This creates an additional problem for the officials trying to administer the redistribution of land under agrarian reform rules: eligibility is limited to those with farming experience. The government had promised to settle 60,000 families this year. The MST says this is insufficient given that there are 4m people seeking land of their own — but even that limited target is looking unrealistic: in the first eight months of the year the government only managed to settle 6,000 families. The MST has vowed to force the pace by moving into land that has been lying idle and is thus subject to expropriation for redistribution. Landowners have promised to resist this, by force if necessary.
BRAZIL | Prison-directed terror campaign averted. São Paulo's organised crime unit has foiled a campaign of kidnappings of government officials, and the bombing of a metro station and a power pylon, planned by the imprisoned leader of the drug-trafficking gang known as Primeiro Comando, Marcos Williams Herbas Camacho. The plan was aborted when police arrested the go-between, lawyer Mário Sergio Mungioli, with instructions for those who were to carry out these actions. Last March the Primeiro Comando contracted the murder of judge Antônio José Machado Dias, who had convicted several of the gang's leaders.
This episode came just under a month after the head of Rio de Janeiro's prison service asked for his agency to be declared in a state of emergency, after a string of incidents involving corruption among warders, torture of prisoners, and death threats and assassination bids against high-ranking prison officials.
CHILE | Anti-terrorism convictions for Mapuche leaders. Two Mapuche loncos (headmen), Pascual Pichún and Aniceto Morín, were convicted of issuing `terrorist threats' against local loggers and sentenced to five years in prison. They were acquitted of `terrorist arson' for lack of evidence. The use of anti-terrorist legislation for such actions has been criticised by local human rights groups and by the UN rapporteur on indigenous rights, Rodolfo Stavenhagen. Two Mapuche organisations, the Consejo de Todas las Tierras and the Coordinación de Organizaciones e Identidades Territoriales Mapuche, have launched a protest campaign, including a hunger strike, against the sentences.
ARGENTINA | Joint exercise with US called off. The Aguila III joint military exercise with the US (plus contingents from all neighbouring countries), scheduled for 27 October, has been called off by the Argentine government because congress has not approved the immunity requested by the US for its personnel. The legislators had been willing to go along with an exercise-specific immunity, not the blanket protection demanded by Washington as a safeguard against action by the International Criminal Court. The US Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Roger Noriega, suggested that Uruguay might be able to host the exercises instead, but the Uruguayan government begged off, saying that it lacked the necessary facilities.
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