In Brief 7/4/2012 Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, Venezuela, Guatemala

On June 27, Ret. army Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra became the first former army official in Brazil to be convicted of crimes dating from the 1964-85 military dictatorship. He was sentenced to pay US$100,000 for the 1971 torture and murder of journalist Luiz Eduardo da Rocha Merlino at a political police facility in São Paulo.

The National Copper Corporation, or CODELCO, the state-run copper company of Chile, announced June 27 that it will use a solution containing living organisms to extract copper from ore, a technique called bioleaching. Chilean scientists developing the technique say it will create a more sustainable and cleaner form of mining. Chile is home to around one-third of the world’s copper reserves, of which CODELCO controls 11 percent.

Some 2,000 campesinos in Colombia marched on June 27, demanding that the Tres Cruces military base in the southern Cauca region be dismantled. It was installed in April on a farm to counter the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Local residents there complained that it put them in the crossfire.

The government of Ecuador on June 27 said that it will stop sending military members to the formerly-called School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, saying that it has trained Latin American officials with ties to human rights violations. Ecuador’s decision followed a withdrawal from the school by Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and Venezuela. The school was created in 1946 and renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation after it was moved from Panama in 1984.

A court in Guatemala on June 26 sentenced 36 members of the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas to 1,250 years in prison for murder, kidnapping and drug-trafficking, among others. Hugo Álvaro Gómez Vásquez, known as “La Bruja,” received a 158-year sentence, while other three high-ranking members each received 97. Among their crimes was the May 2011 murder of prosecutor Allan Stowlinsky.

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