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Development: The minister for rural development, Miguel Rossetto, announced on 7 April that the government has freed up an extra R$400m (US$154m) for land reform this year.

Significance: The government reduced the rural development ministry's budget in February this year from R$3.7bn to R$1.7bn, at the same time cutting the ministry's funds for purchasing land to give to peasants from R$755m to R$480m. Rossetto subsequently demanded that President Lula restore this latter sum if the government was to achieve its target for relocating families. According to Rossetto, the new injection of funds will mean that the government can now relocate a further 35,000 families on top of the 40,000 he reckoned could be relocated after his budget was cut.

Frustrated by the government's lack of progress on rural reform, the landless peasant movement, the Movimento dos Sem-Terra (MST), has once again taken the law into its own hands. The MST has so far this month invaded 14 estates in the northern state of Pernambuco as part of its Abril Vermelho (Red April) land-occupation campaign. Some 4,870 families have taken part in the land occupations.

Development: Marí­a Julia Alsogaray, a former environment minister under Carlos Menem, was released from jail on 11 May, 21 months after she was convicted on corruption and embezzlement charges.

Significance: The release of Alsogaray, the only official who served in the Menem administrations during the 1990s to be imprisoned for illicit enrichment, was sharply criticised by the government of President Néstor Kirchner. The prime minister, Alberto Fernández, said: "There is always that outrageous feeling that in Argentina a certain perverse impunity system prevails ... which this government is fighting so hard against." Kirchner himself said the release smacked of someone “being afraid of her (Alsogaray) spilling the beans."

At her trial in 2003 Alsogaray admitted to receiving “supplementary wages" to the tune of seven times her monthly salary. She was paid out of a secret fund, which was ostensibly set up for intelligence and security purposes. While the Kirchner administration has fulminated against the corruption believed to have been entrenched in the executive, legislative and judicial branches under Menem, and claims that it would never institute the practice of secret payments to officials, it has not as yet revoked the “secret laws" that permitted the corruption to take place.

A federal court is in the process of investigating the misuse of funds set aside under the secret laws. Three former ministers, Domingo Cavallo, Oscar Camilión and Raúl Granillo Ocampo, the economy, defence and justice ministers respectively, will testify next week. Alsogaray will face two charges of malfeasance.

Development: On 16 June the Partido Popular Socialista (PPS) accused the ruling Partido dos Trabalahadores (PT) of trying to buy votes for the former mayor of São Paulo, Marta Suplicy.

Significance: The PT has already been hit by allegations that it bought votes in the national congress; the PPS is now accusing it of carrying out the same practice at municipal level. Sources within the PPS claim that in the first half of 2004 the secretary general of the PT, Silvio Pereira, and the then-municipal secretary for communications, Valdemir Garreta, offered the PPS leadership R$4m (US$1.66m) to back Suplicy in the São Paulo legislature.

The bribe attempt described by the PPS matches the accusations made against the PT on a national level by Roberto Jefferson which have caused upheavals in the government of President Lula da Silva. The president's reputation will take a further hit on account of the PPS revelations; Lula strongly backed Marta at last year's municipal elections at which she failed in her attempt top win a second term as mayor.

Development: On 20 July the president of the anti-drug agency, Nils Ericsson, criticised an ordinance passed by the regional government of Huánaco authorising free cultivation of coca as irrational and completely unacceptable.

Significance: The government set a dangerous precedent by accepting a similar ordinance in Cusco on 21 June. It was only a matter of time before other regions decided to follow Cusco's lead. Puno did so on 13 July, a move that the government roundly condemned. But Huánaco is much more serious. 

The government cannot turn a blind eye to the Huánaco ordinance if it wants to preserve its coca-eradication policy intact. This is because the Monzón valley is located in Alto Huallaga, which straddles the departments of Huánaco and San Martí­n. The Monzón valley increased coca cultivation by 6% to 11,320 hectares in 2004, over 20% of the whole of Peru's coca acreage and more than the country's legal limit of 9,000 hectares in itself. Significantly, the state coca firm, Enaco, buys none of the coca cultivated in the Monzón valley. It is all destined for the cocaine market.

Ericsson said that the ordinance was unconstitutional because all regional laws are subordinate to the national law declaring coca production illegal unless it is sold to Enaco. He said the government would adopt this stance on all similar regional ordinances in the future.

Development: Full diplomatic relations have been restored between Panama and Cuba almost a year after Cuba broke off relations with Panama on 26 August 2004 when Panama's former president Mireya Moscoso decided to pardon four anti-Castro activists, including Luis Posada Carriles, as her parting act.

Significance: Cuba's foreign minister Felipe Pérez Roque and his Panamanian counterpart Ricardo Durán signed a document on 20 August reinstating bilateral diplomatic ties at a ceremony in Havana attended by Presidents Fidel Castro and Martí­n Torrijos, who has sought to restore ties since taking over from Moscoso on 1 September last year.

Moscoso never provided a convincing explanation for her decision to pardon the men, especially given Posada's proven terrorist background. At the time she justified her decision to free the men on the grounds that "We know that if they stay, they would face the possibility of being extradited to Venezuela or Cuba, where I am sure they would have been killed."

Posada was arrested in Miami by US homeland security agents on 17 May. Cuba accuses the 77-year old Cuban-born Venezuelan, a former CIA operative, of a series of terrorist attacks. Posada served in the US army from 1963 to 1965 and then worked with the CIA from 1965 until the Agency severed ties with him after receiving intelligence that he could be involved in smuggling cocaine from Colombia to Miami through Venezuela. Soon after the CIA cut him loose, Posada was linked to the bombing of a Cubana jetliner on course for Barbados on 6 October 1976 which claimed the lives of all 73 passengers.

Development: The government dismissed the head of the Gendarmerí­a Nacional (border guard), Pedro Pasteris, on 26 September after it emerged that he is being investigated for the disappearance of nine people during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

Significance: Pasteris was close to the government of President Néstor Kirchner which appointed him in November 2004 after pushing 12 of the 16 commanders of the Gendarmerí­a into retirement. Kirchner has fired all officials suspected of rights violations during the dictatorship.

The Argentine daily Clarí­n splashed the Pasteris story over its front page on 25 September reporting that he was a suspect in a probe into the disappearance of at least nine dissidents of the Montonero guerrillas in 1980, when he was in charge of the border post at the bridge of Paso de los Libres in the northeastern province of Corrientes. The interior minister, Aní­bal Fernández, said that a person under investigation for such a serious incident could not be seen at the head of the force. The investigation is looking into the existence of an underground detention centre known as "La Polaca" situated near the bridge.

Development: On 29 October the weekly magazine Veja published a report accusing President Lula da Silva of receiving US$3m from the Cuban government for his 2003 election campaign.

Significance: Veja has broken the majority of the corruption allegations which have dogged Lula this year. It has uncovered several cases of malfeasance in the government and in public-owned companies alike including the mensalão scandal, in which the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores is accused of paying a monthly allowance to allied legislators for their support in congress.

The magazine has also been trying to detect irregularities in Lula's campaign leading up to the 2003 presidential election. In April it alleged that the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) had paid US$5m to the PT's campaign chest but the evidence was flimsy; in its latest edition Veja has claimed that Fidel Castro smuggled US$3m to the PT in cases full of whisky and rum.

If this were true, Lula and the PT would have broken a number of electoral laws, such as a failure to provide accurate information on sources of funding and receiving financing from a foreign source. Interestingly, Veja has provided two sources close to the finance minister, Antonio Palocci, to corroborate the story.

The PT and other parties have described the article as a crude plot by Brazil's rightwing parties to discredit the president further and the attempt to implicate Palocci as a transparent attempt to slur one of the few members of Lula's cabinet who is as yet untouched by the corruption scandals. The Cuban government has issued a statement roundly denying the report.

If the Veja story is the product of a rightwing conspiracy, it might backfire. Showing a unity which has been lacking in recent months, leftwing and pro-government parties have come together to dismiss the story; if no more credible evidence emerges against Lula and the PT then the report will have achieved little more than to galvanise the left.

Development: The candidate for the opposition Partido Liberal, Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, stretched his lead further over his rival from the ruling Partido Nacional, Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo Sosa, according to figures released by the supreme electoral tribunal (TSE) on 1 December.

Significance: Four days after the president of the TSE, Arí­stides Mejí­a, prematurely proclaimed Zelaya as the clear winner it looks as if Honduras really does now have its "president elect". With 78% of the vote counted, Zelaya has opened up a 3.5 point lead over Lobo (49.61% against 46.32%). Mejí­a, who is affiliated to the PL, said he had been vindicated: "Everyone accepts what happened in Honduras except the Partido Nacional and I don't understand that attitude," he said.

The final result should be announced on 3 December but it will be well into next week before the TSE reveals the results of the legislative and municipal elections so the victor will have to wait a while to see the composition of congress. Judging by the closeness of the presidential count the PL and PN are likely to win a similar total of seats. The new government will take over on 27 January. Zelaya is already constructing his cabinet. According to the national daily, El Heraldo, his future minister of the presidency, Hugo Noé Pino, travelled to Washington to meet World Bank and IMF officials on 1 December.

Development: General Marcelo Antezana, the army commander, made some wild statements on the morning of 12 January, which he then took back in the afternoon.

Significance: First, Antezana said, on the radio, that the US had organised the decommissioning of 28 Chinese-made missiles in October 2005 because it feared that Evo Morales would win the presidential elections. Morales alleged this before the elections. In the afternoon, Antezana was summoned to the presidential palace by President Eduardo Rodrí­guez, who will hand over to Morales on 22 January, to elaborate on his comments. Antezana recanted completely at a press conference and said: "I am absolutely sure that our government did not submit to any force or foreign power over the missiles nor in any other situation which involves President Rodrí­guez, or worse, the US."

The head of the armed forces, Admiral Marco Antonio Justiniano gave the broadest hint that Antezana would be fired by saying that although Antezana remained in his job the final decision rested with President Rodrí­guez.

Equally, bizarrely, Antezana told the same radio show in the morning that the previous (also interim) president, Carlos Mesa, had contemplated a coup, in June 2005, to remain in power. He claimed that Mesa wanted to create chaos and then establish a socialist-military government, backed by the former commander-in-chief, Luis Aranda.

Development: On 16 February two leaders of the mara gang, Mara 18, offered a truce to its main rival Mara Salvatrucha to strike back at the authorities.

Significance: The government will be concerned about the possibility of the maras setting aside their differences. It blames much of the violence in El Salvador on the mara gangs, although statistics show that most violence is in fact domestic. It also claims the maras are involved in drug-trafficking.

The leaders of Mara 18 told members of the press in Soyapango, just south of San Salvador, that they were proposing the alliance with Mara Salvatrucha because they felt they were being hunted by death squads working within the Policí­a Nacional Civil (PNC) and carrying out "social cleansing". They said that President Tony Saca should take note that they are merely the symptoms of a corrupt society which violated human rights. Human rights groups have denounced the existence of death squads operating in the three countries where the maras are most prevalent: El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

Development: The US government will not free Luis Posada Carriles, the Cuban exile militant who has been in custody since May 2005, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on 22 March.

Significance: The decision shows that the US simply does not know what to do with Posada Carriles, who entered the country illegally in May. Both Cuba and Venezuela want him extradited for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner and a string of hotel bombings in Havana in 1997 and 1998 but this would be politically embarrassing and an immigration judge ruled against it based on the Convention Against Torture (CAT).

ICE decided not to make a decision. It issued an "Interim Decision to Continue Detention" while continuing "to review Mr. Posada's custody in light of any additional information that he may submit, collateral developments, and efforts to remove him to other countries." ICE did not rule out the possibility of Posada Carriles being extradited to a third country. No third country has given any indication that it wants him.

Development: President Evo Morales and William Francisco, the top anti-drugs official at the US embassy in La Paz, agreed that the US and Bolivia would work together against drug trafficking on 27 April.

Significance: The warm agreement made a contrast to warnings issued earlier this week in La Paz by Anne Patterson, an Assistant Secretary of State and head of the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, who virtually demanded that Morales step up Bolivia's coca eradication effort. Francisco was invited by Morales to attend the passing out of 67 policemen in Chimoré, in Cochabamba department. Morales said: “I agree with Mr William Francisco that in the struggle against drug trafficking we are partners."

Morales added that he was sorry that Patterson did not “understand" Bolivia's plan to lobby for the decriminalisation of coca leaf at the UN. Coca has been a banned substance since the early 1960s. Morales did hint at a further development in his government's anti-drugs policy: “there will not be a zero coca policy but nor will there be a policy of unlimited coca growing. I would like to suggest to the coca-growers that the greatest help they could give this government is a voluntary and agreed reduction in coca acreage: we do want a confrontation. "

Morales added that his government would start to go after the “big fish" in the drug trafficking business, not only in Chapare but also in Yungas and elsewhere in Bolivia.

Development: On 1 June a leader of the main opposition party, Unión Cí­vica Radical and former president, Raúl Alfonsí­n, repeated his call for former economy minister Roberto Lavagna to head a "centrist and progressive" coalition in presidential elections in 2007.

Significance: Lavagna has refused to comment on whether he intends to stand in the elections but, judging by the fierce criticism from several officials in the administration of President Néstor Kirchner this week, there is real concern in government circles that he might run against Kirchner.

Alfonsí­n suggested in mid-May that Lavagna stand in the elections at the head of an alliance between the UCR, a faction of disgruntled Peronists (supporters of former president Eduardo Duhalde), the Partido Socialista of Hermes Binner, who scored a resounding victory over Kirchner's candidate in legislative elections in the third-most important province of Santa Fe in October 2005, and the Alternativa por una República de Iguales (ARI) of Elisa Carrió.

Several officials, including Lavagna's successor at the economy ministry, Felisa Miceli, lashed out at Lavagna after he criticised the government's anti-inflation policy, particularly the price controls and a ban on beef exports ordered by Kirchner, and Argentina's support of Venezuela joining Mercosur. Miceli said Lavagna should be modest as he had done little to address some of these issues during his stint as economy minister. Agustí­n Rossi, the leader of Kirchner's Frente para la Victoria faction of the ruling Partido Justicialista, said that it was "very painful" to see Lavagna become "an outsider to the government".

Lavagna says that he will not discuss candidacies until next year but he has ruled out running for mayor of Buenos Aires.

Development: The senate approved early on 6 July a draft law that will curtail congress's rights to overturn presidential decrees.

Significance: The debate in the senate was angry and united the opposition Unión Cí­vica Radical, provincial senators and the socialists, but the government won by 42 votes to 17. Unprecedentedly, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President Néstor Kirchner's wife, who is a senator, spoke in favour of the bill for 2 hours 25 minutes even though the rule is that no senator should speak for more than 40 minutes. Cristina Kirchner's intervention developed into a diatribe against the rightwing media.

The new draft bill on ratification of presidential decrees is controversial because it does not set out congressional deadlines for the approval of presidential decrees, though it does specify that each decree has to be approved individually. The opposition argued that the absence of deadlines meant that the government, which has a majority, could simply delay endlessly the congressional overturning of a decree.

The draft now goes to the lower chamber for debate and ratification.

Development: On 10 August some 1,200 members of indigenous communities in the northern province of Jujuy removed road blocks from two international highways, which had been cutting off access to Chile and Bolivia for two days.

Significance: Argentina's indigenous communities are stepping up their demands for the recovery of ancestral lands. On 30 July members of four Mapuche communities of the west-central province of Neuquén moved into land they have been claiming as their own for years, currently administered by a joint federal-provincial corporation set up a decade ago, and by the defence ministry. Verónica Huilipán, leader of the Confederación Mapuche Neuquina, defended the action on the grounds that the government had given no response to their demands over the past two years. Almost as soon as the land invasion took place, the defence ministry announced that it was willing to negotiate.

The leaders of 115 indigenous communities in Jujuy suspended their protest action after meeting the Governor of Jujuy, Eduardo Fellner. They signed an agreement in which Fellner promised to implement almost all of their demands. Fellner agreed to remove private titles to land claimed as ancestral by the indigenous communities; to carry out environmental impact studies on mining operations that could affect them; and to work with them to develop tourism programmes. The protest march was called “Segundo Malón por la Paz" (literally “the second peaceful Indian raid"): the first Malón por la Paz was staged in 1946 when indigenous jujeños marched all the way to the capital to demand that the government of Juan Domingo Perón return of their lands. Organisers claim that successive provincial governments have failed to enact Perón's promise.

Development: President Lula da Silva said on 14 September that "81% of the corruption cases investigated by the federal police started before 2003", the year he came to power.

Significance: Lula's tirade was an answer to the claim made by former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso last week, in which he said the Lula administration was "rotten" and that the opposition failed in not having demanded Lula's impeachment from congress last year. When asked by a journalist how he "was not aware" of the corruption happening within his government, Lula excuse himself saying that Cardoso "also probably did not know" about the corruption cases that allegedly started during his tenure.

The opposition was quick to rebut Lula's allegation. The leader of Cardoso's Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB), Alberto Goldman, said that during the PSDB's administration "no minister was ever impeached". Goldman referred to Lula's one time chief of staff, José Dirceu, who lost his mandate last year accused of corruption. The leader of the Partido da Frente Liberal, José Agripino, continued the opposition's attack saying that "no minister [in Cardoso's cabinet] ordered the breaching of a citizen's banking secrecy rights". That was a reference to the former finance minister, Antonio Palocci, who had to resign last April after it was discovered that he leaked bank account details of a hostile witness.

Now a new scandal is in the making. Two public-prosecutors, Luciano Rolim and Alfredo Silva, sent a report to the justice minister, Márcio Thomaz Bastos, demanding explanations from him and the federal police's director-general, Paulo Lacerda, for tipping-off investigated officials before police raids. According to Rolim and Silva, several police investigations into politicians linked to the government were undermined by tip-offs from the senior echelons of the justice ministry and the federal police. Rolim and Silva were emphatic in the report when they reminded Bastos and Lacerda that the practice was "utterly against the law".

Development: On 22 October President Hugo Chávez tried to spin Venezuela's failure to win a seat on the UN security council as a defeat for the US.

Significance: Chávez said that although Venezuela had not won a seat, it had stopped the US from getting its candidate, Guatemala, appointed to the Latin American seat. “This is a fact," Chávez claimed, “and this was our goal."

Chávez said that Venezuela would not withdraw its candidacy when voting resumes, for the 36th round, on 25 October. Chávez claimed that the “whole world had seen a small country like Venezuela standing up to the US and stopping it, thanks to the support of our friends around the world."

Venezuela and Guatemala are competing for the Latin American seat on the UN Security Council. The most likely solution is that a compromise candidate, such as Costa Rica or Uruguay, will be appointed. The Brazilian elections of 29 October may allow Brazil to broker a compromise, if President Lula is re-elected. Some political commentators in Venezuela say that Chávez will want to keep the candidacy alive until the Venezuelan presidential elections on 3 December. 

A security council member needs the support of 124 (two-thirds) of the UN's members. Guatemala has averaged 105 votes and Venezuela 85. In 1991, when Venezuela also stood for the Security Council, it was elected unanimously.

Development: On 28 November the Venezuelan opposition rejected the government's decree prohibiting any kind of public assembly on 3 December.

Significance: Most polls point to a comfortable win for President Hugo Chávez on 3 December. Those commentators who prefer the polls which point to a close finish, or even a possible victory for the president's main challenger, Manuel Rosales, believe the government is gearing up to commit fraud. The most optimistic among the opposition think that abstention has been massively underestimated in the past, and that this time it is the government which will suffer the consequences of lackadaisical supporters. Although there are plenty of questionmarks around the nature of Chávez 's next term, the most pressing imponderable is how the opposition will react after losing, fairly or unfairly, on 3 December.

The government's decision to ban public meetings on Sunday follows an editorial in the Caracas daily El Nuevo Paí­s, in which the editor Rafael Poleo urged opposition supporters to back a plan to take to the streets following the elections in an attempt to bring down Chávez . Poleo, whose wife was accused of masterminding the murder of Danilo Anderson, the state prosecutor investigating those behind the 2002 coup against Chávez , said he was basing the plan on the events in the Ukraine in 2004, when opposition supporters occupied the streets in Kiev to reject the results of a fraudulent election.

Poleo expressed his confidence that the defence minister, General Raúl Baduel, "was not a communist" and would not use weapons against "citizens who have the right to protest enshrined in the constitution". However, Baduel has said he would act "monolithically" against those who tried to undermine public order. Around 110,000 troops are due to guard 11,118 polling booths around the country on 3 December along with 18,900 reservists, labelled by the opposition as "Chávez 's paramilitaries". None of the military personnel are allowed to ask voters for ID, organise voter queues or ask for their fingerprints.

The opposition complained that members of the armed forces (FAN) have been helping the government's cause by transporting Chavista supporters to his rallies and intimidating Rosales's. They are also concerned that the decree preventing meetings on election day will prevent the opposition from monitoring developments at the polling booths.

Voting on Sunday will be done electronically, with a counterfoil to be placed in the ballot boxes. Fifty-four per cent of the ballot boxes will be audited to check for any inconsistencies between the electronic vote and the manual receipt. One question raised by the opposition is whether the voting machines will be connected to the National Electoral Council (CNE) system before or after they have printed the original vote. The opposition believes the government could be gearing up to commit fraud by connecting the machines beforehand. There will be a 45-day period after the elections in which to challenge the results. In total there will be 130 election observers from the EU, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Carter Center and Mercosur but the CNE (four out of five of whom are government supporters) has refused to allow an observer mission from the Spanish parliament.

If the elections are fair and transparent, the main threat to Chávez appears to be abstention. At the start of his campaign, the president's slogan was "10 million votes down their throats" (there are only 16 million voters in Venezuela), but this has gradually been phased out. Abstention has been consistently underestimated in previous Venezuelan elections. In 1998 when Chávez was first elected at the height of his popularity, abstention stood at 33%, when he was re-elected under the new constitution it was 43.7% and during the recall referendum it was 30%. If Rosales has successfully convinced his supporters he could win and Chávez voters think the president's a shoo-in for another term, the opposition could have a chance.

Development: The main opposition party, the PSDB, said on 11 January, that it would back Arlindo Chinaglia, from President Lula's Partido dos Trabalhadores, for the presidency of congress.

Significance: It is not clear whether the announcement, from Jutahy Júnior, the leader of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira in the lower chamber of congress, will swing the election to Chinaglia. Júnior admitted that not all the PSDB deputies would follow the party line. 

Although Chinaglia comes from the PT, President Lula appears to prefer Aldo Rebelo, from the Partido Comunista do Brasil, who presided over the chamber before the elections last October to stay on. On 5 January Chinaglia refused the government's offer of a ministerial job if he withdrew and left Rebelo a clear run.

At least two PSDB deputies complained that Júnior was trying to pre-empt a decision by the party's 66 deputies. They said that the decision had yet to be taken.

Development: Deputies in the department of La Rioja voted on 15 February to eliminate indefinite gubernatorial re-election.

Significance: Angel Maza, a supporter of President Néstor Kirchner who has held the office of governor of La Rioja since 1995, will not be allowed to run for re-election. Only four provinces in Argentina now allow indefinite re-election, namely San Luis, Catamarca, Santa Cruz and Formosa. 

This is a setback for Kirchner's strategy of surrounding himself with loyal lieutenants to uphold Kirchnerismo in the provinces, and part of the "Misiones effect", so-called after the governor of Misiones, Carlos Rovira, failed to establish perpetual re-election in his province in October.