Late last week, the highly contested HidroAysen dam project received a major endorsement by a member of Michelle Bachelet’s Chilean Government.

According to the Santiago Times

[on Thursday] Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman joined Interior Minister Edmundo Perez-Yoma to announce a series of measures aimed at alleviating Chile’s current energy crisis… while the announcements themselves came as no surprise, Perez-Yoma’s response when questioned about the HidroAysen project certainly did. “Do you support pushing forward with the Aysen dams?” a reporter asked him. “Yes, I’m for it… Of course I am. I think …

Today, the Summit for Friendship and Integration of the Iberoamerican Peoples begins in Santiago, Chile. Yesterday, the presidents of Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, along with the vice-president of the Council of State of Cuba confirmed their presence in an act with the social movements and organizations of the region.

According to Real World Radio, “The summit was planned by tens of social movements and organizations of the country, for instance, the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI) and the Central Union of Workers. Political Chilean organizations have …

This past weekend, 80 Representatives of communities effected by environmental conflicts met in Cobquecura, Chile, for the first of four meetings (noted on the map) to take place by the end of this year.

Summoned by the Action Network for Environmental and Social Justice (RAJAS), the meetings are being held “For the Resistance and Mobilization Against Looting;” all of which are aimed at discussing and organizing a consolidated strategy against the problems they commonly face–namely, those presented by socio-territorial mining projects, hydroelectric, urban and forest plantations and the cellulose industry.

According …

In Chile last week, a bill was proposed to officially recognize the extermination of the Selk’nam and Aonikenk, two Peoples whom thrived in Chile’s southern Patagonia area before contact with Europeans—as genocide.

The bill also proposes to construct monuments about the genocide of the Selk’nam and Aonikenk, ‘to enter them into Chile’s history’.

In the mid-nineteenth century, European settlers established sheep ranches near the Selk’nam lands…. Completely foreign to the European notion of private property, the astute Selk’nam Warriors hunted the sheep.

In response, the Ranchers organized themselves …

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is currently on a mission in Latin America, pushing forward a “Canadian-made” free trade model which he wants applied throughout the region. Harper has also been going to incredible lengths to improve Canada’s image in the South, making impressive statements claiming that Canada the perfect, Canada the majestic, Canada the awesome — seeks only to free Latin America from the evil scourge that is Latin America.

On the 15th he set out to Colombia, where he met with President Alvaro Uribe to discuss …

On the weekend, several social, cultural and environmental organizations met in Chile to draw out an initiative to create a unified movement in Chile, who will explicitly work to change the current system towards one that is respectful to “natural resources, social justice and cultural diversity.”

From Real World Radio - Representatives from the Student Federation of the University of Chile in Santiago, from the National Confederation of Artisanal Fishermen of Chile, from the Confederation of Sea Workers, from the Council in Defense of Valley de Huasco and from …

Here’s a few recent stories focusing on the current work of the Mapuche People…

On May 16, 2007, fourteen Mapuche activists temporarily occupied a property owned by Fernando Léniz, one of Chile’s most important forestry leaders…

From the Santiago Times - Mapuches entered Léniz’s property at 8 a.m. and left it at 5 p.m., after government officials assured that the National Corporation for Indigenous Development (Conadi) would meet with them to discuss their grievances. Juan Huichamán, spokesperson for the Mapuche community, explained that “the community mobilized because Conadi failed to respond …

Chile Explodes
from: www.infoshop.org
March 31 2007

Today on the anniversary twenty years ago when two brothers belonging to the MIR, Rafael and Eduardo Toledo, were shot down by the Chilean police, student protesters shut down the center of Santiago Chile and set up barricades in the poor neighborhoods in the southern part of the city.

The government is blaming the movement on guerilla groups like the Frente Patriotico and the GAP and its propaganda is claiming that they are connected to drugs. The police raided the University of Chile and claimed to find a molotov cocktail factory and an arms deposit with …

Venezuela’s Banco del Sur: The End of the IMF in Latin America
by Paul McIvor, www.upsidedownworld.org
March 21, 2007

Speaking to an audience at Columbia Business School in February, Rodrigo de Rato, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, sketched out his vision for Latin America. Optimistically titled “The Way Forward,” Mr. de Rato called on the countries of the region to stay the course laid out by the IMF – structural adjustments, trade liberalization and privatization.

He dismissed the shift to the left in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia as an “apparent inconsistency of economic and political developments,” suggesting that voter dissatisfaction has …

Chile’s Indigenous Pehuenches turn to tourism in Alto Biobio
By Beatrice Karol Burks
March 16, 2007

Chile’s indigenous Pechuence population – which lost part of their ancestral homelands when Spanish utilities company Endesa built two major dams, the Pangue and the Ralco, on the Biobío River in the 1990’s – have turned to ecotourism as a means to protect both their rapidly disappearing culture and their livelihoods.

The new initiative, “Horse riding and Walking Along the Old Paths,” is financed by Chile’s National Environment Commission (CONAMA) and the United Nations Development Program and offers trekking – on horseback or foot – through 200 kilometers …