The Ninth Indigenous March, now camped at Yolosa on the edge of the Bolivian Altiplano, held a celebration June 21 of the Aymara New Year festival, Willkakuti or "Return of the Sun"—marking year 5520 in Aymara calendric reckoning. For the first time, the festival was jointly honored by the Aymara and indigenous peoples of Bolivia's Amazon lowlands who have joined together for the Ninth March under the respective leadership of the National Council of Ayllus and Markas (CONAMAQ) and the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Oriente of Bolivia (CIDOB). Leaders of the two groups pledged to renew their commitment to fight for the protection of Mother Earth and indigenous rights in both the Altiplano and Amazon. (CONAMAQ statement [PDF], June 21)

A US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent shot a man to death in Honduras during a raid on a smuggling operation in the wee hours of June 23, the US embassy announced. The man who was killed had been reaching for his weapon, and the agent fired in self-defense, the statement said. The incident marks the first confirmed time a DEA agent has killed during an operation since the agency began deploying teams to Latin America over a generation ago.

The American Civil Liberties Union on June 19 released a report alleging widespread abuses by the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD). The report documents numerous instances excessive force, sometimes deadly, to suppress speech, subdue protesters, and target ethnic and racial minorities. It also alleges a culture of impunity among the police and a failure to police crimes of abuse and sexual assault:

Turkey on June 24 called a NATO meeting to discuss a response to the shooting down of one of its warplanes by Syrian forces the previous day. Ankara accuses Syria of shooting its F-4 Phantom over international waters without warning, and denies it was on a spy mission. While acknowledging that the plane briefly entered Syrian airspace, Ankara says it was on a routine test of Turkey’s own radar system. Damascus says the jet was shot down less than a mile from Syria's coastal province of Latakia.

Mexico's government admitted June 23 that it had mistakenly identified a detained man as the son of the country's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquín Guzmán AKA "El Chapo"—leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. Just a day earlier, a man arrested in the Guadalajara suburb of Zapopan was paraded before the media as Jesús Alfredo Guzmán AKA "El Gordo"—his capture hailed as the most important blow against the cartel in years. But a lawyer purporting to speak for the Guzmán family released a statement denying that the suspect in custody was the fugitive kingpin's son. The arrested man's mother spoke to journalists, denying any link to Joaquín Guzmán or the Sinaloa Cartel. The Prosecutor General was forced to acknowledge that the arrested man was in fact Félix Beltrán León, a car salesman. Nonetheless, Beltrán León and his brother Kevin were ordered jailed for 40 days while they are investigated for organized crime links. (BBC News, El Universal, June 23; BBC News, LAT, June 22)

At the southeast corner of Manhattan's Union Square is a home-spun memorial attached to a traffic-light pole, with flowers, photos of a stunningly beautiful young woman—and a handwritten plea for justice from her anguished family. Fortunately, city authorities have not removed it. Here are the details from New York's DNAInfo, June 21:

Family of Actress Killed in Hit-Run Holds Vigil on Her 22nd Birthday CHELSEA — As the investigation into the Union Square hit-and-run death of Roxana Sorina Buta continues, the aspiring actress's friends and family celebrated her life Thursday in an emotional ceremony on what would have been her 22nd birthday...

Paraguay's Senate voted June 22 to remove populist President Fernando Lugo from office—a move blasted by Lugo as an "express coup d'etat." While saying he would abide by the decision, he added, referring to himself in the third person: "Today it is not Fernando Lugo who is receiving a coup, but Paraguay's history, its democracy." Legislators quickly swore in the vice president, Federico Franco, as Paraguay's new leader. The Senate move came the day after Paraguay's lower house Chamber of Deputies voted to impeach Lugo over charges of malfeasance—mostly related to a clash last week between peasant squatters and police that left 17 dead. The affair had already led to the resignation of Lugo's interior minister and chief of police. The Senate gave Lugo just two hours to defend himself in a public trial; he declined to appear, instead sending lawyers to request 18 days to prepare his defense. They were rebuffed by the Senate president, Jorge Oviedo, leading to the vote of 39 to 4, with two absent.

One protester was gravely hurt with a head injury as National Police attacked a demonstration against the planned Conga gold mine project in Peru's northern city of Cajamarca June 21. Seven were arrested as police unleashed tear gas, and protesters responded with sticks and hurled rocks. Authorities said five police officers were also injured in the confrontation in the city's Plaza Bolognes—which came as Cajamarca's regional president Gregorio Santos was leading a rally against the mine in the city's Plaza de Armas, just a few blocks away. (El Comercio, June 21) When two rights attorneys—Genoveva Gómez of the Defensoría del Pueblo (human rights ombudsman) and Amparo Abando of the National Human Rights Coordinator— entered at city's National Police headquarters to inquire after the seven detained, they were themselves attacked by police, both suffering bruises. (Celendin Libre, June 22)