After a month in which reports of ‘invasions’ and gunbattles in some of Rio’s ‘pacified’ favelas, the installation of new police pacification units has resumed and the authorities have begun to crack down on one of the new threats to this drive: police corruption. At the same time in São Paulo police may have nipped in the bud a new wave of gang-led violence. In March police were able to enter unopposed two groups of favelas in the Zona Norte, the Complexo do Caju in São Cristóvão (between two of the main access avenues to the city) and the Barreira…

The trial now under way of three men accused of murdering two rural activists in Pará has become a reminder to the fact that violence in rural areas has been increasing, and that the reaction of the government and the judiciary is painfully slow and, according to human rights campaigners, inadequate, bordering on indifference. The murders in question took place in May 2011. José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, María do Espíritu Santo da Silva, had been living for 20 years in the Projeto de Assentamento Agroextrativista (Paex) Praialta-Piranheira (close to Marabá), engaged in harvesting chestnuts. They were…

One of the worst storms in the history of the province of Buenos Aires had yet to subside when the accusations of blame began. Dozens were killed and at least 280,000 people were left without power as terrible flash floods battered Buenos Aires and the coastal city of La Plata. Eight people were killed in Greater Buenos Aires, as between 140 and 190mm of rain fell in just two hours early on 2 April; the most intense rainfall since 1906. Several of the city’s major roads were cut off by the floodwater, all city transport ground to a halt and…

Former president Michelle Bachelet waited more than three years to confirm that she would seek to run for the presidency again, despite being the constant source of speculation. When, this week, she finally revealed her intention to seek another term in November, it was totally overshadowed by the president of the Partido Comunista (PCCh), Guillermo Teillier, who for the first time admitted that he had authorised a failed attempt to assassinate General Augusto Pinochet in 1986. Teillier was roundly condemned by Democracia Cristiana (DC), the largest faction in the opposition coalition Concertación. The DC and the PCCh pose a serious…