The US Border Patrol shot dead a Mexican national who was among three men allegedly attempting to cross the frontier at San Ysidro, Calif. June 21. The dead man, identified as Jose Alfredo Yañez Reyes, 40, was shot after throwing stones at the agents from the southern side of the border, in Tijuana. One of the border agents reportedly sustained injuries but has since been released from hospital. The Border Patrol said the agent fired in self-defense. But the Mexican government condemned the killing, calling it a “disproportionate use of force” and has demanded a thorough investigation. President Felipe Calderón Tweeted that he had protested about the incident to Hillary Clinton at a Guatemala summit they are both attending. The death comes almost exactly a year after a 15-year-old Mexican boy was shot on the border at El Paso, Tex., after allegedly throwing stones at Border Patrol agents. (UPI, InSight Crime, June 23)

Health workers in Colombia's remote southeast report that an outbreak of respiratory disease has struck one of the Amazon’s last nomadic tribes—whose numbers have already been decimated by flu and malaria. Around 35 members of the Nukak-Maku people, including nine children, have been admitted to the hospital at departmental capital San José del Guaviare. Local health director Héctor Muñoz told Colombia's RCN radio that the hospital is well over capacity, leaving some Nukak with only make-shift beds. Many members of the tribe have been living in a refugee camp on the outskirts of San José since being pushed out of their rainforest home by illegal armed groups and drug traffickers. Since they first emerged from the forest in 1988, more than half the tribe has been wiped out.

Rufino Machaca Quinto, a representative of the Natural Resources Defense Front protest organization, announced after a meeting with leaders of the Mines and Energy Ministry (MINEM) in Lima June 23 that the government has agreed in principle to overturn Supreme Decree 083–2007, which gave approval to a controversial mining project in the southern Peruvian region of Puno. Overturning the decree has been a key demand of the Aymara protest movement in Puno. However, more meetings with MINEM chief Pedro Sánchez Gamarra and other cabinet ministers are planned, and the decision is not official yet. The Front's director, Walter Aduviri, emphasized that the movement has other demands—including a halt to oil exploitation in Puno and the planned Inambari hydro-electric project—and that the protests will continue until these are met as well. (Radio Onda Azul, Puno, June 23; Mariátegui blog, Lima, June 21)

Aerial photos released by Brazil's indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI, June 22 reveal evidence of one of the world's last "uncontacted" tribes, in the Vale do Javari region of Amazonas state, near the Peruvian border. (See map.) The photos show four large communal thatched huts surrounded by crops of corn, bananas, peanuts and other subsistence foods. FUNAI director Aloysio Guapindaia said the agency, which took the photos in an overflight of the settlement, will work to keep the tribe isolated and safe from outside encroachment. The tribe is thought to belong to the Pano linguistic group, which straddles the borders of Brazil, Peru and Bolivia.

Received from the progressive Arab blog Yansoon, June 21:

Open Letter to Gaddafi Supporter Cynthia McKinney from Disappointed Palestinians

Dearest Cynthia McKinney,

Two years ago, you spoke out against Israel’s human rights abuses in Palestine. You were even put in an Israeli prison after your attempts to help deliver medical supplies and humanitarian aid on a ship to Gaza in 2009. For your sacrifices, you gained respect from many Palestinians all over the world.

In what authorities call a dispute over control of drug trafficking routes and timber resources, paramilitaries linked to organized crime have used death threats and violence to cause a general exodus of the campesino community of La Laguna, in Coyuca de Catalán municipality of southern Mexico's Guerrero state. In a caravan of seven trucks, 30 adults, the majority women and elders, with 77 children, fled the night of April 21 from the hamlet in the Sierra Madre del Sur to Puerto Las Ollas, some five hours away on rugged mountain roads. There they remain, having been granted refuge by local residents.

Prominent Mexican journalist and commentator Miguel Angel López Velasco was shot dead along with his wife and son in Veracruz early on the morning of June 20. Gunmen broke into the family's home in the port city's Playa Linda section, killing López, 55, his wife Agustina Solano, and their son, Misael López Solana, 21. López worked as an editor at Notiver, the city's biggest newspaper, covering corruption, crime and drug trafficking. He wrote a widely read column called "Va de Nuez" under the pseudonym Milo Vela.

Local environmental activist Juan Francisco Durán Ayala of El Salvador’s Cabañas department was found dead June 16, in an open field in the Lamatepec district of Soyapango municipality, outside San Salvador. Durán Ayala went missing on June 3—a day after hanging up posters and distributing flyers in his hometown of Ilobasco opposed to a gold mine operated by the Canadian Pacific Rim corporation. (See map.) He had continued his public opposition to the mine despite having received numerous threats. Activists are expressing outrage that his body was promptly buried by authorities in a "common grave" in the capital's Bermeja cemetery. The Environmental Committee of Cabañas (CAC), the National Board Against Metal Mining and the local Radio Victoria—whose operators have also recently received threats—are demanding that the national authorities reveal what they know in the case and launch an aggressive investigation. Durán is the fourth Pacific Rim opponent killed in El Salvador in the last two years. (Mining Watch, June 20; LaPágina, San Salvador, June 18; FSRN, Diario CoLatino, San Salvador, CAC statement, June 16)