Barack Obama signed into law a measure intended to promote renewed development of the low-wage apparel assembly industry in Haiti—protested by activists as a “humanitarian alibi.”
In an interview on Spanish CCN, Honduran president Porfirio Lobo Sosa agreed that the removal of former president Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya (2006-2009) from office on June 28, 2009 was a coup d’Ă©tat.
Some 600 Mexican federal police agents used tear gas and nightsticks to remove about 100 members of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) from outside a power substation in Cuernavaca.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) ordered the Guatemalan government to suspend operations at the Marlin gold mine within 20 days.
European and Latin American social movements meeting in Madrid denounced the US and European response to the Haiti earthquake as using a “humanitarian alibi” for “geopolitical interests.”
Union leaders in Puerto Rico claimed success for a 24-hour general strike held to support students striking against a proposed $100 million budget cut, who have met police repression.
Five participants in an open-ended hunger strike by dozens of laid-off Mexican electrical workers were hospitalized as the protest reached the four-week mark.
Costa Rica’s Caribbean ports signed an agreement with the dockworkers union for privatization of the facilities. The move follows a “coup d’Ă©tat” that purged union leadership.
The Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) reported that the police and military forcibly removed campesinos from at least four cooperatives in the northern Atlantic region of Honduras.
Several thousand people marched in Port-au-Prince in the latest and largest in a series of demonstrations against the government of Haitian President René Garcia Préval.
Haiti’s agriculture ministry accepted a “gift” of 523.6 tons of hybrid corn seeds and 2,067 kg of vegetable seeds from the Monsanto Company—despite activist fears that they are genetically modified.
Police took control of the entrances to the RĂo Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan in an effort to cut off student protesters on the campus from supporters outside.
