[With less than six months before Mexico hosts the next global climate change summit, Mexican environmental organisations hosting the parallel civil society forum are divided on how to carry it out -- which some fear could ultimately weaken their role at the negotiating table. Emilio Godoy reports.]

Opening a Crack in History

Duncan Smith - Red Pepper (June/July 2010)

Sixteen years have passed since an army of indigenous peasants burst out of the jungles of south-eastern Mexico crying ‘Ya Basta!’ (enough) and still the Zapatistas fascinate observers worldwide. The day that the North American Free Trade Agreement came into force, 1 January 1994, will forever be remembered as the day a totally new rebellion started. This was the day the previously unknown EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) occupied seven major towns in the state of Chiapas, declaring ‘war against oblivion’.

[Israel's deadly storming of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters has unleashed a wave of criticism of the Netanyahu government's actions from nearly every country in the world. It is interesting to compare the US administration's position on this tragic event with the positions expressed by its Latin American neighbours, writes Alexander Main.]

Venezuelan group perform their song 'En Favor De La Paz'

The governments of Latin America and the Caribbean asked ECLAC Tuesday to come up with a new set of criteria so middle-income countries are not excluded from official development assistance. They also called for greater South-South cooperation.

President Obama met with Peruvian President Alan Garcia at the White House on Tuesday amidst growing unrest in Peru over the Alan Garcia government’s free-market policies that open up indigenous lands to resource extraction. Outside the White House, Hollywood actor Q’orianka Kilcher chained herself to a fence, her body covered in black paint to represent oil. She was forcibly removed and the police had to use a saw to cut through her chains. Democracy Now reports.

[Buoyed by the party machine and rural voters, a win for Juan Manuel Santos means an uphill battle for Antanas Mockus.]

Colombia Restricts Media on Election Day

Thursday 27th May 2010, by Camilla Pease-Watkin - Colombia Reports

Colombian press are prohibited by law to report on electoral irregularities during this Sunday's presidential elections, without prior confirmation of the news by an official government source, reported Colombian media on Thursday.

Cuban Researcher Receives the 'Green Nobel'

Friday 28th May 2010, by Cuba 50

The representative of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Havana, Ana Maria Navarro, congratulated Cuban researcher Humberto Rios Labrada who last week became the first Cuban to receive the Goldman Environmental Prize, sometimes called the Green Nobel and the largest prize in the world given to grass-roots environmentalists.

[Mapuche territory once stretched from the Pacific coast and islands of Chile across the Andes into Argentina. The Mapuche are still fighting for recognition, now against Chile’s two biggest forestry companies, government obduracy, and an anti-terrorist law drafted by the Pinochet regime.]