In a major victory for Costa Rica’s environmental movement, the country’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision canceling a concession for an open-pit gold mine in Crucitas de San Carlos.
On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, women’s organizations throughout Latin America said regional governments have failed to take measures to reduce “femicides” and end impunity in such crimes.
Tens of thousands of students marched in more than a dozen Latin American cities in a coordinated regional demonstration to support free and high-quality public education.
Private contractors are now bidding for US-funded “drug war” operations, including training for Mexican soldiers and police.
Thousands of activists attended the 21st annual protest against the US Army’s School of the Americas, while one was arrested at a nearby detention center protesting the government’s “inhumane immigration policies.”
The AFL-CIO presented its 2011 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award to Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, general secretary of the Mexican mineworkers union, now living in exile in Vancouver.
Haitian activists have started an international campaign to force Port-au-Prince apparel assembly plants to rehire six union members who were allegedly dismissed for their union activities.
President Santos withdrew his education “reform” bill, and student leaders responded by suspending a month-old strike that shut down the country’s public universities and many of the private schools.
The Mexican Senate has called on the government of President Felipe Calderón to start criminal proceedings against US officials involved in two programs that let firearms enter Mexico illegally.
The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) acknowledges that it has received a petition for relief filed on behalf of the victims of a cholera epidemic brought by UN troops.
Chilean and Colombian students are planning a binational demonstration in defense of education as the two countries’ rightwing governments may be preparing to meet some of the strikers’ demands.
Residents of San José del Progreso, Oaxaca, say they are continuing their three-year struggle against a mine operated by Toronto-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. The struggle is documented in the new film Minas y Mentiras (“Mines and Lies”).
