World oil consumption dropped by 1.2 million barrels a day last year, the biggest decline since 1982, according to a study released June 9 by BP. "Energy developments in 2009 were dominated by a global recession and, later in the year, a tentative recovery," said Tony Hayward, BP's embattled chief executive who's become a media fixture in the wake of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. "We can't know how durable this recovery will be," he added. "But the data show changes in the pattern of global energy consumption that are likely to indicate long-term change."

Mexican and US authorities are investigating the death of a 14-year-old boy who was shot late June 7 near the Juárez-El Paso crossing, apparently by a US Border Patrol agent. Eyewitnesses said Sergio Hernández was playing with friends in a dry area of the river that forms the border. Crossing momentarily into the US with his friends, he was chased by a patrol agent. He ran back onto Mexican soil, hid behind a steel wall—and was shot in the head when looked out.

As many as 2,000 Mexican federal police and Sonora state police, supported by helicopters, invaded the Cananea copper mine on the night of June 6, firing tear gas and attacking and beating workers who were defending the mine. With the police having cleared the mine, managers from Grupo Mexico, the mine owner, took control of the facilities. The company reported that it had 2,000 "contractors" ready to go to work as soon as it was safe to do so.

After 16 years, Peru's single-chamber Congress finally passed into law on May 19 the rights enshrined in International Labor Organization Convention 169, which commits nations to protecting indigenous and tribal peoples. In 1994 Peru ratified ILO Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, which establishes in article 6 the right of native peoples to be consulted on matters affecting their territories. In the intervening years, some 70% of the Peruvian Amazon has been opened to oil companies, and mining projects on indigenous lands have proliferated in the Andean sierras.

Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state-owned oil company, has accused BASF Corp., Murphy Energy Corp. and three other US companies of knowingly buying stolen natural gas condensate from Mexican bandits, according to a lawsuit filed in Houston federal court. Pemex Exploracion y Produccion, the company's production unit, accused the companies of facilitating a black market in natural gas condensate stolen from Pemex's Burgos Field on Mexico's Gulf Coast. As much as $300 million in liquids have been smuggled across the border in hijacked tanker trucks since 2006, Pemex asserts.

From the Center for Constitutional Rights, June 7:

CCR Endorses New Report Showing Evidence of Bush Administration
Human Experimentation on Men in CIA Secret Detention
Violations of Nuremburg Code and Role of Health Professionals
In Secret Torture Program Require Criminal Investigation
Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement in response to a new report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the "Enhanced" Interrogation Program. Download the report at http://phrtorturepapers.org.

In meetings with striking students on June 2 and June 4, officials of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) announced that the public university was $200 million in debt and that they intended to cover the debt with $200 million in tuition surcharges over the next three years—about $1,000 for each student. There will also be an "enormous reduction" in the pay to university employees, Board of Trustees president Ygrí Rivera said; this would be done through lower salaries and other cutbacks, not layoffs. Finally, UPR officials plan cuts in the budgets for books, professional services, scholarships and other aid to students, and the purchase of equipment.

Two indigenous Mexican women, Teresa González Cornelio and Alberta Alcántara Juan, were released from prison on April 28 after serving more than three and a half years of a 21-year sentence for allegedly kidnapping six agents of the now-defunct Federal Investigation Agency (AFI). Their release followed a unanimous ruling by a five-member panel of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) that the two women, street vendors who belong to the Otomí indigenous group, had been falsely imprisoned. The charges against them stemmed from a March 26, 2006 incident in the market in Santiago Mexquititlán community, Amealco de Bonfil municipality in Querétaro state; the AFI agents had raided the market in an unsuccessful search for pirated DVDs, destroying the women's booth in the process.