Colombia`s Santos administration and FARC guerrillas have unveiled an “historic agreement” on “political participation”. Today`s announcement hopes to breathe life back into a year long peace process that faces growing skepticism. The FARC have promised finally after 50 years of conflict to trade the bullet for the ballot box. We`re now a third of way through the talks, with two of the six points on the agenda being signed off. Excellent, you might think.

Consider the latest from the gatekeeper of the late Hugo Chávez's experiment in "21st-Century Socialism": the Deputy Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness. Last week, to much fanfare, Nicolas Maduro unveiled this new government subdivision, which he said will oversee and troubleshoot some 30 separate social programs, known collectively in Venezuela as "missions."

The four ex heads of state and other politicians received the Ulyses Guimarares medal the highest decoration of the Brazilian Congress for their contributions to the current constitution. The constitution, the seventh in the country's history, was promulgated on 5 October 1988, after a year and eight months of discussions by a constituent assembly elected in 1986.

Earlier this week, Germany’s Der Spiegel reported the latest leak of confidential documents from former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden. According to these reports, the NSA monitored former Mexican president Felipe Calderón’s e-mail account and personal communications, gaining insight into Mexico’s political system and internal stability.

A human rights commission in the House of the Representatives will hear testimony this Thursday from the United States government, NGOs, think tanks, and members of civil society on the state of human rights in Colombia. The bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission will discuss the ongoing peace talks in Havana, Cuba, between Colombia’s largest rebel group FARC and the government, the development of land restitution programs, and labor rights issues, according to the hearing brief.

Everywhere he looks nowadays, Nicolás Maduro sees conspiracies. At least a dozen plots to assassinate him have allegedly been detected since he became Venezuela’s president in April. Mr Maduro recently expelled three American diplomats for supposedly conspiring with the opposition, business groups and unions to wage “economic war” and overthrow the government. Some plots may even be real: there are rumours of discontent in the armed forces, on which the president is lavishing time and money. But publicly, at least, the opposition media are Mr Maduro’s prime suspects.

The cows were dying of hunger. Months of drought in northeastern Brazil left 34-year-old Natanael Melo and his 22-year-old wife, Vaniele Costa, with no option. They had borrowed money to buy food for their small herd, but that cash withered away like the crops. It was time to leave.

Colombia, led by its second largest city Medellin, has the most unequal urban areas in Latin America, according to the United Nations. While Latin America as a whole has been making strides to combat inequality, lowering rates of unequal income distribution across the region over the past decade, Colombia has bucked the trend, experiencing a 15 percent increase in inequality in urban areas over the last 20 years.