As of Oct. 4 Hondurans' free speech and assembly rights remained suspended under a 45-day state of siege declared by de facto president Roberto Micheletti a week earlier. The general secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS), Chilean diplomat José Miguel Insulza, was scheduled to visit Tegucigalpa on Oct. 7 with a delegation of about 10 foreign ministers to negotiate a resolution to the crisis that began more than 100 days earlier with a June 28 military coup against President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. The deposed president has been staying in the Brazilian embassy since his surprise return to the country on Sept. 21. (Agence France Presse, Oct. 4)

Members of the independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) were guarding the Mexico City facilities of the state-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) to make sure the federal government could not "throw the switch and blame the workers," union president Martín Esparza Flores said after a labor forum in the capital on Oct. 3. The union charged on Sept. 29 that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's center-right administration was contemplating a quasi-military occupation of the plants within a week on the pretext that the SME was planning to cause a blackout. The LFC provides power for the Federal District, and México, Morelos, Puebla and Hidalgo states.

Four Puerto Rican union leaders chained themselves to the gates of the Fortaleza, the governor's official residence, in San Juan on Sept. 28 to protest plans to lay off 16,970 of the island's 180,000 public employees. About 30 other unionists set up what they called a "Camp of Dignity and Shame" outside the 16th-century fortress. After a brief scuffle, police agents dispersed the group, which included members of the General Workers Union (UGT) and Robert Pagán, president of Local 1996SPT of the US-based Service Employers International Union (SEIU). No arrests or injuries were reported. Pagán promised that this was just the first of "dozens of civil disobedience actions" against the layoffs.

Brazilian organizations delivered an open letter to the United Nations Information Center in the Itamaraty Palace in Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 5 opposing the continued presence of Brazilian troops in Haiti. Afterwards the activists held a solidarity event with hip-hop presentations in the Largo Carioca plaza in downtown Rio. The UN Security Council is expected to renew the mandate for the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), now five years old, sometime before Oct. 15.

Peru's Indigenous Affairs Department, INDEPA, has discovered evidence of an uncontacted tribe in a remote region of the Amazon. The evidence, including 38 abandoned fishing huts, fires, and food remains, was collected during a visit to the Las Piedras River in Madre de Dios region by an INDEPA team in mid-August. Peru's President Alan García has denied the existence of such tribes, saying they have been "invented" by environmentalists opposed to oil exploration.

Ecuador's indigenous movement launched a national "Mobilization to Defend the Water" Sept. 28, erecting roadblocks with rocks, trees and burning tires on several sections along the Panamerican highway and various other locations. The mobilization was called by Marlon Santi, president of Ecuador's national indigenous coalition CONAIE, two weeks earlier, at a "National Assembly to Defend the Water." A statement on the website of Ecuador's Amazonian peoples alliance ECUARUNARI states that the country's indigenous movement has been "exhausted by the process of dialogue" with the Rafael Correa government.

Two Qeqchi Maya leaders were shot and killed and over a dozen wounded this week near the site of a shuttered nickel mine in Guatemala. The first shooting took place Sept. 27 on land claimed by the community of Las Nubes, which Compañia Guatemalteca de Niquel (CGN), a subsidiary of Manitoba's HudBay Minerals, also claims to own. Early reports indicated CGN's private security guards opened fire while attempting to remove families from their land. Adolfo Ichi Chamán, a teacher and community leader, was killed and at least eight more wounded by AK-47 fire.

The Canada-based Linear Gold Corp. ceded to pressure from indigenous communities who oppose plans to exploit gold and silver deposits at Ixhuatán in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, and announced the closure of its offices in the state on Sept. 28. Along with the company Blackfire Exploration Corporation, Linear Gold Corp. holds most of the concessions granted by the Mexican government to foreign mining outfits in the conflicted state. The company's statement upon closing its Chiapas offices cited the world financial sitaution, and left open the possibility of resuming local operations. The Mexican Network of the Mining-Affected (REMA) had held numerous protests against the project. (No a la Mina, Sept. 28)