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ARGENTINA: Theconstruction industry grew 5.8% in October, year-on-year and 18.5% between January and October, also year-on-year.

PERU: The Peruvian congress approved the 2007 budget worth US$19.2bn, a 14.3% increase on 2006's budget.

URUGUAY: Tax revenues were up 9.7% in the period between January and October year-on-year, reaching US$2.9bn.

Development: Two prominent members of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's Partido Acción Nacional were arrested on 11 January.

Significance: Both appear to be involved in a bizarre plot to bump off a moderate Panista state assembly man in Guerrero and replace him with his more hardline suplente (or alternate). On 4 January, the state assembly man, José Jorge Bajos Valverde was gunned down in Acapulco. On 10 January Aldi Manuel González Rodrí­guez, the husband of Jacqueline Orta, who is Bajos Valverde's suplente, claimed that his wife and Ramiro Arteaga Sarabia, the number two in the PAN in Guerrero, plotted the murder of Bajos Valverde. 

The two panistas arrested on 11 January were Arteaga Sarabia and Ángel Pasta Muñúzuri, a former federal deputy. Orta was his private secretary. 

González said that the plotters hired a killer, known only as Nico, for M$20,000 (US$1,800) to kill Bajos Valverde. He added that he drove Nico, in Orta's car, to intercept Bajos Valverde as he was walking to do a TV interview in Acapulco.

Development: On 15 February Felipe Paúcar, an expert in security issues, warned that the country risked returning to the violence of the 1980s if it did not tackle drug-related crime. 

Significance: Paúcar is trying to drum up interest in his latest book, "La guerra oculta en el Huallaga, Monzón y Aguaytia" un which he claims that the country's coca acreage has increased from 30,000 hectares to 70,000 hectares. He says that the trade is policed by armed gangs, which, though lacking the manpower of the Maoist guerrillas, the Sendero Luminoso, are much better armed. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Sendero Luminoso, operating in the highlands and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amarú, operating more in urban areas, came close to overthrowing the Peruvian government. 

Paúcar argues that the government must overhaul the police so that it can tackle the drug trade before the trade becomes too powerful. He argues that the government has neglected policies to deal with the gangs and has focused too heavily on coca-eradication which is unpopular. 

According to the Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación (CVR), around 70,000 people were killed in the fighting between the government and the two main guerrilla groups between 1980 and 2000.

Development: On 25 March the Los Angeles Times published extracts from a CIA report which alleged that General Mario Montoya Uribe, the commander general of the Colombian army, had worked with paramilitary organisations.

Significance: This is another heavy blow for President Alvaro Uribe. Although Montoya's human rights record has long been suspect, such a public denunciation of his links with the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) could well have a deleterious effect on Colombia's chances of keeping its current levels of military aid from the US, particularly now Congress is controlled by the Democrats. Uribe's domestic critics are now ascendant. With eight congressmen loyal to the president now in jail and another five being investigated over their links to paramilitary groups, it is now conceivable that Uribe could struggle to finish his mandate.

According to the CIA document quoted by the newspaper, which also implicates General Freddy Padilla de Leon, commander of all the armed forces, Montoya worked with a paramilitary group in 2002 in order to eliminate urban guerrillas operating in the city of Medellí­n when he was 4th division commander in Antioquia. At least 14 people were killed in the operation, and many more disappeared. The accusation is not new: the Colombian attorney general's office had launched an investigation into the rumours but did not proceed to prosecute the general.

Montoya was appointed by Uribe in February 2006, after the sacking of his predecessor, General Reynaldo Castellanos. Even as a young army officer in the 1970s, he was accused of involvement in the American Anti-Communist Action (AAA), effectively a terrorist group which carried out a series of bombings against civilian targets in Bogotá, including the offices of leftwing newspapers. In the 1980s he was sent for training at the US Army's School of the Americas in Panama. He now controls the largest army in South American, of some 120,000 troops, with another 25,000 to be recruited in 2007.

Gustavo Petro, the opposition senator who has provided much of the evidence revealing the extent of paramilitary links with the government, said that he was intending to denounce Montoya in congress in the next few days. According to Petro, Montoya was instrumental in developing the army's “false positives" approach to the fight against leftwing guerrillas, in which military triumphs were invented to win plaudits. Such tactics involved dressing up the corpses of innocent victims in army fatigues; the apparent rescue of “hostages" and the recovery of explosives seemingly stolen from army barracks. In fact, in October 2006 Montoya himself had accused the security forces of launching bomb attacks on the eve of Uribe's second inauguration. In another scandal, in May last year soldiers acting on the orders of drug traffickers massacred a group of elite policemen.

In a response to the accusations the Colombia government issued a statement saying that it rejected the allegations, which should have been made to either the government or the courts. Montoya gave an interview to the Bogotá daily El Tiempo in which he said his conscience was clear and asked the LA Times to provide evidence of his involvement. The US paper said the report was leaked by a disillusioned CIA operative to protest the Bush administration's failure to do more to pressure Uribe to improve the human rights' situation.

With so many of Uribe's supporters facing investigation, the forced resignation of his foreign minister over her family's link to the AUC and the imminent trial of Jorge Noguera, the former head of the security services and a close friend of the president, the US$700m the US spends every year to fund Plan Colombia will come under closer scrutiny than ever before.

Saturday
CARIBBEAN: Barbados will hold the Final of ICC Cricket World Cup.

CUBA: Members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) trade pact to meet. Representatives of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua will meet to stress solidarity and cooperation and criticise US-sponsored free-trade agreements.

CUBA: Bolivia's President Evo Morales will meet Fidel Castro in public during a meeting in Havana with regional presidents.

Sunday
PERU: Miners will launch an indefinite nationwide strike to demand the country's president fulfill pledges to eliminate outsourcing and improve pension benefits.

Tuesday
VENEZUELA: Deadline for foreign oil companies working in the Orinoco tarbelt to migrate to contracts in which the Venezuelan state will hold the majority share. 

BOLIVIA: This is the due date for a commission of three ministers and two vice-ministers to finish the negotiation process to return control of the National Telecommunications Company (ENTEL) to the Bolivian state.

BRAZIL: This is the deadline set by Brazil and the US for an agreement in principle within the Doha round of global trade talks.

REGION: Protesters in Cuba, El Salvador and Guatemala will stage demonstrations in protest of the release of CIA operative and known-terrorist Posada Carriles on bail. 

Wednesday
BAHAMAS: General election will be held.

Wednesday - Friday
COLOMBIA: President Alvaro Uribe will travel to the US to meet with President George W Bush.

Development: On 3 June President Hugo Chávez suggested that the four Alba members should form a federation.

Significance: Chávez has opted to deepen rather than widen his embryonic alliance, the Alternativa Bolivariana de la Américas (Alba). Two key allies of Chávez , Argentina and Ecuador, were not invited to become founder members of the “Alba federation."

Only four countries are members of Alba (Venezuela; Cuba; Nicaragua and Bolivia). Chávez said, at a summit with President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, that these four countries should move to forming a federation which other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean could then join. The Alba is due to hold its first ever meeting of its council of ministers on 6 June.

Development: On 5 July the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) appeared to accept that congress would have to modify the fiscal reform.

Significance: The crucial point is that neither of the main two opposition parties, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática, will block the reform. The PAN only has 206 of the 500 seats in the lower house of congress.  

Both opposition parties, along with the PAN, want to make constructive changes to a new tax, the Contribución Empresarial a Tasa Unica which is designed to tax the informal economy. The government reckons that that there are 4m people or companies operating in the informal economy.  

All three parties accept the thrust of the reform, which is much more modest in scope than the fiscal reform proposed by President Vicente Fox. The Fox reform, controversially, proposed levying VAT on food and medicine. The opposition-dominated congress refused to accept this and blocked the whole reform.

The three parties are most worried about the Cetu's effect on jobs. They want to spell out that the Cetu will only be levied after companies have met their payroll costs.

Who is Nelson Jobim? He is Brazil's new defence minister.

Why watch him? President Lula da Silva appointed Jobim to the defence ministry in July to sort out the chaos afflicting Brazil's aviation sector following two serious crashes in less than one year. Brazil's aviation sector is controlled by the air force and civilian government agencies. Brazil's airports are all managed by a state-company, Infraero.

Born: 12 April 1946.

Place of Birth: Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul.

Educated: Jobim graduated in law from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre in 1968.

Public Life: Jobim was an active member and representative of the influential Brazilian Attorney's Order (OAB) for many years. He taught law and is the author of several books and articles. He has served in all three branches of Brazil's government, first in the legislature, then in the executive as a cabinet minister and finally in the supreme court. Jobim was a member of the national assembly that issued Brazil's Constitution in 1988.

Timeline:
1969-1994: Practiced law. During this period he was a member of OAB and represented the order in several occasions.
1987-1995: Served two terms as an elected member of Brazil's congress for the Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (PMDB). In 1994 he presided over a review of the 1988 Constitution.
1995-1997: Served as justice minister under the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994-2002).
1997-2007: Appointed to a seat in Brazil's supreme court by Cardoso. From 1999 to 2001 Jobim presided Brazil's electoral court. In 2004 he was voted by his peers to become the supreme court's president. He retired in 2007.

Strengths: Jobim is well regarded by both the Brazilian Left and Right, as his two appointments as cabinet minister show. As an experienced jurist he is also sensitive to the legislation regulating Brazil's aviation system. Yet as a former member of Brazil's congress and the supreme court, Jobim also has "open transit" in both the legislative and judiciary branches of government to push for the legal changes the necessary to reorganise Brazil's aviation sector and improve its safety standards.

Weaknesses: As a civilian, Jobim is expected to encounter problems with the military, especially the air force which is protective of its management of Brazil's air traffic control system. Brazil's military never accepted the fact that the defence ministry, since its creation under Cardoso, has been run by civilians and this is not about to change. The military is also concerned with the potential loss of positions in Infraero. The management of Infraero is one of the few ways air force officers can increase their pay.

Prospects: Jobim has a hard task on his hands. However, he is hard-working, well-connected and, significantly, received a "carte blanche" from Lula to make all the necessary changes in Brazil's aviation system. He is bound to have clashes with the military and will have to deal with serious corruption in the civilian government agencies that are also involved in the management of Brazil's aviation system. A successful outcome to aviation chaos could open the way to the presidency. In 2006 he was mooted by sectors of the regionally-split PMDB to run for Brazil's presidency. The PMDB decided against, reckoning that he would have no chance against Lula. If Jobim sorts out the aviation chaos he will be the PMDB's best choice of a presidential candidate in 2010, an election that is paramount to the party's survival as a national force. Without Lula in the race (he is not legally allowed to run for a third term), and with Lula's potential blessing, Jobim is well-placed to become the next President of Brazil.

Chile: The supreme court announced that it would deliver its judgment on whether former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori should be extradited to Peru on 20 September.

Venezuela: Congress approved the second reading of the proposed constitutional reforms. Congress has one more chance to modify the proposal before it goes to a national referendum.

Development: The Partido Podemos, which has been allied to President Hugo Chávez , accused him of "bypassing" the constitution on 11 October.

Significance: The Podemos's declaration was a reaction to Chávez 's declaration that the party was made of "traitors and the corrupt" as he spoke to the leadership of the allied Partido Comunista de Venezuela and the Patria Para Todos. Chávez 's declaration and the Podemos's reaction suggest it will be difficult for the two to form an alliance again.

Chávez spoke to the PCV and the PPT in a bid to convince the two parties to join his Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela. The PSUV is Chávez 's attempt to bring all leftwing parties in the country under his sole leadership. Chávez told the PCV and the PPT to "abandon the defence of kinds of power" and join the PSUV "before it becomes too late, like it is now late for Podemos".

Podemos, however, said they are still supporters of the government. Yet the party is unhappy with Chávez 's supposed "refusal to listen" to the party's concerns with regards to his proposed constitutional changes. It was then that the party's leaders said that Chávez was "bypassing" the constitution. Podemos also said that what Chávez is trying to implement in Venezuela is "not socialism but state-managed capitalism".

Between April and June some 5.7m Venezuelans joined the PSUV. Critics say the success is due to people's expectations that membership will help them to find jobs in the government and state-owned companies. Chávez said that the PSUV's "historic first congress will be celebrated on 2 November".

Development: On 13 November employees at the Santa Cruz airport Viru Viru and the main union of transport workers announced they were going on strike.

Significance: The Santa Cruz aviation-services administration (Aasana) workers' union declared a strike in protest at the government's freezing of Aasana's funds, following allegations of corruption within the airport authorities. This lengthy dispute came to a head mid October when the government ordered the military take-over of Viru Viru after airport workers detained an American Airlines plane demanding the carrier pay them landing fees in cash - a practice viewed with concern by the government and airlines alike.

The takeover was quickly seized upon by the Santa Cruz civic committee and rightwing opposition party Poder Democrático y Social (Podemos) as evidence of government repression and an attempt at undermining local authorities. The incident provided yet another example of the tension between Morales and the wealthier "media luna" regions, which are pushing for autonomy.

At the time, the rightwing opposition fanned anti-Morales sentiment by claiming that the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez , was indirectly behind the military action and that the government's intention was to control the airport so that "Cuban and Venezuelan planes can come and go as they please".

Meanwhile, the largest transport workers' association, the Confederación de Choferes de Bolivia, also announced a strike, protesting the poor state of the roads, gasoline shortages and inflation among other complaints.

Government minister Alfredo Rada said the transport workers' strike was "totally unjustified" as their demands had been addressed by the government. Rada also said it was "politically motivated" in its timing: the association's congress is due to take place on 20 November and its leaders are seeking re-election. Rada also pointed out that the strike will coincide with other protests taking place in the "media luna" regions over the proposal to use profits from the direct hydrocarbons tax (IDH) to provide senior citizens with a new "Dignity" pension plan.

Development: The Italian energy company, ENI, resumed business activities in Venezuela, according to an official statement issued on 17 December.

Significance: The announcement reveals that despite objections to President Hugo Chávez 's energy policies, foreign companies are still finding it profitable to sign deals with Venezuela. Indeed, ENI was one of the companies that did not agree with Chávez 's "nationalisation" of oil operations in 2006. The Italians vowed to take matters to international arbitration after the Venezuelan state energy company Pdvsa took over its operations.

Venezuela, however, is the fifth largest oil exporter in the world and is currently certifying its reserves - which could turn the country into the holder of the largest crude reserves in the world. With the price of a barrel of oil at almost US$100 in the international market, foreign companies seem to be willing to ditch contractual terms for easier profits. Indeed, most of the foreign companies operating in Venezuela agreed to become minority partners in joint operations with Pdvsa.

ENI and Pdvsa will form a mixed-capital company, Petrolera Guiria, to explore three oil fields in the east of Venezuela. Pdvsa will hold 64% of the new company's shares.

Development: President Oscar Arias admitted on 29 January that Costa Rica might not be able to meet the end-of-February deadline for approving Cafta.

Significance: Arias's problem is congress, which has to approve the 12 enabling laws. He narrowly won the referendum on Cafta approval in October but he admitted that he was not sure how long the enabling laws would take to get through congress. The US has imposed the deadline of the end of February 2008

Arias's biggest obstacle is that the Acción Ciudadana, which has 19 of the 57 members of congress, is preventing the issue from being discussed. Another problem is that several deputies have refused to turn up to sessions, rendering them inquorate.

Development: On 3 March the head of Colombian police, General Oscar Naranjo, claimed to have evidence that Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez had offered US$300m to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc). The evidence was found on a computer belonging to Raúl Reyes, the Farc's number two who was killed at the weekend.

Significance: The fascinating contents of Reyes's computer have been a catalyst for the rapid deterioration in relations between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. The Farc leader's death in a Colombian air strike in Ecuador has become a secondary issue after the Colombian government published documents from three computers found at the Farc base which allege growing ties between the Farc and the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela.

The first documents revealed by Naranjo on 2 March suggested that Ecuador's President Rafael Correa had sent his security minister, Gustavo Larrea, to negotiate with Reyes. The same documents suggested that Correa wanted to get involved in the prisoner swap, that he was willing to install military commanders sympathetic to the Farc near the Colombian border and that he wished to cooperate with the Farc in humanitarian activities in the same area.

On 3 March Larrea admitted that he had met Reyes in January, though he said that the meeting had taken place "outside Ecuador" and, more importantly, that Colombia knew all about it. Correa claimed that he had asked Uribe's permission to become involved in the attempts to secure the release of the Farc's hostages when the pair met in Colombia on 31 December while waiting (in vain) for the Farc to free three of its captives.

According to Correa, his efforts were about to succeed when Reyes was killed. The Ecuadorean president said that he was in negotiations to secure the release of 12 hostages including Ingrid Betancourt and three US military contractors and that "negotiations were at an advanced stage". "Today [Colombia] wants to tie us to the Farc; what cynicism!" Correa lamented. Correa admitted that following the raid there was no chance of getting Betancourt and the other hostages released.

The Colombian government promptly denied knowing anything about Larrea's meeting with Reyes before it had read about it on the Farc leader's computer. (This statement does not directly contradict Correa's claim that Uribe knew about and had approved Correa's mediation with the Farc). A statement released by the presidency dismissed the suggestion that Ecuador was motivated by humanitarian concerns; "the negotiations revealed in the documents look more like the traffic of hostages for political ends".

An interesting footnote to the story is that the US appears to have known about the relationship between Larrea and Reyes even if Colombia didn't. The Miami-based El Nuevo Herald spotted that in the same document (dated 28 February) in which Reyes detailed his meeting with Larrea, the Farc's number two also stated that "los gringos" (the US) had asked "el ministro" (presumably Larrea) to convey to the Farc the US's "interest" in discussing "various topics" with the Farc.

Earlier in the day, the Colombian government had used Reyes' computer to make far more serious allegations against President Hugo Chávez . Naranjo claimed to have found evidence detailing an agreement reached between the Venezuelan government and Iván Márquez, another high-ranking guerrilla leader, during the latter's visit to Caracas in December 2007.

According to Naranjo, Chávez agreed to donate to the Farc US$300m worth of Venezuela's oil production over the course of this year which the guerrilla group could then sell on. One document suggested that the Farc then invest this money back into Venezuela, possibly into government projects. On the subject of money, the computer also revealed that the Farc had donated some US$50,000 to Chávez while he was in prison following a failed coup in 1992.

Another document indicates that Manuel Marulanda, the Farc's top leader, had reached a "military alliance" with Chávez . Marulanda has reportedly placed the Farc under Chávez 's orders in the event of a conflict between Venezuela and the US. Naranjo also suggested that the Farc wants to acquire radioactive material, though he did not suggest Venezuela was in any way involved in the delivery of this.

Colombia announced on 3 March that it will send the computers to the United Nations and the Organization of American States so that these institutions can verify the computers' contents. Given that they were only found after the raid, the computers cannot justify Colombia's decision to bomb Ecuador in pursuit of Reyes. However, they are crucial to the counter-case Colombia is building against Ecuador and Venezuela.

Development: An opinion poll published on 4 April showed that Dominican President Leonel Fernández leads over his closest competitor by 26 percentage points.

Significance: If Fernández maintains the 58% support recorded by last week's poll he will be re-elected in the first round of the presidential elections on 16 May.

Fernández has enjoyed constantly high support throughout the campaign period. As well as his successful management of the country's economy, which enjoyed 8% growth in 2007, he undoubtedly received a boost from the international acclaim gained by hosting the Rio Group Summit in Santa Domingo where he achieved what had appeared unthinkable when the summit began; the hugs and handshakes between the heads of state of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

Fernández's closest rival, Miguel Vargas Maldonado of the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD) trails with 32%, while Partido Reformista Social Cristiano (PRSC) candidate Amable Aristy Castro is out of the race with only 4% of voter support, according to the Asisa Research Group poll.
Fernández has just completed an eight day campaign tour in the US, where he wooed US-based Dominicans with promises of new jobs and better healthcare in the Dominican Republic, and scholarships to allow young Dominicans to study abroad.

Carlos Rafael Fernández - Argentina

Who is he? Fernández was appointed economy minister by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (no relation) after Martí­n Lousteau resigned on 24 April.

Why watch him? Fernández takes over in the middle of a confrontation between the government and farmers' associations, and as inflation appears to be spiraling.  

Born: Ciudad de la Plata, Argentina.
Date of Birth: 1954

Education: Graduated in economics from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata in 1979 where he specialised in public finance and tax administration.

Public Life: A staunch ally of both President Cristina Fernández and her husband Néstor, Carlos Fernández is known more as a technical expert rather than a politician. After various posts in regional government, he joined Néstor Kirchner's administration in 2003 as the economy ministry's sub-secretary for provincial relations. Three years later he became treasury secretary. He then returned to regional government as interim economy minister for the Buenos Aires province under Felipe Solá before being offered a position in Cristina Fernández's new administration as budget sub-secretary.

Fernández then became the country's top tax official in mid March after the president sacked Alberto Abad and the customs chief, Ricardo Echegaray, after Abad and Echegaray rowed blazingly in public. On 24 April he was appointed economy minister following the resignation of Lousteau over a running argument with commerce secretary Guillermo Moreno. The pair had clashed most spectacularly over Moreno's tactics for dealing with inflation; Lousteau believed that Moreno was doing nothing to prevent price rises but was trying to obfuscate the problem via fictitious statistics.

Time Line:
1989-1997: National director of the tax coordination authorities for the provinces.
1990-1996: Worked on the World Bank program for regional economic development.
1997: Sub-secretary of tax coordination and policy for the Buenos Aires provincial government.
2003: Ministry of economy sub-secretary for provincial relations under Néstor Kirchner's government.
2006: Appointed treasury secretary.
2007: Economy minister for the Buenos Aires province (interim).
December 2007: Appointed sub-secretary of the budget.
March 2008: Appointed head of AFIP (the tax office).
24 April 2008: Appointed economy minister.

Strengths: A loyal disciple of the Kirchners, Carlos Fernández also has reasonable relations with Moreno. This makes a contrast with his two predecessors. He has also has a decent reputation as an economist in both the areas of national and regional government.

Weaknesses: Carlos Fernández will encounter considerable constraints in the form of Moreno, whose power over the ministry have become increasingly apparent. It is worth noting that when Lousteau resigned, President Fernández first sounded out Martí­n Redrado, the head of the central bank, on whether he would be willing to serve as his replacement. Redrado, whom many people expected to be offered the post of economy minister when Cristina Fernández took office in December, refused point blank, saying he would not tolerate the conditions which Lousteau endured.

The appointment of Carlos Fernández also attracted considerable criticism from the opposition which considers the appointment illustrates the power wielded by Néstor Kirchner.   Senator Gerardo Morales, head of the opposition Unión Cí­vica Radical (UCR) said that the replacement of Lousteau by Fernández was "another sign that the economy remains in Kirchner's hands."  

Prospects: Carlos Fernández takes over at a difficult time for the economy. The most immediate problem is the government's long-running dispute with the farmers. The more serious problem is the controversy over inflation and the reliability of the data from the national statistics institute, Indec. Two recent polls showed that inflation had overtaken security as the public's main concern.

On 7 May Carlos Fernández and Indec director Ana Edwin gave the first official presentation of the new methodology to measure the consumer price index (IPC), which was met with a barrage of criticism, with complaints that the new index failed to tackle the root of the problem - the way in which raw data is obtained and processed.  

 These problems are unlikely to be resolved simply. The new economy minister has said explicitly that there was nothing he would change in current economic policy. This suggests that he will serve as minister of the treasury rather than the economy, leaving the important economic decisions in the hands of Néstor Kirchner and Moreno.

Development: On 16 June the US government announced that its ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, would return to Washington to discuss security.

Significance: The announcement follows the violent protests which occurred outside the US embassy in La Paz on 9 June and points to further tension between the two countries.

The protests were caused by revelations that former Bolivian defence minister Carlos Sánchez Berzaí­n had been granted political asylum by the US over a year ago. The protesters blame the former defence minister together with ex president, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who also lives in the US, for ordering an army clampdown on anti-government protests in 2003 which resulted in 65 dead and more than 400 injured.

The protests outside the embassy, which resulted in at least three injured after clashes with the police, also resulted in the replacement of La Paz state police chief Ví­ctor Hugo Escóbar, after the government condemned the use of tear gas to disperse the crowds as “excessive".

In a statement unlikely to be well received by the Bolivian government, US State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said that “we appreciate the efforts of the Bolivian National Police to protect our Embassy and our personnel. At the same time, we are concerned by the recent statements of some Bolivian government officials that cast doubt on Bolivia's commitment to fulfill its Vienna Convention obligations to protect diplomatic staff and facilities in the future".

Development: On 19 July the leftwing Partido de la Revolución Democrática annulled its internal elections.

Significance: The timing of the decision to annul the elections, which were held in March and produced a close result with plenty of anomalies, is odd. It comes just a week before the referendum the PRD has organised on the government's proposed reform of the state oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos. The PRD, which is the second biggest party in the lower chamber of congress, is likely to be distracted by infighting in the run-up to the referendum. This suggests that the moderates in the PRD, who control the party machine, want to weaken Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the radical who still does not accept that Felipe Calderón Hinojosa defeated him in the 2006 presidential elections.

Both the candidates for the PRD's party presidency, Alejandro Encinas (López Obrador's man) and Jesús Ortega, criticised the decision by the PRD's Comisión de Garantí­as. López Obrador, however, endorsed the decision. The commission called for fresh elections within a month. It appears that both Ortega and Encinas will be able to run. In the original election there were also three other minor candidates.

Encinas, who appeared to have won, despite the control Ortega's supporters had over the party machine, claims that the decision to annul the election is a victory for “tricksters and people who stop at nothing". Ortega is threatening to appeal against the PRD's decision to the Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJF), on the grounds that there were no major anomalies. The PRD reckons that there were no proper records kept at over 1,000 polling stations.

Development: On 21 August President Hugo Chávez escalated the dispute with the Mexican firm Cemex, after the firm threatened to file for international arbitration over the nationalisation of its operations in Venezuela.

Signficance: Chávez 's tactics are nothing new and are all part of a strategy to push down Cemex's price as low as possible. Having already reached agreement with the two other private cement manufacturers operating in Venezuela (France's LaFarge and Switzerland's Holcim), he is coming from a position of strength. Chávez will also relish the opportunity to stick it to Mexico, a country with which his relations have been cool at best.   Moreover, he may calculate that a show of nationalism against Mexico will boost his government's popular support ahead of important state and municipal elections on 23 November.

Chávez said that Cemex had polluted the environment and failed to invest locally, siphoning off most of its profits for repatriation. 'Go see the pollution not only along the coasts and in the trees, but in the lungs of the children_everything is full of powder. They never invested in technology to clean up the powder because they took all the money abroad". He also said company executives had behaved 'disrespectfully' towards Venezuelans and had a 'superiority complex'. “I am not afraid of arbitration", he said. (Indeed, Venezuela is already facing a number of international arbitration claims, the largest one brought by the US oil firm Exxon Mobil.)

On 19 August Chávez announced that the state, backed by the national guard, had taken full operational and administrative control of the three local Cemex plants, after the 60-day period for talks expired without agreement on a price. Cemex had wanted US$1.3bn, but was offered S$650 - a sum it claimed "significantly" undervalued the business. The president indicated on 21 August that Cemex will be renamed Ceven (Cementos de Venezuela) and that it will work alongside the recently nationalized steel company Sidor and the state oil firm Pdvsa to provide cement for the government's national housing projects.

Chávez announced the nationalization of Ternium Sidor, majority owned by the Argentine firm Techint, in May. Talks are not yet final, but on 19 August it was reported that Techint was on the verge of agreeing a deal worth US$1.65bn for 90% of Sidor. This was a significantly lower than the US$2.4bn Techint had originally wanted, but still a good deal higher than the US$800mn Chávez had initially suggested he would pay in May, which underlines the fact that his bark is nearly always worse than his bite.

Venezuela has typically paid fair value for private companies in previous nationalizations. In the case of Cemex, Chávez will probably take his time, baiting the Mexicans for a while longer.

Development: On 24 September a Florida Federal District court sentenced a former executive of the French telecoms firm Alcatel to 30 months in prison and fined him US$ 261,000 for bribing public workers at Costa Rica's state electricity firm, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE).

Significance: The case throws a spotlight on recent claims made by Transparency International (TI) about the continued widespread prevalence of corruption in Latin America and the Caribbean.  In its latest report it notes a “perpetual sense of deadlock in the fight against corruption" in the region.

That this latest case should refer to Costa Rica is somewhat ironic: it is widely considered to be one of the more transparent and least corrupt countries in the region. In TI's 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Costa Rica was ranked tenth in the Americas region, behind Chile, Uruguay and some high income Caribbean states like Barbados, but ahead of its Central American neighbours and regional heavyweights like Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. Ecuador, Venezuela and Haiti ranked bottom.

According to the Spanish daily El Paí­s , Christian Sapsizian Auvignon (62), formerly the assistant vicepresident of Alcatel for Latin America, was sentenced with conspiring to bribe various ICE civil servants to the tune of US$2.5m over the period 2000-2004.

ICE oversaw the concession of telecom operating licences. In August 2001, ICE granted Alcatel a GSM mobile operating licence for 400,000 lines, worth US$149m. Sapsizian admitted the bribes were intended to curry favour with the ICE.

In October 2004, José Antonio Lobo, a former ICE director, admitted receiving the bribe. The case is controversial because Lobo implicated the then-president Miguel Ángel Rodrí­guez (1998-2002) in the scandal. He said that Rodrí­guez had received 60% of the monies (US$820,000) through a front company, Servicios Notariales Q.C, based in Panama.  Rodrí­guez strenuously denies the accusation.

Sapsizian - who is accused of money laundering, offences against the US and other bribery activities across the region and in Asia and Africa - collaborated with to the US authorities in order to get a reduced sentence. He was arrested in Miami in 2006. He also collaborated with Costa Rican authorities earlier this year, which are still investigating the case locally.