Lenin Moreno was once a wealthy businessman and politician. But in 1998, he was shot in the back as gunmen stole his car from a parking lot in Quito. He was paralyzed from the waist down. Moreno overcame intense pain and bouts of depression to become a motivational speaker. He’s written books about the healing power of laughter.

He also performs inspirational songs.

In 2006, Moreno was elected vice president. At the time, it was rare to see people in wheelchairs in public. In rural areas, people with severe handicaps were treated as outcasts and sometimes confined to sheds and chicken coops.

But Moreno has tried to change all that. Wheelchair ramps are springing up across Ecuador. People with severe disabilities now receive $300 monthly stipends from the government. And Moreno helped draw up a law that compels Ecuadorian companies to set aside at least 4 percent of jobs for people with disabilities.

In a recent speech, he pledged that the government would reach out to all disabled people who need help. That, he said, amounts to a revolution.

That revolution includes providing free artificial limbs to poor Ecuadorians. Some are being built in a wing of this state-run hospital in Quito. Government officials say the program is the only one of its kind in Latin America.

Jorge Costa, who manages the project, says thousands of Ecuadorians hobble around on crutches because they’re too poor to buy artificial limbs. Now, he says, they can become productive members of society.

One person who has made this transition is Sarita Carlosama. I meet her at a sports club where she’s playing an early-morning game of wheelchair tennis before going to work.

A disease affecting her spinal cord left Carlosama paraplegic 20 years ago. Back then she was studying to be a doctor. But she had to quit because there was no wheelchair access to the fifth-floor classrooms.

Finding a job was tough. But under the new law to bring disabled people into the work force, Carlosama was recently hired by an oil company. Not surprisingly, she’s full of praise for Moreno.

“He has achieved so much,” Carlosama says. “But even if he hadn’t done anything, just the fact that the vice president is in a wheelchair changes perceptions about disabled people.”

At the presidential palace where Moreno has his office, disabled people line up every morning seeking assistance. Upstairs, Moreno’s top aide, Alex Camacho, says other Latin American governments have called on Ecuador for advice on policies for disabled people.

“That’s why we are now advising to Peru, to Bogota, to Uruguay, to Dominican Republic, to Guatemala, also to Haiti,” Camacho says.

The presidential band plays as foreign diplomats present their credentials to Moreno. He’s now Ecuador’s acting president, because President Rafael Correa has taken a leave of absence to campaign for reelection later this month.

But Moreno is not on the ballot. He says he needs a break from the exhausting schedule. Still, many of the programs Moreno put in place are likely to continue, says Monica Alemeida, an editor at El Universo newspaper.

“It’s by far one of the best things this government have done,”Almeida says. “I think that whatever government that will come will really have to follow that path that Moreno have initiated.”

It seems likely that Ecuadorians will see more of Moreno. He was nominated last year for the Nobel Peace Prize. And there’s speculation he will run for president in 2017.

Correa is targeting TV, radio and newspapers with lawsuits, fines and insults. All this from a president who offered political asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the interests of freedom of expression. Now press freedom groups describe Ecuador as one of the hemisphere’s most restrictive nations for the media.

“There was more press freedom under Ecuador’s military dictatorship in the 1970s than there is today under the democratically elected government of Rafael Correa,” according to veteran journalist Miguel Ribadeneira, who heads one of Ecuador’s largest radio stations.

“This government is the worst.”

Since he was first elected in 2006, President Correa has complained about sloppy, unprofessional journalism. He claims many of the country’s newspapers, television and radio stations are dominated by corrupt elites who try to undermine his left-wing government.

“Many in the media have crossed the line into political activism, and that has prompted a political response from the president,” said Patricio Barriga, a government spokesman.

Correa is an ally of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s ailing president, who has clashed with the Venezuelan media during his 14 years in power. But critics say Correa has moved even faster than Chavez to muzzle the press.

Correa’s government has shut down more than a dozen radio stations. TV stations are often forced to broadcast government propaganda. When a Quito magazine published an editorial that Correa didn’t like, it was fined $80,000. And in a slander case against El Universo newspaper, a judge awarded President Correa a whopping $40 million.

Meanwhile, the president has instructed his ministers to speak only to state-run outlets, like Radio Ecuador, which belongs to one of South America’s most extensive state media operations. Correa often uses this megaphone to savage independent journalists.

In a televised appearance, Correa ripped up a newspaper in front of a delighted audience.

“We must demand that the corrupt media stop trying to trick us,” he said. “Under our revolution, you the people are in charge and we will not bow down to these scoundrels.”

Correa’s campaign has turned many here against the media. Last year, there were 173 acts of aggression against journalists, including more than a dozen physical attacks and threats. That’s a 50 percent jump from the year before.

Jose Velasquez, the news manager at the private Teleamazonas TV station, says lawsuits against the media are also on the rise.

“Since the president is so aggressive with the journalists, that empowers a lot of people. People will say: ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, you are corrupt so I am going to sue you too.’”

Velasquez says he’s been hit with at least two or three lawsuits per month. Part of the problem, he says, is that Correa is thin-skinned.

Inside the newsroom of the Quito newspaper El Comercio. (Photo: John Otis)

“He doesn’t take criticism well. I mean journalists, we question people. We question situations. And he just doesn’t like that. He’s not used to it. He’s not used to someone saying: ‘You might be wrong.’”

In the absence of a strong political opposition, the media appear to have become Correa’s whipping boy. So, to avoid the government’s wrath many media outlets refrain from publishing hard-hitting stories.

“We are now seeing a movement towards self-censorship,” according to Eric Samson, who works for the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders. He says even mundane subjects are sometimes off limits.

“Weeks ago this channel chose not to talk about bulls, because bullfighting was prohibited. And they said: ‘We don’t want any problem with the government. They are against bullfighting, so we are not going to talk about that.’”

Even at El Comercio, Ecuador’s most influential newspaper, journalists have grown gun shy.

“Due to the fear of lawsuits,” said reporter Santiago Zeas, “every word that goes into the paper comes under extra scrutiny.”

And that, he says, has produced the only upside to Correa’s war against the press: It has forced Ecuadorian journalists to become more thorough and accurate.

The upper reaches of a mountainside slum called Comuna Trece are too steep for cars or buses. Streets give way to staircases. To get home, many here used to climb the equivalent of a 28-story building.

But last year, Medellín officials installed an outdoor escalator. A former mayor came up with the idea after riding an escalator for tourists in Barcelona.

With its stylish orange roof, the Comuna Trece escalator seems a little out of place. It runs past one-room shacks with laundry hanging from clotheslines. At first, some residents were baffled.

City hall worker Claudia Arizmendi says that many people had never ridden an escalator before. So, the city sponsored field trips to shopping malls so residents could practice.

“Now we’ve gotten the hang of it,” says Jose Ivan Taborda, who is 69. “The escalator is comfortable and necessary for older people. It’s a relief because we don’t have to climb all those steps.”

The escalator is part of a broader plan to reduce crime and instill pride in gang-infested slums. Police work is important. But the thrust of the strategy is to install public transportation linked to newly built parks and libraries that encourage people to reclaim their communities from the bad guys.

It’s a radical departure from past policies.

Comuna Trece and other slums were founded by people displaced by Colombia’s guerrilla war. The slums sprang up far from downtown, and residents felt isolated and ignored.

“This displaced population didn’t feel like they were part of the city,” says Laura Isaza, a Medellín city hall consultant. “They used to say: ‘I live in this neighborhood and I don’t live in Medellín.’ And that was one of our first steps: To gain their confidence and to make them feel that they are part of our city.”

One of the main projects to integrate Medellín is a network of cable cars that opened in 2004. They carry people from the mountaintop slums to the subway system.

Now getting downtown takes 45 minutes instead of two-and-a-half hours. The gondolas move 20,000 people a day. They’re so popular they’ve inspired similar cable car networks in the mountainside ghettos of Rio de Janeiro and Caracas.

While the view is impressive, some cable car passengers opt to read during the ride.

Inside one of Medellín’s libraries near a cable car station. (Photo: John Otis)

Many of these experiments were cited last month when a survey sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, Citibank, and the Washington-based Urban Land Institute named Medellín one of the world’s most innovative cities.

But not everyone is convinced.

Comuna Trece resident John Hernandez says the flashy new projects have distracted people’s attention from lingering issues, like high crime, and the government is sweeping those problems under the rug.

Yet, the murder rate has dropped by half in the past decade. Tourists now come to slums to ride the escalator and cable cars. And property values are on the rise. What’s more, investors are moving in.

Over the past five years, Hewlett Packard, Kimberly Clark, and Unisys have all opened production and research centers in Medellín. Consultant Laura Isaza concedes that the city still struggles with violence, but things are changing.

“We don’t have this huge war we had before,” Isaza says. “This is a conflict that could only be ended through real opportunities for the people.”

These advances, she says, have helped Medellín turned a corner.

The miners who worked here just wanted the gold, Hurtado says. “They don’t care if the land is turned upside down.”

Hurtado says this kind of wasteland is a common sight in Colombia. With gold demand booming around the world, production is booming in Latin American. Colombia ranks among the world’s top-15 producers, and about half of its bullion is extracted by small-scale miners and illegal prospectors who often leave behind a ravaged and badly polluted landscape.

One of the biggest problems is mercury. Many miners use the toxic metal to separate the gold from the ore in which it’s found. But exposure to mercury can cause serious and permanent health problems, including brain damage and birth defects. And Colombians are exposed to huge amounts of it. A recent UN report found that Colombia is the world’s largest mercury polluter per capita from mining.

A woman pans for gold at a Green Gold mining site in Choco department in northern Colombia. (Photo: John Otis)

But these days the country is also ground zero for a new movement to clean up small-scale mining. It’s called Oro Verde, or Green Gold.

One project is on display right here in Choco.

Alongside a small mountain river, Miner Luis Palomino picks a few leaves from a balsa tree and stirs them in a wooden bowl filled with water and sediment from the river. The leaves create a soapy film that attaches to the lighter minerals and can be washed away, leaving behind heavier flecks of gold. They do basically the same thing as mercury, but without the health risk.

The technique was passed down by Palomino’s ancestors, former African slaves. Palomino says it’s slower and extracts less gold, but he has no interest in using mercury. “We’ve mined gold like this all our lives,” he says.

And because the technique is chemical-free, Palomino earns a 15 percent premium over the world price for gold through a UK-based outfit called Fairtrade and Fairmined.

Green Gold project director Felipe Arango says Fairtrade and Fairmined gold costs more, but he believes there’s a market for it.

“Our bet is that if we can attach a value to it and if we can get consumers to recognize it, it should be enough,” Arango says. “The forests and the ecosystems that are around these mines should be more valuable than the gold itself.”

The idea behind these and other efforts is to do for gold mining what the organic and fair trade movements are doing for food production.

“This is a sector that can transform itself,” says Lina Villa, who heads the Alliance for Responsible Mining in Medellín, Colombia. Her organization promotes techniques that cut back on mercury use, but don’t eliminate it altogether. Things like better storage and handling techniques can reduce accidents and toxic emissions, and miners who adopt them are eligible for a 10 percent bonus from Fairtrade and Fairmined.

“Miners are willing to change and to do things in a different way,” Villa says. “So once you have that evidence that change is possible, not embracing change doesn’t make sense.”

Instead of using mercury to separate gold from ore, Green Gold miners use a soapy liquid made with water and leaves from balsa trees. (Photo: John Otis)

Fairtrade and Fairmined hopes to sign up legions of miners across Latin America, Africa and Asia. Small-scale prospectors like these make up 90 percent of the world’s gold mining labor force.

But so-called responsible mining has been slow to catch on. Mining with less mercury takes longer and is less profitable, even with the premiums. That may be why just 1,400 miners in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia have so far joined the Fairtrade and Fairmined movement.

Supporters aren’t discouraged, though. Green Gold’s Felipe Arango points out that campaigns for fair-trade coffee and chocolate also started slowly and are now booming.

“This is the beginning,” Arango says. “Right now the volumes are small, but we are starting to see consumers and the mining industry paying attention to a different way of doing things.”

And for the miners in Choco, those different ways of doing things bring more than health advantages.

As she takes a break from shoveling, Green Gold miner Mariveth Mosquera points to patches of land that have been restored after excavation, and which now sprout crops like yucca and plantains. The premiums she and her family receive for their eco-friendlier approach have also helped them build fish ponds with mercury-free water to cultivate Tilapia.

“Yes, mining like this is harder,” Mosquera says. “But mercury would kill the fish. It would affect everything. Working without mercury is better.”

Both sides held a press conference in Oslo to outline the five points they will be negotiating over and their commitment to the process.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with reporter John Otis in Bogota.

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Marco Werman: Decades of conflict and now a historic peace process that aims to stop the violence. That sentence could have described Northern Ireland a few years ago but the peace process that was officially launched today was Colombia’s. Government officials from the South American nation and representatives of Colombia’s FARC rebels met for hours in Oslo, Norway. Afterwards, both sides held a press conference to announce the next round of talks. Reporter John Otis watched the pressers from Colombia’s capital, Bogota. John, I got to say I’m kind of surprised the FARC still has enough juice to even push for peace talks.

John Otis: They certainly do have enough juice, Marco. The FARC still has 8,000 fighters in the jungles and mountains of Colombia, and that’s a lot of people and arms. It’s something the government has not been able to control totally. The government is a lot stronger; the arm forces are a lot stronger today than they were 10 years ago but they haven’t been able to completely eliminate the FARCs. So, for the government, they really would like to reach a peace accord with these guerrillas.

Werman: So, what did the two sides discuss today in Oslo?

Otis: Today was more of a ceremony than anything else. They gave a press conference saying we’re going to start negotiations in Havana, Cuba later on this month. They also wanted to point out that they are not going to be speaking to the press all that much because they are worried about constant press leaks and press conferences and this sort of thing could really sort of hurt the peace process.

Werman: Now, apparently there’s a pretty strict framework for these negotiations – five main points that the Colombian government and the FARC will be discussing. What are they?

Otis: The FARC’s insertion into legal politics; the end of the conflict; land reform; the rights of victims who have been hurt by the war and also coming to some kind of an agreement to end the illegal drug trade which finances the FARC’s war machine.

Werman: So, what does each side want and are they likely to get it?

Otis: The government wants the FARC to put down their arms and join the legal political process. That’s something that the government has a much greater chance to achieve this time around than in past peace processes Marco, and that’s because the Colombian military has had a big offensive over the past decade and they’ve reduced the FARC numbers by about half. So, there’s a much better possibility that the FARC might be willing to lay down their arms this time because now the FARC realizes that they’re losing the war. And, you know, the FARC is getting older too. A lot of these guys who were at the press conference today, they’re in their fifties. They’ve got gray hair. They’ve been out fighting for decades and decades. They’re a lot weaker than they were. That’s why they seem more willing to cut a deal this time around than compared to past peace processes.

Werman: Presumably, with any peace treaty, the Colombian government is going to insist on any hostages though remaining with the FARC getting unconditionally released. What is gonna happen with the hostages?

Otis: The FARC claims that they have no more hostages and the government has agreed to sort of overlook this issue, for the moment, for the greater good of trying to reach a peace accord. But, of course, advocates for the hostages claim that the FARC is still holding scores and scores of hostages out there in the jungle and they’re demanding that the FARC respond for what they’ve done.

Werman: Does the FARC know something that the rest of us don’t? Maybe those hostages are no longer alive?

Otis: That’s a very good possibility, Marco.

Werman: John Otis speaking with us from Bogota. Thank you so much John.

Otis: Thanks a lot Marco.

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In August, Brazil’s president signed a law setting aside half of public university seats for poor or nonwhite students.

John Otis reports from Brazil on what people at the universities are saying about that.

The news sparked celebrations across the country for what was an especially sweet victory for Chavez. The president has been undergoing treatment for cancer and the illness forced him to campaign at half-speed. He also had to win over voters amid rising crime, high inflation and rolling blackouts.

But many Venezuelans opted to stick with Chavez, who has funneled billions of oil profits into social programs that cut poverty in half.

“Many people do love him. It’s a fact,” said Max Vasquez, a businessman in the western city of San Cristobal.

He said Chavez draws support from many impoverished Venezuelans who view the president as a surrogate father.

“There are a large number of people in Venezuela who don’t have the father figure in their homes. So that father figure that everyone needs, many of them found it in Chavez. You know the strong person, who has a strong will and a voice of command,” Vasquez said.

In his victory speech, Chavez said he intends to deepen the country’s socialist revolution.

“Venezuela will never go back to the neo-liberal economic policies of the past,” Chavez told a huge crowd in Caracas. “Venezuela will continue down the path towards 21st century socialism.”

In San Cristobal, the prospect of six more years of Chavez has many in the opposition deeply worried.

“We are going to get more of the same medicine,” said Cesar Perez, governor of surrounding Tachira state and a fierce Chavez critic. “We will see more authoritarianism, more state intervention in the economy, more human rights violations and more problems for the private sector.”

Yet it’s unclear whether Chavez will be healthy enough to administer that medicine.

Venezuela’s Constitution calls for a new election if a president dies during the first four years of the term. If a president dies during the last two years, the vice president would finish the term. But Chavez has not named a vice president.

Many of the president’s supporters refuse to speculate about a Venezuela without Chavez.

Estrella Uribe, who works for the Chavez campaign in San Cristobal, said Chavez’s desire to help the people has given the president the will to live. She said the people will stick with him until the very end.

For the opposition, there will be little time to lick the wounds from Sunday’s defeat. Over the next six months, Venezuelans will vote for governors and mayors. These elections are important because Chavez loyalists control all branches of the federal government.

Daniel Ceballos, a state lawmaker in Tachira, points out that in past elections, opposition candidates have done well at the state and local level. So, even though Chavez crushed Capriles on Sunday, he said, it’s not the end of the world.

That may be because increasing numbers of Venezuelans say after 14 years in power, Chavez’s left-wing government is corrupt and incompetent.

Chavez sang patriotic songs during his final campaign rally before a massive crowd in Caracas on Thursday. He’s been known to give five-hour speeches. But Chavez is suffering from cancer and took the stage amid a nasty rainstorm so he kept his remarks relatively short.

Still, he offered a stirring defense of his socialist revolution, which has been financed by oil profits. He said massive government spending on health, education and nutrition programs had cut poverty in half. He also promised that if he wins another six-year term he would eliminate both poverty and unemployment.

Still, a growing number of Venezuelans has soured on the Chavez revolution. While the president has vastly expanded the federal government’s powers, it has failed to do much about everyday concerns, like rampant street crime, high inflation and power outages.

The western city of San Cristobal, an opposition stronghold, sits so far from Caracas that it’s long been ignored by politicians. In fact, the government’s cavalier response to a collapsed bridge helped push some city residents into the Capriles camp.

Four years ago, Chavez transferred bridge maintenance from the states to the federal government. Despite warnings that the San Cristobal bridge had been damaged by a flood, there was no response from Caracas and the bridge buckled in April.

Government crews are now repairing the span, but the resulting traffic jams are so bad that salesmen do brisk business hawking ice cream to exasperated motorists.

Government inefficiency is one reason the construction industry is moving at half speed, according to Max Vasquez, an architect who is building an office complex in San Cristobal. He says that before breaking ground, he had to spend three years securing 42 separate building and environmental permits. Along the way, he was constantly pressed for bribes.

Then, the government nationalized the local cement company, which led to cement shortages.

“There’s been delays in finding cement and sometimes finding steel. Sometimes you can’t find it and you have to wait until the shipment arrives in the city,” Vasquez said.

All this mean that a project that would normally take two years has gone on for five years, with no end in sight.

“It could be finished in maybe eight months, or maybe five years,” he said.

Growing frustrations have provided the first realistic chance for the opposition to defeat Chavez. Capriles is only 40, but he’s already served as mayor of a Caracas suburb, governor and president of the National Congress. His youthful vigor provides a sharp contrast to the sick and aging president. Plus, Capriles has never lost an election.

Capriles pledges to maintain some of the health and education programs that have been the key to Chavez’s staying power. But rather than an ideological firebrand, Capriles presents himself as a pragmatic problem solver. He’s also promises to tackle issue Chavez has ignored, like steep drops in oil and food production.

“I know that today the immense majority of Venezuelans are dissatisfied. And I know that the immense majority of Venezuelans know that we can be do better.”

Although Chavez easily won the last three elections, the political landscape is shifting. In 2010, opposition candidates received half of all the votes cast in the congressional elections.

But at Chavez campaign headquarters in San Cristobal, the president’s supporters warn against reading too much into those results. Chavez himself has always proved to be an electoral juggernaut and though the polls have tightened, most surveys still show him in the lead.

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Henrique Capriles campaigning in El Vigia (Photo: Capriles Campaign)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will attempt to win another six-year term when he faces off against opposition leader Henrique Capriles in Sunday’s presidential election. Both candidates are making their final arguments in TV ads and in stump speeches. They are even taking their campaigns into neighboring Colombia, in search of every last vote.

In the Colombian border city of Cucuta, there are about 10,000 Venezuelans who are eligible to vote in Sunday’s election. Some were born in Venezuela, but many are Colombians who secured Venezuelan citizenship from the Chavez’s socialist government.

Chavez made it easier for foreigners to gain Venezuelan citizenship, making them eligible for government programs like free universities, cheap bank loans and even pensions. In return, Chavez expects these newly minted Venezuelans to vote for him.

The bridge here that connects Colombia with Venezuela closes on election day, so the Chavez campaign plans to bus voters across the border the night before. They’ll receive free lodging and meals plus a ride back to Colombia after they vote.

That’s a lot of effort to cast a ballot. But Humberto Rangel, who works for the Chavez campaign, says that proves that voters are highly motivated to keep the Venezuelan leader in power.

“People seek help from this revolutionary and socialist government. That’s why many people on the Colombian side of the border come to Venezuela. They want to re-elect Comandante Chavez,” he said.

A good example is Leticia Chaustre, who’s come to a Chavez campaign office in Cucuta seeking a bus ride so she can vote. She’s Colombian, but her two sons were born in Venezuela, which made her eligible for Venezuelan citizenship.

She says dual citizenship makes it easier to travel to Venezuela to visit family members and bring cheap goods back into Colombia.

Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles is also courting supporters in Colombia. Near the border bridge, I meet Jonathan Rangel, who works for the Capriles campaign. He claims many cross-border voters fled Venezuela because they couldn’t stomach Chavez’s authoritarian rule.

“These voters truly love their country. They truly want a change,” he said. “They live outside of Venezuela, but they want to come back.”

But Capriles’ efforts pale in comparison to Chavez’s massive get-out-the-vote machine. Venezuela holds some of the world’s largest oil reserves, and the Chavez government has funneled much of the wealth into health, education, and housing programs. Besides reducing poverty, these programs have boosted the president’s popularity. As Sunday’s election approaches, the government is flaunting its largesse.

Just across the bridge in the Venezuelan town of Urena, I met Mayor Nelson Becerra, who showed me a caravan of 50 new SUVs that the government is delivering to poor communities along the border.

But the government is also using more ominous ways to maintain the upper hand. Nearly every government office, including the electoral council, is stacked with Chavez allies. His government has harassed critical journalists and forced scores of opposition radio stations off the air. It also controls most TV stations, and Chavez is now using them to savage Capriles

In a speech broadcast Monday on state TV, Chavez accused Capriles of looking overseas for campaign donations from money launderers, mafia kingpins and drug traffickers.

Yet Capriles is turning out to be the biggest challenge to Chavez since he was first elected in 1998. Most polls give Chavez the edge. But the opposition contends that many Capriles supporters are afraid to tell pollsters how they really intend to vote.

Lucy Araque, who covers politics for the Cucuta newspaper La Opinion, says that after Miami, Cucuta is home to the second largest population of Venezuelan ex-patriots — and in a tight race their votes could be crucial.

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In a televised speech Monday night, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed that talks between his government and leaders of the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, are underway.

Santos called them “exploratory talks to end the conflict” but refused to say more. However, former vice president Francisco Santos – the president’s cousin – told RCN radio that the two sides would begin formal peace negotiations in October in Havana, Cuba.

If so, they would be the first peace talks since 2002. Back then, the government withdrew troops from a huge swath of southern Colombia to convince the FARC to negotiate. Instead, the rebels used this DMZ to launch attacks and stash kidnapping victims. After three years and no progress, the government pulled the plug on the talks.

However, a decade ago the guerrillas were far stronger and believed they would march triumphantly into the Colombian capital of Bogota. Since then, a military offensive has cut the rebels’ troop strength in half and they now seem more willing to make a deal.

Fabián Ramirez, a top FARC commander, recently told a British TV reporter that it’s time to end the war.

Colombian lawmakers helped pave the way for peace talks in May by passing a constitutional amendment that would pardon guerrillas for many of their crimes and allow them to participate in politics if they disarm.

Mauricio Rodriguez, Colombia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, told the BBC that the government and FARC envoys may also discuss issues like land reform.

“So I would say, in general, some social reforms and the guarantee of political space for the guerrillas to abandon their arms and engage in politics,” Rodriguez said.

Still, Colombians are divided over whether the government should sit down with the rebels. The FARC started out as a band of peasants seeking land reform and social equality. But today the FARC is widely considered a terrorist group that funds its war through drug trafficking and extortion.

Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe maintains FARC fighters should either be confronted on the battlefield or imprisoned. In a speech on Monday, Uribe said Santos was making a grave mistake.

“The only thing that should be discussed with terrorists is the process of turning themselves in to face justice,” Uribe said. “This government has abandoned the people in order to negotiate with terrorists.”

However, the FARC is nowhere near defeated.

The rebel army still has about 9,000 fighters. They have recently stepped up their attacks on government troops, oil pipelines, and electric towers. On Sunday, suspected FARC rebels set off a car bomb that killed six civilians. According to the defense ministry, acts of “terrorism” were up 53 percent in the first seven months of this year compared with the same period last year.

In other words, the war could drag on for years. By contrast, peace talks could help FARC leaders make the transition to legal politics, says Colombian Attorney General Eduardo Montealegre.

“I would prefer to have them serving in Congress rather than kidnapping people and sowing violence across Colombia,” he said.

If negotiations with the FARC go well, the country’s second-largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, says it, too would like to join peace talks with the government.

Honduras has been going through an especially rough patch. A military coup in 2009 ousted its president. Drug violence has helped give Honduras the world’s highest murder rate. On top of that, the country is impoverished. Things are so bad that Honduran officials are considering something drastic. They want to build an experimental city to give the country a fresh start.

Last year, the Honduran Congress passed a constitutional amendment allowing the creation of a semi-autonomous city that would have its own governing rules and a degree of foreign supervision.

The plan was inspired by Paul Romer, a U.S. economist who has been promoting what he calls “charter cities.”
“So I was asked by the President of Honduras who said we need to do this project, this is important. This could be the way forward for our country,” Romer said.

Romer proposes that the new city have a governing charter made up of the best political and economic rules from around the world. Partner nations would provide oversight, guidance and more.

For example, the Honduran judicial system is widely viewed as slow and corrupt. So the island nation of Mauritius has agreed to allow its highly respected Supreme Court to serve as the court of appeals for a Honduran charter city.

Supporters say charter cities could serve as catalysts for reform in the rest of Honduras, similar to the way British-administered Hong Kong provided a blueprint for mainland China’s move to a market economy. Romer says they could also persuade some of the 75,000 Hondurans who immigrate illegally to the U.S. each year to stay home.

“A new city could offer new choices for people,” he said. “There would be the choice of a city they could go to, in Honduras, rather than hundreds of miles away in the north.”

Trujillo, on the Caribbean coast, is one of the oldest towns in Honduras, and there’s not much there. It’s a sparsely populated area of farmers and fishermen. In fact, its backwardness inspired the visiting American writer O. Henry to coin the term “banana republic.” But now, Honduran politicians are considering the area around Trujillo for an ultra-modern charter city.

“We need a system where we can have ships, rail, trucks and planes,” said Dino Rietti, a Honduran architect who is advising the government on the charter city plan. Rietti envisions an international airport and trans-oceanic railroad near Trujillo.

“Is it Utopic? Yes, but also it’s a hope. It’s a new way of thinking,” he said.

A few projects are already going up in anticipation of a charter city. Rietti is managing construction of a combined cruise ship marina and shopping mall in Trujillo.

The marina provides work for hundreds of local residents. Building a whole new city would create many more jobs: Jobs that are badly needed according to Joel Louis, a construction worker at the marina.

“In Trujillo, here in Honduras, a job is very hard to get,” Louis said. “People suffer, suffer a lot for jobs.”

A military helicopter buzzing over Trujillo helps explain why. Government troops are battling drug traffickers and the spike in violence has dragged down the economy. What’s more, the Caribbean coast never fully recovered from Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which wiped out the local banana trade.

William Lorenz, a U.S. developer who moved to Trujillo four years ago, says foreign investors are intrigued by the prospect of a charter city.

“We’ve had Americans come. There are Canadians here who are active. People have been here from Great Britain. We have some interest stirred up in South Korea,” he said.

Money to construct the charter city would come from leasing and selling land to foreign investors. Still, Hondurans are a long way from laying the first brick. The Constitutional amendment allowing for charter cities is being challenged in the Honduran Supreme Court. The country’s former attorney general recently called the plan “21st century colonialism.”

Even supporters, like Rietti, worry about outsized foreign influence and environmental damage.

“You see this beautiful place? You see how beautiful it is? It’s natural. You see children playing. You see people working,” Rietti said.

But given the nation’s downward spiral, Rietti says it may be time for Honduras to try something radically different.

“We are giving to the investors the best that we can,” he said. “Now they have to do the best for the country.”

Back in 2002, guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, kidnapped Lopez and the other lawmakers in the southern city of Cali. The FARC wanted to swap them for jailed guerrillas, but the Colombian government refused, so the hostages languished in the jungle.

In a 2007 FARC video, Lopez read a letter to his wife to prove he was alive. Soon afterwards, the FARC executed 11 of the 12 hostages; the rebels panicked when they thought the Colombian army was launching a rescue operation.

Lopez was the only survivor. He said he was being punished for bad behavior and was in another part of the camp during the massacre. Two years later, the FARC released him.

At his homecoming, covered by Colombian TV, his wife and sons were so excited they nearly knocked Lopez to the ground in a group embrace. But now, government prosecutors claim Lopez helped pull off the mass kidnapping. Their main evidence is a 2002 rebel video.

In the video, a man provides the rebels details of the layout and security of the legislative building in Cali shortly before the guerrilla raid. The man’s face is partially obscured, but prosecutors claim it is Lopez.

Carlos Orozco, who was elected to replace his brother — one of the 11 lawmakers killed by the FARC, told me that he is not sure whether Lopez is innocent or guilty.

“The raid was very well planned,” Orozco said. “There had to have been lawmakers, or people close to them, who gave information to the guerrillas.”

Lopez has also come under suspicion because he once served as town mayor in a rebel stronghold where politicians were forced to collaborate with the guerrillas. In addition, he emerged from captivity looking better fed than other newly freed hostages.

Prosecutors say Lopez may have helped the FARC in exchange for money and that he may have been double-crossed by the guerrillas, which would explain his seven years in captivity.

But other factors cast doubt on his colluding with the FARC.

Olga Lucia Gomez, head of the Free Country Foundation, which counsels relatives of hostages, said it defies logic that Lopez would take part in a crime that would confine him to a jungle prison for so long.

“To think that someone would kidnap himself, and then to make the crime look real, stay separated from his family for seven years, I just can’t get my head around that,” she said.

A voice test conducted by the FBI at Lopez’s request showed that his voice does not match the voice on the FARC videotape. What’s more, intercepted guerrilla e-mails refer to Lopez as just another hostage rather than a FARC collaborator.

Speaking to reporters from a Bogota detention center, Lopez predicted he would be exonerated. But he worries his reputation has been damaged beyond repair.

Lopez’s lawyers claim ambitious government prosecutors pounced on the Lopez case to make a name for themselves. Colombia’s Attorney General recently acknowledged that the case could fall apart.

Fabiola Perdomo, who’s the widow of FARC victim Juan Carlos Narvaez, said she dreams about her husband all the time. For Perdomo, the liberation of Lopez was bittersweet. She is envious that Lopez survived while her husband did not, but Lopez provided something precious by telling her daughter about the last five years of her father’s life.

Perdomo is convinced that Lopez is innocent. She wonders whether her husband, had he survived, might have found himself in the same legal limbo.

“It’s scary and painful to see how fast a victim can be recast as a perpetrator,” Perdomo said.

That’s led to a spike in violence and corruption in Guatemala, similar to the one in Mexico.

To counter it, Guatemala’s President Otto Perez wants to decriminalize drugs.

“We are going to kill,” he said in this 1982 interview. “But we are not going to assassinate.”

Now, three decades later, Rios Montt is finally facing prosecution for war crimes. The trial, now under way, is expected to last at least a year.

Guatemala’s civil war between government forces and communist rebels lasted 36 years, but Ríos Montt’s 17 months in power comprised the most brutal period. A UN Truth Commission found that nearly half of the war’s human rights abuses occurred during Ríos Montt’s first year. Yet, he was never held responsible.

The war finally ended in 1996. By then Ríos Montt had been elected to the Congress, which gave him immunity from prosecution. But this past January, he finally resigned from the Congress at the age of 85, and prosecutors pounced. He is now under house arrest.

Prosecutors in a Guatemala City court, where Ríos Montt and several of his former military aides are being tried for genocide and war crimes, contend that Ríos Montt’s troops unleashed a campaign of massacres and rapes in northern Guatemala designed to eliminate the region’s Ixil Indians. Army officers accused them of harboring Marxist guerrillas.

Edwin Calil, a survivor of Ríos Montt’s crimes attending the trial, said troops burst into his village looking for rebels and executed nine members of his family when he was six.

“They killed my grandmother, my mother, four sisters and three cousins,” he said.

Danilo Rodriguez, the lead defense attorney, said his client is not guilty of genocide and that Ríos Montt’s troops were bent on destroying guerrillas, not an entire ethnic group.

“Atrocities were committed,” Rodriguez said. “But they don’t add up to genocide.”

There were so many atrocities that when Ríos Montt was formally charged in January it took the judge three hours to read them all. Yet few Guatemalans are paying much attention.

Jose Leiva, a 27-year-old greeting cards seller at the downtown central market in Guatemala City said he grew up long after Ríos Montt had ruled the country and knows almost nothing about the former dictator. His high school wasn’t much help on that front as well because he said teachers focus on tamer subjects such as Guatemala’s mountains and volcanoes, providing little insight about the war.

The Rios Montt trial is a high-profile effort to examine that past. Yet the army still defends the scorched-earth tactics of the 1980s as a necessary evil. And it still wields vast influence. The current President Otto Perez is a former general who served under Ríos Montt.

Beyond the court room, one of the few places in Guatemala City where the war’s atrocities are on vivid display is at the Foundation for Forensic Anthropologists, a group that excavates mass graves.

“I don’t know if we can define it as a museum, but it is more like an effort for the memory, so the people don’t forget what happened in this country,” said foundation member Isaac Rodriguez.

Rodriguez pointed to a wall decorated with military documents from the early 1980s that reveal the fate of political prisoners and read “Manuel Alfredo Molina, 300. Otto Leonel Juarez, 300.” He explained that the 300 after each name is a military code, which means that the prisoner was secretly executed.

“And you can see how big and powerful were the killing machine,” he said.

A few blocks from the museum is the National Cathedral and the names of thousands of people engraved on the stone pillars outside this monument are another reminder of Ríos Montt’s rule.

It is a moving tribute, similar to the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, but cars zip past without stopping and for the most part churchgoers stride into the Cathedral ignoring the endless list of victims.

This map shows Venezuela's 23 states plus a region of Guyana that Venezuela claims. Click to enlarge (Photo: Wikipedia)

Head for the northern coast of South America.

Venezuela’s on our radar. Its neighbors include Guyana, Brazil and Colombia. The country’s 1700 mile long coastline looks out on the tropical waters of the Caribbean and the big blue Atlantic.

There are 28 million plus Venezuelans spread out throughout its 23 states. Try to spot the Venezuelan state of Barinas on the map.

Now – can you name the city in the state of Barinas that’s the hometown of Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez?

Oscar Pineda, director of human rights group in Barinas, at his office where photos of people who have been kidnapped and disappeared line the walls. (Photo: John Otis)

So where does Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez call home?

His hometown and the answer to our Geo Quiz is Sabaneta, Venezuela.

As you might expect, the president’s hometown gets a lot of government attention, and pork barrel projects. But some residents complain of crime, corruption and press censorship. Hugo Chavez’s recent medical problems have some locals wondering about the fate of the town if the president is sidelined. One scenario is that without Chavez, Sabaneta would likely revert to its former status as a forgotten farm town.

Hugo Chavez, the son of school teachers, is Venezuela’s first president from a poor background. Chavez hails from the small town of Sabaneta, a once-forgotten farm town. The town lies in the sparsely populated western state of Barinas. Farmers here grow tobacco and sugar cane, raise cattle, and listen to folk songs called “musica llanera” or prairie music.

Sabaneta emerged from oblivion when Chavez was elected president in 1998 and pledged to lead a socialist revolution on behalf of the poor.

But he’s not the only family member watching over the region.

One of his brothers, Aníbal, is Sabaneta’s mayor. A second brother, Adán, was elected governor of Barinas in 2008. Adán succeeded their father, Hugo de los Reyes Chavez, who was governor for eight years.

The Chavez connection shows. On a Sabaneta street corner, workers build a school for disabled children. Nearby, the government is putting up an oil refinery and a sugar mill. The town now gets plenty of government attention, and pork barrel projects.

A mural on independence hero Simon Bolivar on the wall of a public school. (Photo: John Otis)

The slum where the president grew up now features neat rows of concrete houses, paved streets and playgrounds. One of Chavez’s childhood friends, Alfredo Aldana, tells me that Sabaneta even has a youth orchestra.

“I had never in my life heard the flute played live,” Aldana said. “Well, they gave my granddaughter a flute and now she plays one.”

But some local residents say there’s a dark side to Chavez family rule.

Among the most critical are relatives of kidnapping victims, who’ve descended on the government’s human rights office in the state capital to demand action.

Barinas state has one of the highest per capita rates of homicide and kidnapping on Venezuela. Migdalia Soler’s brother was abducted two years ago and is still missing.

“This is the president’s home,” Soler said. “Chavez was born and raised here, but it seems like the people of Barinas don’t matter to him.”

Jose Luis Machin, a Barinas reporter, stands outside the police office. He was called in for questioning after reporting on links between a corrupt union and government officials. (Photo: John Otis)

Government officials refused requests for comment. But journalists have linked many abductions to a local construction workers union, which is a big donor to the ruling Socialist Party. But instead of investigating the union, authorities have often targeted the media, including a radio talk show host Jose Luis Machin, who’s been called in for questioning after revealing close ties between local officials and union members accused of kidnapping.

In the past four years, local TV and radio station owners have cancelled programs that criticize the government. They fear losing government ads, their main source of income. The Press and Society Institute, a media watchdog group in Caracas, says there have been more government crackdowns on journalists in Barinas than almost any other area of Venezuela.

The Chavez family has ruled here for so long that it’s simply grown intolerant of criticism, according to Enrique Ochoa, an opposition politician in Barinas.

“They have all the power. They do what they want with Venezuela,” Ochoa said. “It’s his country. It’s a land of Chavez.”

But it’s unclear how long this will remain the land of Chavez. The president is sick with cancer in the pelvic region and his prognosis is uncertain. During an Easter Mass in Barinas, a teary Chavez pleaded to Jesus Christ to save his life.

“Give me your cross, 100 crosses and I will carry them,” Chavez said. “But give me life, because I still have so much to do for my people and my homeland. Don’t take me away yet.”

If Chavez is unable to run for another six-year term in the October, some analysts believe his brother, Adán, will be the ruling party candidate. But Adán lacks Hugo’s charisma and would face a tough fight against opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

In Chavez’s old neighborhood, fans of the president, like ambulance driver Jose Alvarez, say Hugo Chavez is irreplaceable.

“Before Chavez we were like prisoners,” Alvarez said. “We were treated like animals, but not anymore because the comandante opened our eyes.”

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