Henry Benítez Huamán, 14, died on Aug. 12 from a gunshot wound he received one week earlier when police agents attacked protesters in the town of Kitena, in La Convención province of Peru's southeastern Cusco region. Another victim, Juan Carlos Aragón Monzón, remained hospitalized in Cusco city with a gunshot wound in his right leg, while 18 people were apparently injured by rubber bullets. The autopsy report on Benítez Huamán showed he was hit by a metal bullet in the chest, disproving initial claims by the police that they only used rubber bullets. The demonstrators were protesting plans by the Camisea LNG consortium to export natural gas.

Thousands of Honduran workers marched in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula on Aug. 18 to demand an increase in the minimum wage and to show solidarity with teachers who were in the 14th day of an open-ended strike. The protest—initiated by the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), Honduras' main coalition of labor and grassroots organizations—was part of a strategy to build gradually for a national general strike against the government of President Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa, according to Juan Barahona, an FNRP leader.

Hundreds of supporters of Puerto Rican independence gathered at the Ateneo Puertorriqueño, one of the island's oldest cultural centers, in San Juan on Aug. 2 to commemorate Dolores ("Lolita") Lebrón Sotomayor. Lebrón, who died the day before of cardiovascular complications at the age of 90, led an armed attack on the US Congress on March 1, 1954, and spent 25 years and six months in a US prison before being pardoned in 1979 by US president Jimmy Carter (1977-1981). She was a "mythic figure," Rubén Berríos, president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), told the Spanish wire service EFE. "Lolita's death wasn't a death, because she will never be forgotten," said former prisoner Rafael Cancel Miranda, one of the five participants in the attack. "The person who hasn't left anything behind is forgotten."

On Aug. 12 the Mexican government's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued recommendations in the case of two graduate students killed the early morning of March 19 during a gunfight between soldiers and alleged drug cartel members in front of the prestigious Institute of Technology and Higher Education's Monterrey campus (ITESM) at Monterrey in the northern state of Nuevo León. The incident took place as part of a heavily militarized "war on drugs" that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa put into motion shortly after taking office in December 2006; the government and the army claim that most of the thousands of victims are cartel members.

A full session of Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) decided by a 9-2 vote on Aug. 10 that same-sex marriages performed in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) are valid in all the country's states, although each state remains free to regulate marriages performed in its own territory. The court had ruled on Aug. 5 that the DF's law allowing same-sex marriage was constitutional, denying a challenge from federal attorney general Arturo Chávez Chávez.

Hundreds marched in Changuinola, the capital of the northwestern Panamanian province of Bocas del Toro, on Aug. 8 in memory of two workers who were killed a month earlier while protesting legislation opposed by unionists and environmental activists. Erasmo Cerrud, a local leader in the country's largest union, the Only Union of Construction and Similar Workers (SUNTRACS), charged that there had been no progress in the investigations into the deaths of the two workers, Antonio Smith and Virgilio Castillo, in confrontations with anti-riot police. "The dead and the wounded won't be forgotten, and the struggle will continue," Feliciana Jaén, a leader of indigenous women, told the marchers.

A total of 33 candidates met the Aug. 7 deadline for filing to run for president in Haiti's general elections, scheduled for Nov. 28. The candidacies must still be approved by the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP); the decisions are to be made by Aug. 17. Among the more prominent candidates were: Jude Célestin, running for the Unity party of President René Préval; Jacques Edouard Alexis, a former prime minister in the Préval government who is now the candidate of the Movement for the Progress of Haiti (MPH); Coalition of National Progressive Democrats (RDNP) candidate Myrlande Hyppolite Manigat, a former senator and the wife of ex-president Leslie Manigat (February-June 1988); economist Leslie Voltaire of the Together We Are Strong coalition; and pastor Chavannes Jeune of the Alliance of Christians and Citizens for the Reconstruction of Haiti (ACCRHA).

On Aug. 5 Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) upheld a law enacted in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) last December recognizing same-sex marriages. Eight of the 11 justices voted with the majority; two opposed the marriage equality law and one was absent for reasons of health.