On Sunday November 22nd, a vigil in honor of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado will be held at the intersection of MacArthur Blvd., Lakeshore, and Grand Ave. in Oakland. Mercado, a very well known person in the gay community, was found dead on November 14th, in Cayey, Puerto Rico. Mercado was partially burned, decapitated, and dismembered. The police investigator handling the case said in a public televised statement that "people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen."

On November 16th, a suspect was arrested who confessed to the killing, saying that he murdered Marcedo who he thought to be a woman, after discovering that he was a man. According to the Porto Rico police, the suspect will likely use a “homosexual panic” defense, arguing for a plea of temporary insanity.

Pedro Julio Serrano, from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and a founder of Puerto Rico Para Todas said in a statement: “This is a terrible, terrible crime. While we are pleased that law enforcement has acted promptly in making an arrest, it is vital that the hate crimes angle be investigated. This horrendous killing of a young gay man shows no compassion or respect for the dignity of a human life. As someone who grew up in Puerto Rico and has been very active in its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, this is a heart-wrenching moment. Our hearts and sympathies go out to all of Jorge Steven López’s loved ones at this difficult time. Justice must prevail.”

Read More | Gay Puerto Rican Teen Decapitated, Dismembered, and Burned

September 28th was called as an international day of protest against the coup d'etat in Honduras. In San Francisco, demonstrators gathered at the Honduras Consulate at Powell and Market streets to demand the immediate suspension of all U.S. financial aid to the coup government; stop endorsing the Arias Plan; and immediately recall the U.S.Ambassador until the reinstatement of President Zelaya.

San Francisco, California se hizo eco de la convocatoria mundial para solidarizarse con el pueblo de Honduras este Lunes 28 de Septiembre. La coalicion BALASC (Bay Area Latin American Solidarity Coalition), de la que el FMLN-Norte de California es miembro fundador, convoco a una manifestacion frente al consulado de Honduras en el centro de San Francisco. Cerca de un centenar de personas se hicieron presentes en una de las manifestaciones mas grandes en defensa del pueblo Hondureño que se han realizado durante los ultimos 90 dias.

Video | Photos: 1 | 2 | Announcement

Previous Related Indybay Feature: Ousted President Zelaya Returns to Honduras

On September 21st, ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returned to the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa and appeared on several television stations from within the Brazilian embassy. TeleSur showed images of uniformed Honduran National Police officers, with billy clubs, shields, helmets and guns, surrounding the zone near the Brazilian Embassy, apparently to close access to the area, blocking anti-coup demonstrators from entering or leaving.

Coup leader Roberto Micheletti appeared on television after Zelaya's return became public and demanded Brazil hand over Zelaya to stand trial. The coup regime also imposed a militarily enforced curfew and shut down airports until at least 6pm Tuesday.

On the morning of September 22nd, police moved in and attacked protesters in front of the Brazilian embassy, firing tear gas at the crowd. Reuters reports that at least two tear-gas canisters landed inside the embassy compound. Chiapas Indymedia reports 2 people were killed as police shot live ammunition at protesters.

On June 28th, the Honduran military ousted the democratically elected government of Honduras, detaining and then exiling Zelaya to Costa Rica. The crisis began when the military refused to distribute ballot boxes for an opinion poll on a new Constitution. Zelaya fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who refused to step down and sent the military in to detain the President. The Congress and a Supreme Court sanctioned the coup after it had taken place, appointing Roberto Micheletti to be the new President. The OAS, all governments in the region and most countries around the world have refused to accept the new government.

Sept 21 Breaking News From NarcoNews | Seven Million Hondurans Under House Arrest as Micheletti Writes of "Democracy" | Ousted leader returns to Honduras | TeleSur Coverage | Sept 21st FlashPoints Coverage | Sept 22nd Democracy Now Coverage | Honduran Campesino Blog

Live radio from Honduras | Indymedia Chiapas/Honduras Breaking News, Photos And Audio

Previous Indybay Coverage: SF Protest Against Honduran Coup | Military Coup In Honduras

Michael Steinberg writes: "on August 11 protesters gathered at 5 p.m. in front of the Honduran Consulate to protest the coup that removed elected President Manual Zelaya, and called for an end to repression in Honduras and the return of Zelaya to office."

"Zelaya was seized at gunpoint in his pajamas during the early hours of June 28 and forced onto a plane that flew him to Costa Rica. Honduran General Romeo Vasquez, who ordered this action, is a two time graduate of the notorious School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, GA, also known as the School of Assassins.

"The coup regime has refused to allow Zelaya back into Honduras. When Zelaya attempted to return to Honduran by plane in July, he was refused landing at the main airport in the nation’s capital, Tegucigalpa. But, according to the July 19 Independent /UK, permission to land was subsequently also refused at Palmerola Air Force base, HQ of the Honduran Air Force, as well as the US Joint Task Force-Bravo, from which Black Hawk helicopters operate in support of the US War on Drugs in Central America. Read more

Military Coup In Honduras | Will Venezuelan Destabilization Follow the Honduran Coup? | Honduras Coup: Template for a Hemispheric Assault on Democracy | Honduran coup collaborator calls Obama equivalent of "Field Ni**er"

Live radio broadcast from Honduras
On June 28th, the Honduran military ousted the democratically elected government of Honduras, detaining and then exiling President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica.

On Monday, June 29th, an emergency rally and press conference to denounce the coup in Honduras took place at the Honduran Consulate, 870 Market St. in San Francisco. Video: 1 | 2

The crisis in Honduras began when the military refused to distribute ballot boxes for an opinion poll on a new Constitution. President Zelaya fired the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez, who refused to step down. The heads of all branches of the Honduran armed forces quit in solidarity with Vasquez. Vasquez, however, refused to step down, bolstered by support in Congress and a Supreme Court ruling that reinstated him. Vasquez, along with other military leaders, graduated from the United States' infamous School of the Americas (SOA). According to a School of the Americas Watch database compiled from information obtained from the US government, Vasquez studied in the SOA at least twice: once in 1976 and again in 1984.

At an emergency session of the OAS, the Honduran representative compared the coup to Chile in 1973, noted that Zelaya has not requested asylum in Costa Rica as reported by some press, and called for immediate condemnation of the coup. The Venezuela representative has accused former Bush Sub-Secretary of State Otto Reich of complicity in the coup: "We have information that worries us. This is a person who has been important in the diplomacy of the US who has reconnected with old colleagues and encouraged the coup: Otto Reich, ex sub-Secretary of State under Bush. We know him as an interventionist person." He said Reich is operating under an NGO.

Radio Es Lo De Menos, broadcasting from Tegucigalpa, is repeatedly pleading with the international community that protests be organized outside Honduran embassies around the world.

Military Ousts President Manuel Zelaya, Supporters Defy Curfew and Take to the Streets | Updates from the coup | Resistance and Repression in Honduras | "In Solidarity with the Organizations of Via Campesina and the People of Honduras" | Coup in Honduras | "We Will Not Be Silenced or Humiliated" | Honduras' Dictator-for-a-Day Rails vs. Obama & Chávez, Declares Martial Law | Military coup in Honduras this morning | Obama's First Military Coup

More coverage: Narco News | Americas Mexico Blog | TriniCenter Updates | Hands Off Venezuela

Coverage From Latin American Indymedias: Honduras | Argentina | Colombia | Bolivia | Puerto Rico

On June 5th, Peruvian national police attacked a roadblock near the city of Bagua in northwestern Peru, killing at least sixty people. Several thousand indigenous protesters had been blocking the main road to protest measures the government has taken to sell their ancestral land to energy companies. Peruvian indigenous leader Alberto Pizango has been granted asylum in Nicaragua due to his involvements in related protests.

On Tuesday, June 16th, over 30 people converged outside the Peruvian Consulate in San Francisco to amplify their concerns with the Peruvian and US Government's complacency in protecting indigenous rights. Outside folks held protest and spoke with passer-bys educating them on the current situation in Peru, while inside over 15 people went into the consulate to take their concerns directly to the Consul General of Peru.

Photos From SF: 1 | 2 | Peruvian Police Accused of Massacring Indigenous Protesters in Amazon Jungle | Qorianka Kilcher Heads to Peru to Support Indigenous Rights | Peru Faces its Tiananmen | Indigenous Massacre in Peruvian Amazon, Indymedia Israel | Rising Tide Bay Area

In recent years, attacks against the Peruvian Army have escalated by a new formation of the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), a Maoist rebel group in Peru. Long believed to have faded away after the capture of its leader Abimael Guzmán (Presidente Gonzalo) and other top leaders from its central committee in 1993, the Shining Path has recently gained force and weapons. According to the Defense Minister of Peru, Flores Araoz, Shining Path rebels killed thirteen soldiers on April 9th in two ambushes in the southeast Ayacucho Region of the country. The attacks are said to have been the deadliest by guerrillas in the past ten years.

New Formations Of The Shining Path Emerged in the Andes jungles | More than 300 families displaced by "counter-terrorist" operation | Chasing Shining Path, Interview with a Member of the Shining Path | Peruvian soldiers die in ambush | Documentary: The People of the Shining Path | Political Line Of CPP (pdf) l PERU: Guerrillas on the Warpath for Peace Talks | Wikipedia: Shining Path

The Peruvian military, under the pretext of fighting the drug trade and the guerrillas, has launched a military offensive against the peasants in areas associated with the Shining Path. In reports by human rights organizations, the Peruvian military is accused of raping and assassinating civilians, and burning food crops.

Reports of abuse by the Peruvian Armed Forces are not new. On April 7th, 2009, Alberto Fujimori, the former President of Peru during the height of the offensive by the Shining Path, was found guilty by a Peruvian court for "crimes against humanity" for his involvement in the killing of dozens of civilians by Peruvian death squads. Fujimori has been sentenced to 25 years in prison and is the first elected Latin American leader convicted in his home country of human rights abuses.

Fujimori guilty of rights abuses | April 7th Mobilization in Lima for the Imprisonment of Fujimori | The Fujimori Verdict: Justice in Latin America | Human Rights Watch: Peru | Amnesty International: Peru

Past Coverage of Fujimori: Mumia: Crimes of State | Ex-Peruvian president jailed after first trial | Fujimori to go on trial for murder | Chilean court extradites ex-Peruvian President Fujimori | Peruvians demand extradition of ex-president Fujimori | Peruvians Skeptical over Justice for Fujimori | Fujimori held by Peru authorities | Fujimori extradited from Chile

Previous Indybay Peru Coverage

Peter Herlihy and Jerome Dobson, professors of Geography at Kansas University, received funding from the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO), located at the Fort Leavenworth U.S. Army base in Leavenworth, Kansas, to map communally held indigenous land in the states of San Luis Potosi, and in Oaxaca, Mexico. The project, named the Bowman Expeditions or México Indígena, began mapping in 2005 in an indigenous region known as La Husteca, which is partially located in the state of San Luis Potosi, and then moved their operation to the state of Oaxaca amidst the statewide popular uprising of the Oaxacan Peoples’ Popular Assembly (APPO) in 2006.

On January 14th, 2009, the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO) released a communique in which the organization expresses concerns of geopiracy in the México Indígena mapping project, cites a clear lack of transparency, and claims that communities were deceived, having no idea that a primary funder of the project was the FMSO.

The FMSO official assigned to the Bowman Expeditions is Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey B. Demarest. During a 23-year military career, Dr. Demarest served in multiple assignments in Latin America and is also a graduate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas. He has written numerous articles dealing with internal conflict including “The Overlap of Military and Police Responsibilities in Latin America.” Dr. Demarest’s first book, Geoproperty, considers property ownership as an issue of national security and strategy. Read more

When vote totals came in from the Salvadoran presidential election Sunday, the winner by a slim but significant margin was the candidate of the FMLN, Mauricio Funes. The FMLN website said “Hope won over fear.” The FMLN, in Spanish called the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (The Farabundo Martî Front for National Liberation), fought fascism in Central America with a military effort that went on for twelve years. A truce was called in 1992, but the extreme right wing remained in power until now.

Funes was a very popular talk show host; a media star who began his career in journalism covering the civil war. He lost his older brother to a death squad in 1980. He worked for corporate media, joining CNN’s Spanish Edition in 1991. In 2007 he left CNN. That year he also joined the FMLN. He has pledged to work with the Obama administration, and the U.S. has given signals it will accept his victory.

Interviewed on Democracy Now, Salvadoran-American journalist Roberto Lovato said the FMLN victory is the end of 130 years of nearly complete domination of the Salvadoran political system by oligarchy and dictatorship. The Bay Area has been a center for solidarity with El Salvador. An Indybay report by Jorge Castillo said CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) was “one of the biggest solidarity organizations in US history.” A San Francisco celebration of the FMLN victory is planned for March 21 at 7:00 at the Women's Building.

Reflections on the Salvadoran Election
Democracy Now 1 | 2 | 3
Fascism Dealt Lethal Blow in Central America

FMLN Website (Spanish)

For almost two months, the teachers union in the Mexican state of Morelos rose up against the "Alliance for Quality Education", a neo-liberal plan akin to "No Child Left Behind" that would pave the way to the privatization of education, among other things.

They were supported by the people of Morelos in their marches, encampments in public plazas, and blockades of interstate highways. On October 7, 8, and 9, the army and state and federal police were sent in to brutally smash the movement. This model is a mirror of the crackdown that occurred in Oaxaca in 2006 and has enraged teachers and the public across Mexico.

There is little to no information in English about the situation in Morelos, but there are photos that don't require translation. Photos

Several hundred protesters, mostly students, took to the streets of Tijuana, Mexico October 4 in remembrance of the 1968 massacre of leftist students in Tlatelolco Plaza. At that time hundreds, perhaps thousands of students were killed when troops opened fire on a demonstration protesting the Mexico City Olympics.

The Mexican government meant to put an end to the student movement, whose leadership was wiped out. Luis Echeverría, who was Minister of the Interior in 1968, gave the order for the massacre. He was later made President of Mexico under the rule of the PRI Party. Echeverría was charged with genocide in 2006, but the charge was dropped because of the statute of limitations. Documents have become declassified showing that the CIA was involved in the preparations for the massacre. In Tijuana, the demonstrators chanted “ni perdon, ni olvido” (no forgiveness, no forgetting).

Rally organizers and other student speakers told the crowd that gathered in front of a Calimax market that they must unite to oppose the selling off of the state-owned Pemex oil conglomerate to greedy world corporate interests, as well as create a student movement that would increase the quality and availability of 21st Century educational opportunities for all, including the poor. Read More and See Photos

The indynewswire show airs weekly on Free Radio Santa Cruz 101.1 FM, Friday mornings 10-12 noon, broadcasting news and opinion from independent media worldwide, focused on indymedia sites but also drawing from other websites. The October 3rd episode features discussion of sexual violence, patriarchy, and militarism across Mexico. This show is dedicated to Sali (Marcella Grace Eiler), found dead September 24th in San Jose del Pacifico, Oaxaca, Mexico. Read More and Listen to Audio

related links: Mujeres y la Sexta || Mexico Solidarity Network || Lydia Cacho || MexicoReporter.com || El Enemigo Común || Tlatelolco - the 40th anniversary || “The Road To Hell” || Community Radio Producers Murdered in Mexico || Standing With Those Who Fight for Themselves || The right to choose is not enough - Mexico DF