Some 4,000 people living in communities on the banks of the Rio Marañón in Peru's northeastern Loreto department have been affected by an oil spill that occurred June 19, according to Lilia Reyes, the Loreto representative for the national rights ombudsman, the Defensoría del Pueblo. At least six communities that have been affected by the spill, including Santa Rita de Castilla, Ollanta, and Alfonso Ugarte.

A video uploaded to YouTube of a rally in support of the Shining Path movement, which supposedly took place at Lima's San Marcos University June 14, has set off a media frenzy in Peru—and raised fears of police or military intervention on campus. The newspaper La República wrote June 16 that "authorities of the Ministry of Interior and the Public Ministry will begin an investigation together with the university administration."

Mexican campesino rights activist América del Valle applied for political asylum at the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico City on the morning of June 23, citing "four years of unceasing political persecution." Del Valle is a member of the Front of the Peoples in Defense of the Land (FPDT), a campesino movement that formed in 2001 and successfully opposed plans to build a new international airport on farmlands in and around San Salvador Atenco municipality northeast of Mexico City in México state.

On June 23 the Guatemalan government agreed to suspend operations at the Marlin gold mine in the western department of San Marcos, which is owned by Montana Exploradora de Guatemala, SA, a subsidiary of the Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), a Washington, DC-based agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), had ordered Guatemala on May 21 to carry out the suspension within 20 days; the IACHR was responding to a complaint filed by indigenous inhabitants of the communities of Sipacapa and San Miguel Ixtahuacán who say the mine has caused significant damage to residents' health and the local environment.

On June 20 the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) reported that Honduran soldiers from the Cobra Battalion, agents of the Preventive Police and private security guards from the Orión company had entered the Aurora estate in northern Honduras that morning and attacked campesinos who were encamped there. A teenage campesino whose name was given as Oscar Yovani Ramírez or Oscar Geovanny Ramírez died in the operation, and five other campesinos were detained, according to MUCA.

Some 85% of the gross profits from trafficking cocaine from South America to the US remain with US distribution networks, Antonio Luigi Mazzitelli, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) representative for Mexico and Central America, told the Spanish wire service EFE on June 26.

Mexican singer Sergio Vega AKA "El Shaka" was shot dead June 27—only hours after he had issued a statement denying reports that he had been murdered. Vega was on his way to a concert in Alhuey, Sinaloa, when gunmen opened fire on his red Cadillac as it passed through the pueblo of Barobampo. "It's happened to me for years now, someone tells a radio station or a newspaper I've been killed, or suffered an accident," Vega told entertainment website La Oreja hours before his death. (El Debate, Mazatlán, June 27; BBC News, CBS News, June 28)

A federal judge on June 26 ordered the release of Guantánamo Bay detainee Mohammed Odaini, who will now be transferred to his homeland of Yemen, despite the Obama administration's ban on repatriation to the Arab nation. In January, the administration suspended all transfers of Guantánamo detainees to Yemen citing security concerns. Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the US government has illegally detained Odaini for the past eights years and ordered his release, forcing the administration to make an exception to the ban.