The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, denounced on Tuesday that two inspections made at two military bases in the country found that more than one million projectiles and ammunition are missing, including missiles, and assured that these materials may be in the hands of international arms trafficking networks or illegal armed groups.

“The only way to explain this type of missing is that there have been for a long time networks made up of people from the Military and Civil Forces dedicated to a mass trade in weapons using the legal weapons of the Colombian State,” the president said in a statement at the Casa de Nariño.

Petro explained that the inspections carried out in the Fort of Tolemaida, located in the central department of Tolima, and at the base of the 10th Brigade of the Army, in the north of the country.

In Tolemaida, according to the president, “746 calibre 81-millimeter grenades are needed; 3,712 M-26 hand grenades; 2,880 40-millimeter grenades; 1,590 60-millimeter grenades; 797 40-millimeter grenades slaboned; 8,203 7.62 caliber ammunition; 41,745 5.56 caliber ammunition; 131,577 7.62-mped-caliber ammunition and 626,614 5.56-caliber ammunition”.

While at the base of Brigade 10 they did not find “two Spike missiles; 37 Nimrod missiles (both Israeli-made); 550 RPG rockets; 22 155-millimeter grenades; 621 106-millimeter grenades; 1,077 105-millimeter grenades for howitzer grenades; 1,077 90-millimeter caliber grenades; 960 81-millimeter-caliber grenades,” and “1,218 60-millimeter grenades.”

Also missing in the tanks are “4,171 40-millimeter caliber grenades; 24 40-millimeter L70HE caliber cartridges; 1,494 40-millimeter sloon grenades; 3,694 M-26 hand grenades; 17,456 anti-tank charges; 22,293 anti-tank loads .50 TAP; 330,419 7.62 Slap caliber ammunition; 9,829 162 caliber ammunition; 761,551 5.56 ammunition; 5,992 caliber 5.56 Slap and 1,262 special caliber .38 ammunition.

“As you can see, only among 5.56 ammunition there are more than a million lost ammunition,” added the president, who was accompanied in the statement by the Minister of Defense, Iván Velásquez, and by the commander of the military forces, General Helder Giraldo Bonilla.

The president explained that the networks that allegedly stole their weapons were sold “to armed groups in Colombia” or possibly provide “foreign conflicts, the closest to Haiti.”

This is because that country is “hours away by speedboat” from the base of Brigade 10, located in the Colombian Caribbean region.

Petro also lamented that “with these same ammunition they end up injuring and killing the same members of the Military Forces” and warned that they will continue to carry out this type of inspections in other bases in the country.

“This type of gang must be dismantled,” concluded the head of state.

The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, said this Sunday that it would be “wonderful” to confront in presidential elections former president Cristina Fernández (2007-2015), who this Saturday criticized the ultraliberal in a public act.

“Fating Cristina would be wonderful. It would be hilarious. It would be to put an end to the blackest history of Argentina after the dictatorship,” the head of state said in a radio interview when asked if he would like to compete with the Peronist leader in the presidential elections of 2027.

In statements to radio Rivadavia, Milei described the speech given this Saturday by the former president as “very poor.”

“It is of a notorious intellectual poverty,” he said.

In a public event, Fernández accused Milei this Saturday of “anarco-colonialism,” making a play on words with the doctrine he advocates, anarcho-capitalism, and asked him for “a rudder blow” in his adjustment policies.

Fernández, vice president of the country until last December 10, when Milei took over the Executive, referred to the speech offered on national television days ago by the president to announce the fiscal and financial surplus achieved in the first quarter of 2024 as a product of his drastic adjustment plan and that, according to her, “has no sustenance.”

In his one-and-a-half-hour speech, which took place at the inauguration of the Microestadium President Néstor Kirchner, in the Buenos Aires town of Quilmes, Fernández indicated that he does not question Milei’s legitimacy as president, because he recognizes “how unappealable the popular vote is.”

However, he affirmed that “the legitimacy of origin also needs to be legitimized in the results of the management.”

Thousands of indigenous people marched through Brasilia to the seat of the Government, where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva received a delegation that demanded greater speed in the regularization of the lands they have occupied for centuries.

Those and other demands were turned into a document delivered by about forty leaders of the indigenous peoples, who were received by Lula and the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sônia Guajajara, along with other members of the cabinet in the Presidential Palace of Planalto.

“I have a moral duty and a lifelong commitment to do everything possible, and even the impossible, to minimize the suffering of indigenous peoples and guarantee their rights,” Lula said on his social networks after the meeting.

The text also asks the Government for “greater political commitment” in the face of the conservative majority of Parliament. He accuses of promoting an “agenda” contrary to the indigenous people and the protection of the Amazon and other biomes inhabited by the indigenous peoples.

The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples (Apib) calculated that in the march, which took place peacefully, about 9,000 indigenous people who left the Free Land Camp participated. About two kilometers from the presidential palace and that brings together representatives of about two hundred ethnic groups this week.

While the meeting with Lula lasted, the demonstrators remained at the doors of the government headquarters in the midst of indigenous rituals. In a festive but also combative climate, in defense of their territories.

The main object of protests was a thesis known as a “time frame,” approved last year by the conservative majority of Parliament. It only recognizes as indigenous territories those that the original peoples effectively occupied on October 5, 1988, when the current Brazilian Constitution was promulgated.

The approval was after the Supreme Court had declared that thesis unconstitutional, which has generated a conflict, yet unresolved, in the face of which the court has urged a “conciliation”, to which the indigenous people oppose.

The camp, the largest annual event of the indigenous peoples, has been held since 2004 and this time has as its motto the phrase “Our framework is ancestral. We were always here,” alluding to the thesis defended by conservatism and the agricultural sector.

According to official data, indigenous people occupy about 14% of the national territory. It is represented by about 600 already delimited areas, to which can be added another 120 that are still being analyzed.

The demarcation of indigenous lands, an obligation of the State under the Constitution, was suspended between 2019 and 2022, during the administration of the then far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, and was resumed last year by Lula’s government.

However, of the fourteen territories ready for demarcation, the Government has so far regularized ten and the other four are pending negotiation. They are currently occupied by landowners who, in the past, expelled the indigenous people.

Lula pointed out in his message in X that it was not “easy to rebuild indigenous politics” after Bolsonaro’s mandate. He was “satisfied with what has been done so far” and guaranteed that his Government will work “even harder” for the indigenous peoples.