On July 12 Puerto Rican environmentalist Alberto de Jesús arrived at Fort de France, capital of the French overseas department of Martinique, the latest stop in a 1,100-mile journey from Venezuela to Puerto Rico by kayak that the activist has undertaken to publicize the situation of Oscar López Rivera, an independence fighter who has been imprisoned in the US for 31 years. De Jesús, who is widely known as "Tito Kayak," began his trip on June 20 at the Venezuelan town of Macuro, on the Paria peninsula. Despite an injury to his wrist and damage to the kayak during the first days of the journey, de Jesús was determined to continue to Puerto Rico; afterwards he may go on to the US East Coast.

Unidentified persons seized Gregorio Chávez, a 69-year-old campesino, on July 2 while he was working near the Paso Aguán estate in the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras. Residents of the nearby Panamá community said they heard gunshots and found signs that someone had been dragged toward the estate. After searching for four days, on July 6 residents found Chávez's body buried on the estate, with evidence that the campesino had been tortured, according to a communiqué by the Permanent Human Rights Monitoring Center for the Aguán.

Mexico City residents responded to the country's July 1 presidential and legislative elections with a massive and apparently spontaneous demonstration on July 7 repudiating the official results. Thousands marched from the Angel of Independence to the Zócalo plaza to protest what they called the "imposition" of Enrique Peña Nieto, the presidential candidate of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). They charged his electoral victory was the result of fraud, vote buying and biased publicity by the media.

As of early on July 6, with 99.51% of polling places counted, Mexican officials said former México state governor Enrique Peña Nieto of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had been elected president with 38.22% of the valid votes cast on July 1. Center-left candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador followed with 31.57% of the votes, and Josefina Vázquez Mota from the ruling center-right National Action Party (PAN) came in third with 25.42%. Gabriel Quadri, the candidate of the centrist New Alliance Party (Panal), trailed with 2.28%. The results—which matched a rapid count the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) carried out the evening of July 1—followed a substantial recount of the votes after charges of irregularities.

The US Senate is expected to issue a report on July 17 about international money laundering through the London-based corporation HSBC, Europe's largest bank; much of the focus is reportedly on the laundering of drug money through the group's Mexican subsidiary, HSBC Mexico. The US Justice Department is also investigating, and the bank is expected to end up paying a fine of more than $1 billion, both for the Mexican operation and for HSBC's business activities with parties in Iran, in violation of US trade sanctions against that country.

More than 1,000 Haitians marched through downtown Port-au-Prince on June 25 to protest a plan to destroy homes they have built on hillsides overlooking the city. Haitian police and members of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) fired tear gas canisters to disperse the protesters when they tried to approach the National Palace; some protesters threw rocks at the police and at passing cars. This was the second demonstration on the issue in a week.

The US House of Representatives voted on June 28 to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena for documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled program in which the Arizona office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) inadvertently let about 2,000 firearms pass into Mexico during 2009 and 2010. The ATF is an agency of the Justice Department, which the attorney general heads.

On July 1 Mexicans went to the polls to elect a new president, and all 128 senators and all 500 legislative deputies in the federal Congress. New governors were being voted on in six of the 31 states—Chiapas, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Morelos, Tabasco and Yucatán—while the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) was choosing a new head of government, the 66 DF Assembly members and the 16 delegates who represent the city's delegaciones (boroughs). Some 79 million Mexicans were eligible to vote. (La Jornada, Mexico, July 1)