The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), which represents 656 unions worldwide with 4.5 million members, issued a call on July 17 for its members to carry out protests against Honduran shipping. The federation said it was expressing opposion to a June 28 military coup which replaced Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales with a de facto government. "We have to put real pressure on the Honduran military to allow the country to revert to democracy," ITF general secretary David Cockroft said.

A delegation of union leaders and parliamentarians from 13 countries visited Mexico for five days during the week of July 8 to show support for the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) in its three-year struggle against the Mexican government and the Grupo México transnational. Organized by the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), and the United Steelworkers (USW), the delegation included legislators from Australia, Canada and Peru, and union leaders from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway, Peru, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the US.

On June 29 about 1,000 indigenous Nahuas from the communities of Santa María de Ostula, Coire and Pómaro in the central western Mexican state of Michoacán occupied La Canahuancera, a 700-hectare area near the Pacific coast. According to the Nahuas, men armed with pistols in the employ of local political bosses tried to stop the effort to take the land, and a campesino, Manuel Serrano, was hit by a bullet. The Ostula community police captured eight of the attackers; they released five of them later and turned three others over to state prosecutors on July 5. The Nahuas also set up a roadblock on the Manzanillo-Lázaro Cárdenas highway. The indigenous communities say they have titles to La Canahuancera dating back to 1802; they charge that a group of small landowners from the community of Placita, Aquila municipality, seized the land 45 years ago.

Protests broke out in various parts of the Dominican Republic on the evening of July 16 over electricity shortages that had been plaguing the country for two weeks. Dozens of people took the streets in the Capotillo neighborhood in the north of the National District (which contains the capital, Santo Domingo). Agents of the National Police shot two people dead: Miguel Ángel Encarnación, a 13-year-old who worked shining shoes, and Carlos Francisco Peguero, a 24-year-old blacksmith. After the deaths, heavily armed police in bulletproof vests patrolled the neighborhood. Protests were also reported in other Santo Domingo neighborhoods.

Chad admitted to an air raid on rebel positions at Um Dukhn in Darfur, but denied attacking Sudan's armed forces or populace in the raid. (Reuters, July 21) Meanwhile, the SPLA denied breaking terms of the Sudan peace deal after UN monitors accused its troops of moving into the contested region of Abyei. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in the The Hague is to give a final ruling on the boundaries of Abyei this week. (BBC News, July 19)

Under UN auspices, Nepal has started freeing an estimated 3,000 child soldiers from camps holding former Maoist guerilla fighters. Demobilization of the child soldiers, and their transfer to rehabilitation programs, is a key part of Nepal's peace process. The UN welcomed the move as a "significant milestone" for the Himalayan nation. Maoist guerillas ended a 10-year insurgency in November 2006, signing a peace deal that brought them into the government. They won the most votes in 2008 elections, but left the government earlier this year in a row over their leader's attempt to fire the army chief. Some 24,000 former fighters have been confined to UN-monitored camps since the peace deal. Of these, the UN has identified about 3,000 as being under the age of 18. (BBC News, July 17)

Insisting there is no possibility of a coup d'état in Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega is pushing forward on a "citizen power" agenda similar to the controversial project that led to the ouster of Manuel Zelaya in neighboring Honduras. Speaking before some 500,000 supporters July 19 at a rally to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, Ortega called for a constitutional referendum on scrapping presidential term limits.

Costa Rica-mediated talks on the political crisis in Honduras broke down without agreement July 19, with representatives of de facto President Roberto Micheletti rejecting proposals for a national reconciliation government led by ousted President Manuel Zelaya. "I'm very sorry, but the proposals that you have presented are unacceptable to the constitutional government of Honduras," said Carlos López, the head delegate for the Micheletti regime. Zelaya's representatives at the table said they would have have no further talks with the Micheletti delegation.