More than 1,500 Indigenous Bolivian protesters arrived in La Paz on Wednesday after a 603-kilometer (375 mile), 66-day march demanding that President Evo Morales renegotiate the construction of a 305-kilometer (190-mile) road that is slated to traverse the Isiboro-Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS).

Hundreds of supporters in the Plaza San Francisco received the Amazonian demonstrators chanting, “The TIPNIS is untouchable, Bolivians own the TIPNIS,” while distributing food, water, flowers, and blankets. La Paz Mayor Luis Revilla, who supports the protestors, welcomed the marchers and presented them with symbolic keys to the city.

Organizers of the months-long protests are demanding that the government permanently abandon the joint Brazil–Bolivia project, at least along the proposed route. Morales today invited the protestors to discuss their grievances in the office of Vice President Álvaro García Linera, after earlier statements by Minister of Communications Iván Canelas indicated the presidential palace is under construction and not an appropriate place to receive the group. 

Protest leaders in response have rejected such claims and insisted they won’t leave until they talk to the president. “The President has told us he waits for us in the presidential palace. We’re here and we won’t move until he sees us,” said Indigenous leader Fernando Vargas.

Panamanian lawmakers on Thursday voted by a wide margin to revoke a 1960s-era law that had prohibited foreign investment in Panama’s mining sector. It is widely speculated that the change will allow Canadian mining company Inmet to now move forward with plans to build Central America’s largest copper mine.

"What we're trying to do is develop regions, create jobs and reduce poverty," said National Assembly leader Jose Muñoz of President Martinelli's Democratic Change party in response to angry remarks by protestors that made their way into the halls of Congress. Opposition to the law is driven by fears that new mining operations will damage farmland and water supplies in rural areas. President Martinelli has in the past spoken out against the mining law and is now expected to sign the changes into law.

In addition to the Inmet copper project, which is projected to require a $5 billion investment in operations that will eventually produce 250,000 metric tons of copper a year, interest has also been shown from companies in South Korea and Singapore, among others.

Navy Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, a leader in Argentina’s military junta from 1976 to 1978, passed away on Monday in Buenos Aires at age 85. Massera collaborated with Jorge Rafael Videla and Orlando Ramón Agosti to stage a coup d’etat that overthrew Isabel Perón in 1976. The repressive dictatorship that Masserra and his colleagues established in Argentina, and the Dirty War they waged against leftist insurgents and dissidents, lasted from 1976 to 1983.

Nicknamed Admiral Zero, Massero was in charge of the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (Navy Mechanical School)—perhaps the most symbolic, clandestine detention and torture facility in of the dictatorship era. Many of the individuals who disappeared and were tortured by the junta—estimates range from 9,000 to 30,000 people—passed through the walls of Massera’s Escuela.

After the country’s return to civilian rule, Massera was found guilty of murder, torture and invasion of privacy by the trial of the Juntas reconciliatory body in 1985. Despite being sentenced to life in prison, Massera received a pardon in 1990 for these charges as well as for his involvement in Operation Condor by then-President Carlos Menem. In 1998 he was again convicted, this time of concealing and changing the identities of the children of the disappeared, and was sentenced to house arrest due to his age. 

Massera died of cardiac arrest, which was related to a history of neurological problems.