A lawyer for the United Steelworkers has asked the US State Department to investigate infiltration by Colombia's illegal paramilitaries into President Alvaro Uribe's first electoral campaign, based on a video showing then-candidate Uribe meeting with a group that included a man identified as Frenio Sánchez Carreño, leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) in the violence-torn city of Barrancabermeja.

On June 12, Garifuna leader Felix Ordoñez Suazo was assassinated at the community of Punta Piedras, in Colón department on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Community residents identified the killers as members of a group of land invaders who have been encroaching on Punta Piedras' titled lands. The conflict began in 1992, when a group of campesino settlers financed by business interests linked to the military began colonizing the area. Despite the fact that Punta Piedras had title to the lands in question as an ejido since 1921, the National Agrarian Institute (INA) granted the invaders a title to overlapping territory in 1999. Punta Piedras is preparing to bring a complaint in the matter to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (CIDH). (Oil Watch Mesoamerica, June 13)

Veracruz state police detained 47 members of local campesino group "Los Dorados de Villa" at the community of Ixhuatlán de Madero, in the mountainous Huasteca region. The campesinos, adherents of the Zapatista "Other Campaign," had been peacefully occupying a 513-hectare piece of land at Lomas del Dorado, from which they say they had been illegally evicted by the army 23 years ago. They say the occupation was undertaken after a generation of fruitless petitions for redress. An observer at the scene from the local United Human Rights Network (RUDH) is said to have been "disappeared." (La Jornada, June 16; LIMEDDH, June 15)

Resuming his national tour of Mexico, Subcommander Marcos of the Zapatista rebels met June 14 with residents of Loma de Santa María barrio in Morelia, Michoacán, who oppose a so-called "mega-tunnel" state authorities plan to build through their neighborhood. After a closed meeting with the residents, Marcos joined community leaders at a press conference where he said, "The earth is like a human body, and if you destroy a natural area, it is as if you cut off an arm. The politicians are trying to convince us this is possible, when we know it is not true." (Cambio de Michoacán, June 14) Opponents say the tunnel will negatively impact several green areas on the outer rings of the city, including Bosque Cuauhtémoc, Bosque Lázaro Cárdenas and La Loma de Santa María. (Cambio de Michoacán, June 7)

Federal judicial authorities in Mexico have granted an injuction to a group of Zoque indigenous campesinos in the Chimalapas region straddling the border of Chiapas and Oaxaca states, halting construction of a road through their territory. The petitioners, from the village of Santa María Chimalapa, Oax., say the project undertaken by the Chiapas state government, extending the Cintalapa-Rafael Cal y Mayor highway to the Valle de Uxpanapa highway in Oaxaca, would illegally impact communal lands. Complicating the matter is that some of the impacted lands are contested between Santa María Chimalapa, which claims them as traditional communal lands, and communities on the Chiapas side of the border which claim them as ejidos (redistributed lands). "The community is ready to defend its territory and seek a solution to these ancient conflicts," said Miguel Hernández Jacinto, comisariado of communal lands for Santa María Chimalapa. Peasant colonists from Chiapas have apparently been settling the communal forest lands, and petitioning the agrarian reform authorities for reconition as ejidos. These forests are said to protect jaguars, tapirs, tepezcuintles and other species threatened with extinction. (La Jornada, June 13)

On June 14, Jose Luis Soberanes Fernandez, president of Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), confirmed that soldiers had raped at least two underage girls and possibly two others during an anti-drug operation in Caracuaro, Michoacan, from May 2 to May 4. Soberanes was unable to say whether the military would punish the soldiers. But he added that the "Secretariat of National Defense [SEDENA] can't be the judge and a party [in the case] at the same time." President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa's campaign to use the military across the country to control organized crime has led to several abuses, including the June 1 shooting deaths of five members of an extended family—three of them children—by soldiers in Sinaloa state. "[W]hat happened in Sinaloa tells us that the army isn't prepared to take on the functions of the police," Soberanes told the press on June 14. (La Jornada, June 15)

The Chamber of Representatives of the Colombian Congress voted 62-43 the night of June 14 to approve a law recognizing civil unions. The law would allow same-sex couples to register if they have lived together for two years and are not in other marriages or civil unions. If one partner dies, the survivor would automatically inherit and would receive social security payments and other work-related benefits. The Senate is expected to approve the law and send it to rightwing president Alvaro Uribe for approval on June 19; supporters expect no obstacles from Uribe. Although some Latin American cities have recognized same-sex unions--including Mexico City last November--no country in the region has passed a national law for civil unions. (El Diario-La Prensa, NY, June 16 from AP)

On June 12, more than 150 ICE agents executed search and arrest warrants at three sites in Portland, Oregon, connected with the Fresh Del Monte company and its Portland fruit and vegetable processing facility, arresting about 165 workers and three managers. Searches were carried out at two offices of American Staffing Resources Inc, a US recruitment company responsible for staffing at the Portland Fresh Del Monte plant. A search warrant was also executed at the Fresh Del Monte office within the plant. As part of the criminal investigation, a federal grand jury in Portland has returned indictments against three individuals alleging immigration, document fraud, and identity theft offenses.