Telma Yolanda Oqueli, a community leader in San José del Golfo municipality outside Guatemala City, was shot in the chest and gravely wounded by a gunman on a motorbike June 13. She was returning home from a protest vigil when she was intercepted by the two men on the motorbike. Residents of San José del Golfo and neighboring San Pedro Ayampuc have since March 2 been daily blocking the entrance to the Tambor/Progreso 7 Derivada run by Exploraciones Mineras de Guatemala, SA (EXMINGUA), local subsidiary of Canadian junior Radius Gold Inc. The North Metropolitan People's Resistance Front (FRENAM) is asserting the communities' right to a consultation, or local plebiscite, on the mining project. The project began exploratory operations earlier this year without any consent from the local population; nor has the government of Guatemala, carried out any consultation. Oqueli, a leader of the blockades, had received FRENAM has issued an urgent call for the Guatemalan state to guarantee of the communities. (Noticias Comunicarte, CoDev, June 13; MiMundo, June 4 via UDW)

In a wee-hours raid on June 12, heavily armed FBI and Border Patrol agents in 15 vehicles swept into the Ruidoso Downs Racetrack and Casino, in Ruidoso, NM, seizing dozens of racehorses. A simultaneous raid was carried out at Zule Farms, in Lexington, Okla, which apparently supplied horses to the Ruidoso track. A total of seven were arrested in the raids, accused of using the horse trade to launder money for Los Zetas drug cartel. Indicted in the case are accused Zeta commanders Miguel Angel Treviño Morales AKA "Z-40" and his brother Oscar Omar Treviño Morales AKA "Z-42"—who are presumed to remain at large in Mexico. (El Paso Times, AP, June 13; El Paso Times, June 12)

With the Ninth Indigenous March, called to protest construction of a road through the Isiboro Sécure National Park Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS), now resting at Caranavi, in the Yungas region of La Paz department, a new blow to the movement was registered June 8 as leaders loyal to President Evo Morales affected a change of leadership in the main organization behind the march, the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian Oriente (CIDOB). After an "extraordinary assembly" in Santa Cruz, 10 regional CIDOB leaders announced that they had voted to "disown" the organization's president, Adolfo Chávez, for "violating" internal norms. They said a Grand National Assembly of Indigenous Peoples (GANPI) would be held in 30 days to chose a replacement for Chávez, the main leader supporting the Ninth March.

The Transportation and Communications Commission of Peru's Congress on June 7 approved Law 1035-2011, introduced by the fujimorista bloc, that would declare the "public necessity and national interest" of a new highway between Puerto Esperanza, Purús province, Ucayali department, and Iñapari, Tahuamanu province, Madre de Dios department—cutting through Alto Purús National Park, and territory believed to shelter isolated or "uncontacted" indigenous bands. Peru's Amazonian indigenous alliance AIDESEP and its Madre de Dios regional affiliate FENAMAD protested that the region's native inhabitants had not been consulted on the measure, and charged that the road would impact the Madre de Dios Territorial Reserve for isolated peoples. The law now goes to the full Congress for debate. But Verónika Mendoza, leader of the Commission on Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Peoples, insisted that her commission should have to sign off on the bill before it goes to the floor as well. (InfoRegión, June 11; La Republica, June 10; AIDESEP, June 7)

Responding to outcry over civilian casualties, the Pentagon is preparing to deploy a new generation of drones the size of model planes, with miniscule warheads that can allegedly be delivered with pinpoint accuracy. The Predator and Reaper drones now in use typically carry 100-pound laser-guided Hellfire missiles or 500-pound GPS-guided "smart bombs" that can reduce buildings to smoldering rubble. The new Switchblade drone weighs less than six pounds and are supposedly designed to kill a sniper on a rooftop without destroying the building. (LAT, June 11) The announcement comes days after UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on a visit to Pakistan said: "Drone attacks do raise serious questions about compliance with international law. The principle of distinction and proportionality and ensuring accountability for any failure to comply with international law is also difficult when drone attacks are conducted outside the military chain of command and beyond effective and transparent mechanisms of civilian or military control... I see the indiscriminate killings and injuries of civilians in any circumstances as human rights violations." (AFP, June 7)

Burma's President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in western Rakhine (formerly Arakan) state June 10 following an uprising by the Muslim Rohingya people, in which hundreds of homes of Buddhist villagers were put to the torch. At least seven have been killed since the incident that sparked the violence. The rape and murder of a Buddhist woman was blamed on Rohingyas; a bus full of Muslim pilgrims was then waylaid by a mob, who beat 10 of the passengers to death. The pilgrims, who were returning to Rangoon from Thetsa Masjid in the Rakhine town of Thandwe, appear not to have even been Rohingyas. The Rohingyas are a stateless people; the Burmese government maintains they are "illegal" immigrants from Bangladesh, and periodically rounds them up by the hundreds to deport them across the border—where, far from being welcomed, they languish in refugee camps. (See map.) In Burma, they face harsh restrictions on their movements, and are denied the right to have more than two children per family by law. "The government needs to recognize...that its discriminatory policies against the Rohingyas that [have] denied them citizenship and subjected them to such restrictions need to be lifted," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch. "They need to be treated as people of Burma and recognized as such." (Radio Australia, The Telegraph, June 11; AFP, June 9; The Voice of Rohingya, June 4)

With anger still growing in Honduras over the May 11 raid on the village of Ahuas that left four dead, the White House shows no sign of reconsidering the Central American Regional Security Initiative, under which the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Pentagon's Southern Command are coordinated with regional security forces. Officials boast the new cooperation is working, stating that last year the US monitored more than 100 small planes from South America landing at isolated airstrips in Honduras, with no interference. In contrast, two such flights were intercepted in May—including the one involved in the deadly raid at Ahuas. "In the first four months of this year, I'd say we actually have gotten it together across the military, law enforcement and developmental communities," William R. Brownfield, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, told the New York Times. "My guess is narcotics traffickers are hitting the pause button. For the first time in a decade, air shipments are being intercepted immediately upon landing."

On June 1, a tribunal of the World Bank's International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) granted jurisdiction to Canada's Pacific Rim Mining Corp, allowing the final phase of the company's arbitration case against El Salvador to go forward. The tribunal dismissed objections filed by the Government of El Salvador, ruling that the case can proceed under El Salvador's own Foreign Investment Law. Since 2009, the Vancouver-based company has been seeking $100 million from El Salvador for having turned down the company a permit to mine gold in the northern region of Cabañas.