South America

Thousands of students marched through the rain on Thursday demanding far-reaching education reforms and dismissing the government’s latest plan to resolve the weeks-old crisis. For three months students have been taking to the streets to demand free public education and an end to for-profit schools, which are seen as fuelling high prices and disparity between the rich and poor.

At least 50,000 Brazilian rural workers called for increased social justice, especially for women, from President Dilma Rousseff’s government as they marched through Brasilia’s streets on Wednesday. “Brazil is a very socially unequal country and when it comes to women, that inequality is even bigger,” said Carmen Foro, who coordinated this year’s annual protest march.

The Venezuelan Minister for Energy and Oil, Rafael Ramírez, said bringing home the gold is a measure that will strengthen the economy and sovereignty. He also defended the government project to nationalise gold mining in the country. The Venezuelan executive announced on Wednesday that it will recover the gold deposited in countries such as the UK, the USA and Canada.

Despite the very low wintry temperatures and the heavy rainfall all day last Thursday in the city of Santiago, Chilean students went on with the massive social protest which has been described as the unprecedented “march of the hundred thousand umbrellas against profiteering in education”.

This was the prayer of the thousands of placards that, under continuous rain and a temperature close to freezing, were carried through the streets of Santiago today by almost 100 thousand people, obediently sticking to the new route outlined by the government in order to distance the protest and its conscience-raising role from the centre of the capital.

Ecuador’s first wind farm to generate electricity will begin to be built in September in the southern province of Loja, according to the Electricity Corporation of Ecuador (Celec). The project, worth 34 million US$, will provide a total of 15 megawatts to the national power system, and should be operational in 2012.

President of Paraguay Fernando Lugo regretted on Tuesday that the ability to recover ill-gotten lands is not only in the hands of the executive, and urged the judiciary and the Legislature to intervene to find a solution. Land reform is one of the country’s historic debts and it requires the involvement of all social sectors, Lugo said at the ceremony for Children’s Day.

Plans for a law condoning same-sex marriage are being considered by the ruling left wing coalition party, Frente Amplio, in Uruguay. A project created by Uruguay’s first transsexual lawyer, Michelle Suárez, will be unveiled shortly to the Constitution Commission and the Chamber of Deputies.

“A new Chile is born,” said President Sebastián Piñera as he personally welcomed 33 miners at the surface after their spectacular rescue from a collapsed mine in the Atacama desert 10 months ago. The country has indeed changed since then but not as La Moneda palace’s current occupant expected.

Three Chilean students on hunger strike were admitted today in a delicate state after 31 days of fasting which, from this week included the rejection of liquids, as a deepening of the protest demanding free and better quality education. They were admitted with heart and kidney problems.