Students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) started a 48-hour strike on Dec. 7 to oppose plans for an $800 tuition surcharge at the public university beginning on Jan. 1. Five people were injured during the first day of the strike as students confronted guards at the Río Piedras campus in San Juan, and the campus was closed down through Dec. 8. On Dec. 10 police chief José Figueroa Sancha announced that police agents would patrol UPR campuses, at the request of university president José Ramón de la Torre. This is the first time the police have had a presence in the university in nearly 30 years.

On the evening of Dec. 7 Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced the preliminary results of presidential and legislative elections held on Nov. 28. The elections had been chaotic and sometimes violent, and the majority of the presidential candidates denounced the process as fraudulent even before the polls closed.

A report by a leading French cholera expert, Dr. Renaud Piarroux, concludes that the outbreak of the disease in Haiti in mid-October originated at a base maintained by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) near Mirebalais in the Central Plateau. "No other hypothesis could be found," Piarroux wrote, even though he and his team had looked for "another explanation, even an improbable one, [that] could be advanced to explain the sudden occurrence of this cholera epidemic."

The World War 4 Report House Band, featuring Subcommander Pogo, will play Otto's Shrunken Head, 538 East 14th St. (near Ave. B) on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Sunday Dec. 12 at 5:30 PM. If you missed the politically didactic power trio's premier performance at the World War 4 Report benefit in June, this is your chance. Other bands to follow on the bill include Iconicide, Fast Lane and Damn Kids.

On Dec. 1 indigenous Guatemalan Angelica Choc and her lawyers, Klippensteins Barristers & Solicitors, announced a lawsuit in Ontario, Canada, against the Canadian mining company HudBay Minerals Inc. for the murder of Choc's husband, Adolfo Ich Chamán, in the community of El Estor in the eastern department of Izabal on Sept. 27, 2009. Choc charges that security guards working for HudBay, HMI Nickel Inc., and their Guatemalan subsidiary, Compañía Guatemalteca de Níquel, murdered Ich, a leader in the local Q'eqchi' community, because of his opposition to violations by the mining companies.

Hundreds of campesinos marched in Tegucigalpa on Dec. 2 to demand that the Honduran government resolve longstanding land conflicts in the Lower Aguán River Valley in the north of the country. The march, from the National Pedagogic University to the National Congress, was organized by various campesino groups and by the local section of Vía Campesina, an international federation of campesino organizations.

Mexico has the highest rate of violent deaths for women among countries not at war, the regional director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Ana Güezmes, said in Mexico City on Nov. 23, citing a study of 135 countries by the Queen Sofia Center in Spain. A Mexican organization, the Origin Foundation, announced on the same day that between the ages of 15 and 44 Mexican women are in greater danger of rape or abuse at home than of cancer or accidents. "Every day six women die violently: four by homicide and two by suicide," the group said, "and 30-50% of abuse victims are under 15 years of age; 20% are under 10." (La Jornada, Mexico, Nov. 24)

Mexican president Felipe Calderón has been advising the US on how to fight the influence of leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, according to a secret Oct. 23, 2009 US embassy cable that was made public by WikiLeaks on Dec. 2, 2010. During a meeting on Oct. 19, 2009 with US national intelligence director Dennis Blair, Calderón "emphasized that...Hugo Chávez is active everywhere, including Mexico," the embassy reported. "Calderon also commented that he is particularly concerned about Venezuela's relations with Iran, and that the Iranian embassy in Mexico is very active."