As of July 5 the Guatemalan government had still failed to comply with instructions from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) to help more than 600 campesino families that had been evicted from land in the Polochic Valley in the northeastern department of Alta Verapaz. The IACHR, the human rights arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), gave the government 15 days to carry out "precautionary measures" (medidas cautelares) to guarantee the life and physical integrity of the displaced campesinos, to ensure that they had food and shelter, and to report on investigations into the violence that accompanied the evictions.

Famed Argentine folksinger Facundo Cabral was shot to death early July 9 by unknown gunmen who ambushed his car on the way to the airport in Guatemala City. A total of eight bullets struck Cabral and his Nicaraguan concert promoter Henry Fariña. The singer’s white Range Rover and a Chevrolet Tahoe carrying his bodyguards attempted to seek cover in a fire station. A firefighter witnessed gunfire from two black vehicles. Initial claims that the attack was an armed robbery have now been dropped; there is some speculation that Fariña, who survived, was the actual target of the attack. Authorities said one of the attackers’ vehicles, pock-marked with bullet-holes and strewn with casings, has been located in El Salvador. Cabral, 74, rose to fame in the 1970s, an icon of protest music in an era of harsh repression across Latin America. Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom personally called his Argentine counterpart, Cristina Fernandez, to tell her of the slaying. (NDTV, LAT, La Republica, Lima, July 10; ThirdAge, July 9)

The Honduras Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by former Guatemalan vice president Eduardo Stein, presented the report to current Honduran President Porfirio Lobos, Honduran chief justice Jorge Rivera Avilez and OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza in Tegucigalpa July 7. The report concludes that the June 28, 2009 removal from office of former President Manuel Zelaya was in fact a coup d'etat—and not a constitutional succession as some of Zelaya's opponents claimed. The report further asserted that National Congress overstepped its powers when it nominated its speaker Roberto Micheletti as interim president. According to the commission, the interim administration was therefore illegal and a "de facto regime."

Hundreds of debt-ridden small merchants and farmers in northern Nicaragua launched a human blockade on the main road between the Caribbean coast and the capital at Río Blanco municipality, Matagalpa department, on July 2. The "No Pago" movement, led by Omar Vílchez, the former Sandinista mayor of Jalapa, is demanding renegotiation of local business' debts to micro-financing lenders. They are also demanding that the Supreme Court of Justice issue an order to halt the eviction of 2,500 local families whose homes have been repossessed. The government has pledged to send a negotiating team, but the protesters say they will launch new roadblocks until their demands are met. (EFE, July 3; Nuevo Diario, Managua, July 2)

UN Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Gabriela Knaul warned July 2 that a new law in El Salvador requiring its high court to issue unanimous judgments is an "attack" on judicial independence and the separation of powers. The law, passed by the Legislative Assembly and issued by the president (as Decree 743), places requirements on the judgments of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court. Knaul said that requiring unanimous rulings will harm the judges' ability to function effectively. She stated:

The UN on June 24 announced its approval of the arrest of a former top Guatemalan military figure accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Gen. Hector Mario López Fuentes, former chief of staff of Guatemalan armed forces from 1982-1983, is accused of directing military attacks against citizens, namely indigenous Mayans. Villages were destroyed and women and girls were systematically raped under his authorization. Fuentes was arrested a week earlier and charged for his involvement in Guatemala's 36-year civil war. Margot Wallstrom, the Secretary-General's Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, applauded the arrest:

Local environmental activist Juan Francisco Durán Ayala of El Salvador’s Cabañas department was found dead June 16, in an open field in the Lamatepec district of Soyapango municipality, outside San Salvador. Durán Ayala went missing on June 3—a day after hanging up posters and distributing flyers in his hometown of Ilobasco opposed to a gold mine operated by the Canadian Pacific Rim corporation. (See map.) He had continued his public opposition to the mine despite having received numerous threats. Activists are expressing outrage that his body was promptly buried by authorities in a "common grave" in the capital's Bermeja cemetery. The Environmental Committee of Cabañas (CAC), the National Board Against Metal Mining and the local Radio Victoria—whose operators have also recently received threats—are demanding that the national authorities reveal what they know in the case and launch an aggressive investigation. Durán is the fourth Pacific Rim opponent killed in El Salvador in the last two years. (Mining Watch, June 20; LaPágina, San Salvador, June 18; FSRN, Diario CoLatino, San Salvador, CAC statement, June 16)

Campesino organizations from the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras marched in Tegucigalpa on June 9 to protest the killings of Aguán campesinos and to demand that the government act on its promise last year to distribute 3,000 hectares of land to campesino families. The Honduras section of the international campesino group Vía Campesina joined in the demonstration, along with the Alliance for Food Sovereignty and Agrarian Reform (SARA) and members of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), the country's main alliance of social movements. The groups say 39 campesinos have been murdered in the course of a longstanding land dispute in the valley.