spent seven and a half years in Manaus, the city in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. "The project is really fantastic," he says, explaining why he plans to renew his work contract again in September.

QUITO, Aug 25 (IPS) - The campaign for the Sept. 28 referendum on Ecuador’s newly rewritten constitution has got under way, with fierce arguments between the document's supporters and opponents.

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 25 (IPS) - For nearly a year and a half, local residents in the northwestern Argentine province of La Rioja have been blocking the road that climbs up to the Nevados de Famatina mountain to protest a gold mining project that they say will pollute the water in the country’s driest district.

MANAOS, Brazil, Aug 23 (Tierramérica) - The Brazilian state of Amazonas is "a quarry of ideas and creativity" and is in the vanguard for having preserved 98 percent of its native forests, paying for environmental services, and enacting the pioneering Climate Change Act, says Nadia D'Ávila Ferreira, the state's secretary for the environment and sustainable development.

LIMA, Aug 22 (IPS) - The Peruvian Congress voted Friday to repeal two decrees that opened up communally owned native lands to private investment and that triggered a wave of protests this month by indigenous people in Amazon jungle provinces.

MEXICO CITY, Aug 22 (IPS) - In response to the growing public outcry over Mexico’s soaring crime rates, the president, state governors, lawmakers and judges agreed to a broad new anti-crime plan, characterised by a number of old promises, but also by one novel aspect: precise timeframes, targets and follow-up mechanisms.

LA PAZ, Aug 22 (IPS) - A beef producers’ boycott declared by agribusiness interests in eastern Bolivia is the latest attempt by the pro-autonomy opposition movement to undermine the government of Bolivian President Evo Morales.

HAVANA, Aug 21 (IPS) - When leafy vegetables like watercress or cabbage showed up at the local market in the 1970s and 1980s in Alamar, a suburb east of the Cuban capital, locals would say "here’s grass for the Chileans."

BOA VISTA, Roraima, Brazil, Aug 21 (IPS) - An imminent decision by Brazil’s Supreme Court on the demarcation of the Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous reservation in the Amazon jungle region has the country’s native communities on edge, because of the precedent it will set.

LA PAZ, Aug 20 (Tierramérica) - What do Bolivia's largest textile mill, an organic cacao cooperative and an indigenous-run tourist hostel in the Amazon have in common? The answer lies in the path, shaky but inspiring, that they are all taking towards sustainable production.

BILWI, Nicaragua, Aug 20 (IPS) - The newly reactivated U.S. Fourth Fleet began its operations in Latin American waters with a humanitarian mission that made its first stop in Nicaragua, before heading on to six other countries of the Caribbean and Central and South America.

SANTIAGO, Aug 19 (IPS) - More than 100 artists from Chile’s nine indigenous groups will take part in the second biennial exhibition of indigenous art in the capital Oct. 17-Nov. 2, which hopes to draw at least 30,000 visitors.

LIMA, Aug 19 (IPS) - Defending the state of emergency declared in three provinces in Peru to crack down on protests by indigenous communities against a law facilitating the sale of their community-owned lands, Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo said the government was safeguarding "the rights of the great majority of Peruvians."

HAVANA, Aug 18 (IPS) - Miriam Leiva, one of the founders of the Cuban movement Women in White, announced Monday that she was leaving the group of wives, mothers and sisters of imprisoned dissidents to dedicate herself to "independent journalism."