Mexico
Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield succumbed to a fit of honesty earlier this month: "When the drug war turns bloody, he said, the strategy is working," journalist Martha Mendoza reported. By Brownfield's standards, the strategy has been an enormous success.
7.4 Earthquake strikes off coast of north-western Guatemala, by the department of San Marcos where Goldcorp operates its very harmful open-pit, cyanide leaching, mountain-top removal gold mine. Concern has been expressed about the structural stability of the tailings pond, full of cyanide and other chemicals, built high on a mountain side.
In this newsletter, we set out a summary of organizations, projects and struggles that Rights Action has funded, to date, in 2012. These are your funds at work. With your help, we are supporting courageous people in Guatemala and Honduras, and their efforts to protect the environment, to defend human rights and justice, and to build real democracy from the grassroots level up.
Media Release from a Popular International Health Tribunal, that took place July 14-15, 2012, in the shadow of Goldcorp Inc's open-pit/ mountain-top removal, cyanide leaching mine, in Mayan Mam territories of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, department of San Marcos, Guatemala.
We send you this sad update about work we are involved with in Guatemala. Please consider donating 'humanitarian relief' funds for the needs of Yolanda Oqueli, and for the other people and communities mentioned in this article.
On July 14-15, an International Health Tribunal will take place in San Miguel Ixtahuacan, Guatemala, in the shadow of Goldcorp's "Marlin" mine. People from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico will give testimony as to the health harms and other human rights violations they have suffered due to the operations of Goldcorp mines in their regions.
A delegation of academics, human rights and labor activists, visited the community of Ahuás in the Department of Gracias a Dios in a region known as La Moskitia. On May 11, 2012 four helicopters conducted an apparent drug interdiction near the town of Ahuas. At least one of the helicopters opened fire on a passenger boat killing two pregnant women, a 14-year-old boy and a 21-year-old man, while seriously injuring at least four more. The purpose of the visit was to inquire into this tragedy.
Honduran journalist Alfredo Villatoro has been found dead on the outskirts of the capital, Tegucigalpa, a week after he was abducted. Mr Villatoro, a radio reporter, was dressed in a police uniform, Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla said. He had been kidnapped by a gang of young men on his way to work on 9 May.
The Summits of the Americas began in 1994 as forums to promote free trade. In 2009 the Summit's focus shifted to demands for the inclusion of Cuba in regional political bodies and the end of the U.S. economic embargo, a debate which continued in this month's Sixth Summit in Cartagena.
