As of May 18 a group of Argentine activists were continuing an encampment they had set up on April 21 at the Obelisk in Buenos Aires' Plaza de la República to push their demands for improved services in the city's 17 marginal communities, known in Argentina as "villas." The action's sponsor, the leftist Independent Villa Residents' Current, was calling on the government of right-wing Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri to declare a housing, health and educational emergency in the impoverished communities; to formalize their status as urban areas; to carry out audits of the cooperatives and businesses that work in the neighborhoods; and to regularize rents and housing subsidies. A statement by the group denounced what it called "the model of two cities that Macri proposes, where the rich city excludes the poor one…while officials of the city government don't hide their intention to fill their pockets." Leftist groups have confronted the Macri government in the past over plans that they say favor real estate interests over the needs of the majority of city residents.

State police arrested six indigenous Mexicans on May 17 in connection with the killing on May 2 of an activist in La Realidad, a village in the official municipality of Las Margaritas in the southeastern state of Chiapas. La Realidad is one of a number of indigenous communities that supporters of the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) have considered autonomous municipalities since December 1994. The victim, José Luis Solís López ("Galeano"), taught at a "little school" (escuelita) that since last year has provided international activists with an introduction to the Zapatistas' experiment with autonomous communities. Another 15 EZLN supporters were wounded in the May 2 violence, and a school and a clinic were destroyed.

A delegation of 15 Hondurans traveled to Mexico City in mid-April to seek a meeting with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and ask for his government to provide Central American migrants with a "humanitarian visa" allowing them to travel safely through Mexico on their way to the US. The delegation represented the 432 members of the Association of Migrants Returning with Disabilities (Amiredis), an organization of Hondurans injured while trying to cross Mexico; the vice president, Norman Saúl Varela, lost a leg while riding north through the southern state of Tabasco on a freight train that migrants call "The Beast." The group failed to get an interview with President Peña Nieto, but they managed to meet with Governance Undersecretary Paloma Guillén on April 11. (El País, Madrid, April 13 from correspondent)

Mexican authorities on May 1 announced the seizure of a ship carrying 68,000 tons of illegal iron ore bound for China—hailed as the latest blow in a crackdown on the contraband mineral sideline by the Knights Templar drug cartel. Federal police were apparently tipped off by an anonymous phone call after the ship left Lazaro Cárdenas, the Pacific port in conflicted Michoacán state. Authorities detained the ship, the Jian Hua, off Manzanillo, the next major port up the coast, in neighboring Colima state. The ship's crew produced documents showing it had authorization to transport the iron ore. But authoriites said the paperwork listed a legal mine that was not the actual source of the contraband ore. The company operating the ship, China's Fujian Huarong Marine, has been given one month to prove to authorities that the ore was extracted legally. Mexican authorities say they have seized more than 200,000 tons of illegal iron ore so far this year, most of it headed for China.

A new development in the interminable culture wars over New York City's Ground Zero emerges as the site's museum finally opens. We've already noted outrage over the crass commercialism at the museum's souvenir shop (!). Now a Jews Against Islamophobia coalition is planning a May 21 vigil at the site to demand that the National September 11 Memorial Museum edit a six-minute video to be screened there, entitled "The Rise of Al Qaeda," that "contains disturbing terminology linking Islam with terrorism and that fails to contextualize al-Qaeda." The probem is that this assertion is being made despite the fact that only a select few have actually viewed the video. Daily Beast informs us that Peter Gudaitis, "chief executive of the New York Disaster Interfaith Network" (they apparently mean New York Disaster Interfaith Services, and Gudaitis is listed on their website as a member of the board of directors) "said that after the screening, every single one of the 10 religious leaders present voiced concerns that the video didn't do enough to separate Al Qaeda from mainstream Islam. He called the film in its current form 'reckless.'" According to the Daily News, Sheikh Mostafa Elazabawy, imam of Masjid Manhattan, resigned from the Lower Manhattan Clergy Council, a group advising the museum, after officials rejected the group's suggestions to alter the film. Apparently the offense is that the film calls the 9-11 attackers "Islamists," and describes their mission as "jihad."

The US District Court for the District of Columbia on May 16 ordered (PDF) officials at Guantánamo Bay to temporarily suspend forced feedings of a detainee at the facility. Judge Gladys Kessler's unprecedented ruling also bars officials at the facility from subjecting the detainee to so-called forced cell extractions "for the purposes of" tube-feedings until May 21, the date of the next hearing in the case.  The ruling also orders the military to preserve more than 100 videos that show the prisoner being forcibly removed from his cell and force-fed. Syrian national Abu Wa'el Dhiab (advocacy website) has been held at Guantánamo Bay since 2002 after being detained in Pakistan. Dhiab has been cleared for release or transfer out of Guantanamo since 2009, and has been refusing food for over a year. Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale stated in an e-mail that "[w]hile the Department follows the law and only applies enteral feeding in order to preserve life, we will, of course, comply with the judge's order here." (Jurist, May 17; Al Jazeera America, May 16)

The Congress of the Republic of Guatemala on May 13 approved a non-binding resolution denying any existence of genocide during the civil war lasting from 1960-1996. The resolution calls for national reconciliation and states: "It is legally impossible...that genocide could have occurred in our country's territory during the armed conflict." The Movement of Victims of Northern Quiche allege that more than 250,000 people were killed during the civil war, predominately Mayan indigenous people. Guatemala's Congress approved the measure with 87 of the 158 members voting in favor, after the secretary general Luis Fernando Pérez proposed the resolution. Pérez is a legislator for the party founded by ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who was convicted of genocide in May 2013.

An appeals court in Argentina ruled May 15 that a controversial agreement between Argentina and Iran to investigate the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center was unconstitutional. The two nations signed the agreement in January 2013, which permitted Argentinian authorities to question the Iranian suspects under Interpol arrest warrants, but only in Tehran. The agreement angered Jewish groups, who said that the deal empowered Iran without bringing any suspects to justice. Argentinine Foreign Relations Minister Hector Timerman announced that he plans to appeal the decision, saying that it was unprecedented for a court to strike down an international agreement. No one has been convicted in connection with the bombing, which killed 85 and injured more than 300 others.