After three days of meetings at the Distinction Night Club in a suburb north of Port-au-Prince, on Sept. 16 four Haitian political coalitions announced their opposition to the general elections scheduled for Nov. 28. The four coalitions--Alternative, Liberation, Rasanble ("Assemble") and the Union of Democratic Haitian Citizens for Development and Education (UCCADE)— said they were forming a "United Political Front" and expressed their lack of confidence in the current Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). Instead of elections, the coalitions called for a "government of public safety" to take power after President René Garcia Préval's term ends on Feb. 7 and carry out a transition to full democracy.

Mexico's National Defense Secretariat announced on Sept. 13 that four soldiers would be arrested and charged with homicide for the killing of two civilians the night of Sept. 5 on the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway in Apodaca municipality in the northern state of Nuevo León. The soldiers, from the 7th Military Zone, opened fire on a car in which members of an extended family were driving home after a party. Vicente de León Ramírez and his 16-year-old son, Alejandro Gabriel de León Castellanos, were killed; three other family members were hit by bullets, and two children, 8 and 9, were injured by broken glass. The soldiers said they shot at the car because the driver, Vicente de León's son-in-law, ignored orders to stop at a checkpoint. The family denied that there was a checkpoint and said they not been ordered to stop.

A group of 12 Chilean activists began an open-ended "massive solidarity fast" on Sept. 14 to support indigenous Mapuche prisoners who have been carrying out a liquids-only hunger strike since July 12. The solidarity fasters included the presidents of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) and the Federation of University of Santiago Students; the president of the Copper Workers Commission of the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT); and members of the Coordinating Committee of Santiago Autonomous Mapuche (COOAMS) and the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees. A number of leftists, unionists and artists expressed their solidarity with the fast, which was being held in the FECH offices in Santiago.

Latin America solidarity activist Rev. Lucius Walker, 80, died of a heart attack on Sept. 7 at his home in Demarest, New Jersey. Walker, a Baptist minister, was also active in the US civil rights movement; in 1967 he founded the New York-based Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).

On Sept. 10, Puerto Rican politicians from across the spectrum praised leftist independence activist Juan Mari Brás, who died earlier that day at 82 of lung cancer in his home in Río Pedras, San Juan. Mari Brás was a "legendary leader who fought for his ideals," according to Gov. Luis Fortuño, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP). Héctor Ferrer, president of the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD), called Mari Brás "an example for all of us who believe in an ideal and seek the best for Puerto Rico," while Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) president Rubén Berríos Martínez said: "Thank you, Juan, for your life and your example."

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an agreement in principle in Tegucigalpa on Sept. 10 for a standby loan to the Honduran government. This gives the country immediate access to $196 million and will clear the way for loans of $80 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, $40 million from the World Bank, $52 million from the European Union (EU), $7 million from Germany and an unspecified amount from Taiwan.

On Sept. 9 military units began carrying out street patrols in Honduran cities, mainly Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the northern industrial center, in what the government said was an effort to help the police fight crime. The authorities didn't set an end date for the patrols, whose duties include searches of individuals and vehicles for drugs and illegal arms. "The idea is to fight without truce against crime and to bring tranquility to Hondurans," Minister Oscar Alvarez explained. (EFE, Sept. 10)

At least three people suffered serious injuries and 26 were arrested when fighting broke out between striking miners and others at the giant Cananea copper mine in the northern Mexican state of Sonora on Sept. 8. One of the injured, apparently a strikebreaker, was shot in the head but survived, despite initial reports that he had died.