Following last month's nationwide campesino mobilization in Honduras, campesinos from Patuca and Catacamas municipalities in the country's sprawling and rugged northeastern department of Olancho held a protest outside the offices of the National Electric Energy Company (ENEE) in Tegucigalpa, the national capital. The April 25 protest demanded cancellation of the planned Patuca III hydro-electic project until land rights in the area have been clarified. The government claims that last year it delivered promised compensation to campesinos whose lands would be flooded by the Patuca III project, on the river of the same name, and is preparing to commence construction. But the protesters say some 320 affected campesinos have received no compensation. Many of these lack official title to their lands, and protesters say the government has not followed through on pledges for a demarcation of peasant lands in the affected zone. (El Heraldo, Proceso Digital, Honduras, April 25 )

Residents of the villages of Ahuas and Patuca, in the remote Miskito Coast of northeast Honduras, took to the streets May 11 to protest a deadly DEA raid, demanding the US agency leave their territory—and burning down four government offices to make their point. In the incident in the pre-dawn hours that morning on the Río Patuca, four were killed—including two pregnant women—and another four wounded when DEA agents and Honduran National Police agents in a US State Department-contracted helicopter piloted by Guatemalan military men fired on a boat they apparently believed was filled with drug traffickers. Local residents—backed up by the mayor of local Ahuas municipality (Gracias a Dios department), Lucio Baquedano—say they were humble villagers who were fishing on the river, and had nothing to do with drug trafficking.

The Israel Corporation, with holdings in the energy sector across South and Central America, has especially targeted Peru for expansion. IC Power, a holding of the Israel Corp Group, already operates four hydro and gas plants in the Andean nation. South American subsidiary Inkia Energy owns 75% of Kallpa Generación, operator of the massive Kallpa Thermo-electric Center, south of Lima, which burns natural gas from the Camisea pipeline. Inkia Energy has also invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build the giant 510-megawatt Cerro del Águila Hydroelectric Center in Tayacaja province, Huancavelica region. IC Power's plants produce 11.34% of Peru's electricity, and the company hopes to greatly expand in coming years. While IC Power has operations in Bolivia, Chile, Panama and El Salvador, CEO Javier García sees the greatest potential in Peru. "The Peruvian market is developing and its consumption increases every year," García told Israel's YNet news service. In contrast, García said that Bolivia's economic climate attracts few investors, despite the fact that IC Power's holdings there have yielded "nice profits." (YNet, May 12; Green Prophet, Nov. 17, 2011)

Peru's Apurímac-Ene River Valley (VRAE), which exploded into the news last month when Shining Path guerillas briefly took 36 pipeline construction workers hostage, is the scene of a contest between the local Asháninka indigenous people and economic interests seeking to develop a hydro-electric mega-project in the area, to export power to neighboring Brazil. The proposed 2,200-megawatt Pakitzapango hydroelectric dam would flood much of the basin of the Río Ene, as the Apurímac is known after it enters the Amazonian lowlands. The project would mean relocation of 15 Asháninka communities, numbering some 10,000 inhabitants, and it is conceived as but the first of six dams in the area that together would generate more than 6,500 megawatts under a 2010 agreement signed with Brazil. All told, the five-dam project would displace thousands more people. Brazilian companies Electrobras, Odebrecht, Engevix, Camargo Correa, and the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES) are driving the push for the mega-project.

A month after the jungle hostage crisis in Peru—when 36 pipeline construction workers were briefly abducted by Shining Path rebels—facts are starting to emerge about the murky affair, and the revelations have prompted the resignation of two cabinet ministers. Defense Minister Alberto Otarola and Interior Minister Daniel Lozada stepped down May 10, when President Ollanta Humala was on a tour of South Korea and Japan. Both were harshly criticized in the deaths of 10 soldiers and police officers over the last month in the conflicted Apurímac-Ene River Valley (VRAE). The toll just over the past month is already higher than that suffered by the security forces in all of 2011, when nine police officers and soldiers were killed in the VRAE.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by fighting in northern Mali and dozens have been subjected to arbitrary detention, extra-judicial executions or sexual violence including rape, Amnesty International said May 16. In a report "Mali: Five months of crisis, armed rebellion and military coup," Amnesty International catalogues a litany of human rights violations committed against the backdrop of a food shortage affecting 15 million people in the Sahel region. "After two decades of relative stability and peace, Mali is now facing its worst crisis since independence in 1960," said Gaetan Mootoo, Amnesty's West Africa researcher who just returned from a three week research mission to the country. "The entire north of the country has been taken over by armed groups who are running riot. Ten of thousands of people have fled the region, creating a humanitarian crisis in Mali and in neighbouring countries."

Venezuela on May 16 demanded that the US extradite a former supreme court judge who has accused high-ranking figures of the Hugo Chávez government of links to drug-trafficking. The fugitive judge, Eladio Aponte Aponte, was removed from office in March over charges that he provided forged documents to accused trafficker Walid Makled. Aponte is co-operating with US authorities after his April 2 flight to Miami in a DEA-chartered plane. Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said the US must hand over Eliado Aponte, as there was a judicial process underway against him in Venezuela, and noted that an Interpol "red notice" has been issued for him. From the US, Aponte has publicly claimed that Chávez's office and top military officials including Defense Minister Henry Rangel Silva asked him to be lenient in the case against a lieutenant accused of trafficking drugs. Maduro counter-charges that the DEA is working to protect criminals and undermine the revolutionary process in Venezuela. He said if the US does not return Aponte, Washington would become "direct accomplices of these drug-trafficking mafias." (InSight Crime, FT, May 15; Radio Nacional de Venezuela, May 14; WSJ, April 19)

Palestinian prisoners on long-term hunger strike agreed May 14 to a deal ending the strikes in exchange for improved conditions. The Egyptian-brokered deal to end the mass hunger strike in Israeli facilities will see the prisoners—including Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla on a 77-day strike—released at the end of their "administrative detention" terms. Four hunger strikers will be transferred to civilian hospitals within Israel for treatment. Hamas official Saleh Arouri, who was a member of the negotiations team, said that under the deal Israel agreed to provide a list of accusations to administrative detainees, or release them at the end of their term. Israel also agreed to release all detainees from solitary confinement, to lift a ban on family visits for detainees from the Gaza Strip, and revoke the "Shalit law." The "Shalit law" restricted prisoners' access to families and to educational materials as punishment for the five-year captivity of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Shalit was freed in October in a prisoner swap agreement. (Ma'an News Agency, May 16)