In the early hours of July 9, FARC guerillas attacked the central plaza of the indigenous Nasa village Toribio in Colombia's Cauca department, leaving two civilian residents dead and 73 injured. The attack, with improvised explosives, came at the start of a market day in the village. One National Police officer was also killed, and three injured. Damage was caused to several homes, small businesses and public buildings in 400 square-meter area. The injured were evacuated from the village for medical treatment. In a statement, the region's traditional indigenous authorities said the attack "demonstrates the deterioration of the guerillas and the total disrespect of all the armed actors for life and human dignity."

Famed Argentine folksinger Facundo Cabral was shot to death early July 9 by unknown gunmen who ambushed his car on the way to the airport in Guatemala City. A total of eight bullets struck Cabral and his Nicaraguan concert promoter Henry Fariña. The singer’s white Range Rover and a Chevrolet Tahoe carrying his bodyguards attempted to seek cover in a fire station. A firefighter witnessed gunfire from two black vehicles. Initial claims that the attack was an armed robbery have now been dropped; there is some speculation that Fariña, who survived, was the actual target of the attack. Authorities said one of the attackers’ vehicles, pock-marked with bullet-holes and strewn with casings, has been located in El Salvador. Cabral, 74, rose to fame in the 1970s, an icon of protest music in an era of harsh repression across Latin America. Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom personally called his Argentine counterpart, Cristina Fernandez, to tell her of the slaying. (NDTV, LAT, La Republica, Lima, July 10; ThirdAge, July 9)

The Honduras Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by former Guatemalan vice president Eduardo Stein, presented the report to current Honduran President Porfirio Lobos, Honduran chief justice Jorge Rivera Avilez and OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza in Tegucigalpa July 7. The report concludes that the June 28, 2009 removal from office of former President Manuel Zelaya was in fact a coup d'etat—and not a constitutional succession as some of Zelaya's opponents claimed. The report further asserted that National Congress overstepped its powers when it nominated its speaker Roberto Micheletti as interim president. According to the commission, the interim administration was therefore illegal and a "de facto regime."

For the first time in three years, the Israeli state confiscated uncultivated land in the West Bank last week, to "legalize" a nearby settlement outpost. Acting on orders from the government, the Civil Administration declared 189 dunams of land belonging to the Palestinian village of Karyut to be state land, so as to retroactively "legalize" houses and a road in the Hayovel neighborhood of the settlement of Eli. The expropriation was carried out under an Ottoman land law dating from 1858 that allows uncultivated land to be declared state land. Hayovel was built on Karyut lands in 1998 as a temporary outpost, and later permanent houses and an access road were added.

In a resolution that passed 406-6, the US House of Representatives on July 7 threatened to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority if it pursues recognition of statehood outside of negotiations with Israel. The text of the resolution "affirms that Palestinian efforts to circumvent direct negotiations and pursue recognition of statehood prior to agreement with Israel will harm United States-Palestinian relations and will have serious implications for the United States assistance programs for the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority." It also calls on the Obama administration to review assistance to the Palestinians, which runs to about $500 million a year, in the light of negotiations with Hamas toward a unity government. The Senate passed a similar non-binding resolution last month.

In another contradictory message on the Libya intervention, the House of Representatives July 8 defeated 199-229 a bipartisan measure sponsored by Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Justin Amash (R-MI) to defund all US military operations in the North African country, but passed 225-201 a separate measure sponsored by Tom Cole (R-OK) to deny funding for equipment and training to the Libyan rebels. The second measure, which comes as an amendment to an annual Pentagon spending bill, forbids the Defense Department from providing "military equipment, military training or advice, or other support for military activities, to any group or individual, not part of a country's armed forces, for the purpose of assisting that group or individual in carrying out military activities in or against Libya."

The government of Bolivia formally notified the UN Secretary General of its withdrawal from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on June 30. The withdrawal will enter into effect on 1 January 2012. At that time, Bolivia will re-accede to the Convention with a reservation on the coca leaf and its traditional uses. Bolivia's step—the first of its kind in the history of the UN drug control treaties—comes after the rejection earlier this year of its proposal to delete the Single Convention's Article 49 obligation that "coca leaf chewing must be abolished." A number of countries, including the United States, objected.

July 3 elections in Mexico's key central state of México returned to power the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the former ruling machine of the entire country, in what commentators are calling a signal that the once-discredited party could regain the presidency next year. The state's current PRI governor, Enrique Peña Nieto, is considered the party's early presidential front-runner. He is to be succeeded as México's governor by PRI candidate Eruviel Avila. The PRI also took the two other states where gubernatorial races were held, Nayarit and Coahuila, further tilting the national balance of power to the party.