News stories by Helda Martínez, page 4

After Colombia’s FARC rebels released 23-year-old soldier Josué Daniel Calvo, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said he is not opposed to a humanitarian swap of imprisoned insurgents for hostages, as long as the guerrillas do not return to the fighting.

'Why is the government, which is so generous towards the richest sectors of the economy, so stingy towards the displaced?' asked activist Marco Romero at the presentation of a new report on the dire situation faced by the millions of Colombians who have been forced out of their rural homes by the country's nearly half-century old armed conflict.

Over the last two weeks, 31 Colombian soldiers accused of the forced disappearance and murder of 11 young men from the poor Bogotá suburb of Soacha have been released from prison on the grounds that they were not formally indicted within 90 days of their arrest, as established by Colombian law.

Indigenous and rural women from southern Tolima, a province located in the heart of Colombia, are lending a hand to the bleak land around them, with the aim of simultaneously recovering the ecosystem and regaining their own dignity, in a community effort that is changing their environment and their lives.

Chicha, a traditional homemade brew produced all the way from Mexico to Chile since the days of the Inca, has largely been a rural drink over the centuries. But it is enjoying a new popularity in bars and restaurants in Bogotá and other Colombian cities, as a hip alternative to mass-produced beer.

The number of cases of torture attributed to the armed forces in Colombia increased 80 percent from 2003 to 2008, in a context of near total impunity for such crimes. However, the number of documented torture cases overall fell 43.5 percent, compared to the 1998-2003 period.

Sexual violence is used as a weapon of war in Colombia by all parties in the country’s longstanding armed conflict, and its main victims are women and girls, states a report recently released by Intermón Oxfam, backing up claims made repeatedly by national and international human rights groups.

The latest film out of Colombia is based on the true story of a priest in a rural town whose passions include a search for justice in an area that, like so many in this civil war-torn country, is hemmed in by armed groups, whether far-right paramilitaries, leftist guerrillas or state security forces.

Women in the small Andean town of Cajamarca and the nearby city of Ibagué, in the central-west Colombian province of Tolima, are leading the struggle against a major gold mining venture that threatens to alter their way of life.

Thousands of displaced Colombians living in a protest camp in a park in central Bogotá are the target of an eviction plan by the local authorities, who admit they are overwhelmed by the influx of people fleeing violence in the countryside.