Pope Francis denounced the "throwaway" culture of today's society that discards anyone who is unproductive as he celebrated his first public Mass in Bolivia on Thursday, one of the key days of his South American pilgrimage.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations declared 2013 as the International Year of the Quinoa, a high-protein, grain-like crop from the Andes. Whether consumers of quinoa around the world associate this crop with Peru, a major producer of quinoa, is debatable. Nevertheless, quinoa’s widespread popularity is helping the Peruvian government expand its international presence via culinary diplomacy.

Antonio Patriota, Brazil's foreign minister, stepped down Monday night amid a diplomatic row with neighboring Bolivia. President Dilma Rousseff's office issued a brief statement, saying Patriota had submitted his resignation and would be replaced by Brazil's representative at the United Nations, Luiz Alberto Figueiredo.

America is pivoting to Asia, focused on the Mideast, yet the "backyard," as Secretary of State John Kerry once referred to Latin America, is sprouting angry weeds as the scandal involving intelligence leaker Edward Snowden lays bare already thorny U.S. relations with Latin America.

South American leaders planned to send a tough message to Washington on Friday over allegations of U.S. spying in the region and to defend their right to offer asylum to fugitive former U.S spy agency contractor Edward Snowden. Capping two weeks of strained North-South relations over the Snowden saga, presidents from the Mercosur bloc of nations were meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay. Complaints against the United States were high on the agenda.

Sure, we've heard fiery speeches offering asylum from leftist leaders who are eager to criticize the United States. But supporting Snowden's cause and wanting to make Uncle Sam look bad aren't the only parts of the equation, with so many trade and diplomatic relations hanging in the balance, said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.

Suddenly, South America’s leftist presidents, whose hemispheric influence had been waning of late, found their mojo again. They rushed breathlessly to Bolivia to greet Morales, who shouted, “United we will defeat American imperialism!” while calling for the closure of the U.S. embassy there. By Friday evening, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in need of a political boost after just barely winning a special April election to succeed his mentor, the late Hugo Chávez, formally offered the “young American” Snowden asylum from “persecution from the empire.”

Bolivia says that it has been re-admitted to the UN's anti-narcotics convention after persuading member states to recognise the right of its indigenous people to chew raw coca leaf, which is used in the making of cocaine. Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, had faced opposition from Washington in his campaign against the classification of coca as an illicit drug. "The coca leaf has accompanied indigenous peoples for 6,000 years," said Dionisio Nunez, Bolivia's deputy minister of coca and integrated development, on Friday. "Coca leaf was never used to hurt people.