In the Municipal Elections of 2014, the fine for not voting could come to 76 soles. 

Polls indicated that the Uruguayan presidential race will most likely be decided in a runoff in November. 

In the weeks before Brazil’s first round of elections on October 5, the smart money seemed to be on a runoff between President Dilma Rousseff of the PT (the Workers Party) and Marina Silva of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), former members of the ruling coalition.  It didn’t work out that way.  Silva lost steam

After the murders and disappearances of students in the town of Iguala, Guerrero, a series of clandestine graves were uncovered; so far none have been shown to hold the bodies of the disappeared students, but the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team that examined the scene is not ready to make a definite determination.  Calls continue to

At least a million girls have been victimized in Colombia’s armed conflict; in Medellín a human rights leader barely survived an assassination attempt. 

Retired Colonel Esteelmer Francisco Reyes Girón and military ex-commissioner Eriberto Valdez Asij will face trial for allegedly subjecting a group of indigenous women to labor and sexual slavery. 

The Dirección de Lucha contra el Narcotráfico of Honduras, DLCN, will launch an investigation of “around 35 ‘narcoalcaldes’ ” and President Ollanta Humala of Peru asserted that criminal activity related to drugs is the main challenge in Peru and in the region.   

Two proposals for the legalization of self-cultivated marijuana are currently being debated in the House of Representatives, but many officials only want to consider therapeutic uses; journalist Audeliza Solano says she has been getting death threats from the mayor of the municipality of Samaná, Nadín Miguel Bezi Nicasio. 

Chile’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community lauded a proposal passed by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council striving to end the mistreatment of LGBTs worldwide. 

In an interview Luis K. Zúñiga Valverde,  Deputy Minister of Agriculture, talked about cocoa and hard negotiations to close the multiparty trade agreement with the European Union.