From the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), April 30:

Attorney General's office announces capture of suspects in assassination of FMLN Mayor
In the early dawn hours of April 14, El Salvador’s National Civilian Police (PNC) arrested Isabel Cortés and Marvin Antonio Rodriguez and charged them with January's double murder of Wilber Funes, mayor of the town of Alegría, and municipal employee Zulma Rivera. Cortés is a member of the Alegría city council who was elected along with Funes on the FMLN party ticket in 2006.

According to union sources, some 40,000 Hondurans participated in May Day celebrations, which included marches in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. The three main labor federations marched together, along with a number of grassroots groups and coalitions, including the Popular Bloc (BP), the National Popular Resistance Coordinating Committee and the Coordinating Council of Campesino Organizations. The demands included a better agrarian reform, a general wage increase, a halt to privatizations, an end to corruption, and justice for three unionists murdered the night of April 23-24.

Unionists and other activists marked International Workers Day with marches throughout Latin America on May 1 as rising food and fuel costs cut into workers' standard of living. Demands included increases in the minimum wage, an end to violence against unionists and rejection of trade pacts with the US.

Some 60 men riding in luxury vehicles and wearing uniforms of the Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) and armed with AK-47s shot nine people dead at the ranch of Rogaciano Alba Álvarez in Petatlán May 4. Two of Alba's sons were among the dead, and Alba's daughter was also kidnapped, police said. The remaining dead were ranch hands. The previous day, heavily armed gunmen shot seven people dead at a convention of the state Ranching Association (Asociación Ganadera) at a hotel in Iguala.

America's own Tibet in the Pacific? From the New York Times, May 3, links added:

Occupation of Palace Area Invigorates Native Hawaiian Movement
HONOLULU — A Native Hawaiian independence group laid claim this week to the nation's only royal palace and the state land surrounding it, raising anew the issue of self-determination for the islands’ native people.

From Amazon Watch, May 2:

LOS ANGELES — Leaders of the indigenous Achuar people of Peru accompanied by 40 demonstrators wearing hazmat suits today brought Occidental Petroleum's Amazon disaster to the company's doorstep as they marched inside the hotel hosting the Oxy annual shareholder meeting. The demonstrators took company security by surprise and entered the building chanting: "Oxy, Oxy, clean up now!"

Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez convened an extraordinary meeting of member nations of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) in Caracas April 23 to discuss the world food crisis. At the meeting, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, and Chávez signed a series of accords to promote mutual agricultural development, create a joint food distribution network, and create a $100 million ALBA food security fund. "The food crisis is the greatest demonstration of the historical failure of the capitalist model," President Chávez declared. Lage said the crisis is the fruit of an "unjust international economic order" in which "the logic is profit and not the satisfaction of peoples' needs." (VenezuelAnalysis, April 24)

On the eve of the May 4 autonomy referendum in the lowland department of Santa Cruz, Bolivia is increasingly polarized—with the central government of President Evo Morales refusing to accept the legitimacy of the Santa Cruz vote, and the Santa Cruz leadership refusing to accept the pending constitutional reform which would establish a process for achieving local autonomy. Bolivia's ambassador in ally Venezuela, Jorge Alvarado, called on the OAS to stand firm before "the separatist pretensions of the Departament of Santa Cruz." The opposition prefect (governor) of Santa Cruz, Rubén Costa, assured there would be no violence, announcing to the crowd at the closing rally of the autonomy campaign: "We don't want dynamite, nor clubs, nor rancor. The democratic vote is our only weapon." However, a photo of the rally in Ecuador's El Diario, showed one attendee holding a giant slingshot in the firing position. A popular banner slogan at the rally was "We have no fear!" (¡No tenemos miedo!). (El Diario, Puerto Viejo, Ecuador, May 3)