On June 20 legislative deputies of El Salvador's leftist Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN) called on the Legislative Assembly to repeal the decree that authorizes sending troops to support the US occupation of Iraq. El Salvador has deployed 380-member contingents to Iraq for six months at a time since March 2003; it is the only Central American country that continues to maintain troops in Iraq. FMLN deputy Carlos Castaneda said the petition for the repeal was submitted after it became known that a new contingent of Salvadoran soldiers could be sent to Iraq. (La Prensa Grafica, San Salvador, June 21; AFP, June 21)

From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 3:

Nicaraguan presidential candidate Herty Lewites died late Sunday of an apparent heart attack. The son of a Jewish migrant, Lewites, 66, was the country's best-known citizen of Jewish descent.

From the Mexican news agency APRO, June 30, via Chiapas95 (our translation):

In an unexpected event in the lead-up to the elections this Sunday, the arrest of ex-president Luis Echeverria Alvarez was announced, for the crime of genocide.

The local Fray Bartoleme de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) issued a statement in the prelude to Mexico's July 2 presidential election protesting that they are being held in the state of Chiapas under a "state of exception." The statement also said the same conditions would likely prevail in Aug. 20 state elections. (APRO, July 1)

The results of the July 2 presidential elections in Mexico are still considered too close to call, but both candidates—former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the populist-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and former energy minister Felipe Calderon of the technocratic-right National Action Party (PAN)—are claiming victory. The New York Times quoted Lopez Obrador saying he would repect the decision of the Federal Electoral Institute, while also insisting he had won by 500,000 votes. "This result is irreversible," he said. Countered Calderon: "There is not the slightest doubt that we have won the election."

On the eve of Mexico's presidential elections, a dialectic of militant protest and ugly repression is escalating throughout the country's southern and central regions—although you'd never know it by reading the gringo press. Note the multi-issue nature of this protest in the central-eastern state of Hidalgo, and the mixture of local and national demands. Also note that, despite the supposed transition to "democracy," things are as murky as ever, with the authorities apparently grooming proxy provocateur forces to justify repression. From APRO, June 27 via Chiapas95 (our translation, links added):

From the Mexican news agency APRO, June 27, via Chiapas95 (our translation):

Toluca- The first penal judge based in Tenang del Valle formally brought charges against 13 of the 21 police detained by the Mexican [state] prosecutor in the Atenco case.

With the world's eyes elsewhere, the still-unresolved status of Kosova is a major crisis just waiting to erupt. Kostunica delivered this speech outside a 14th-century monastery in the town of Gracanica rather than at the Plain of Blackbirds, the site of the famous Battle of Kosovo. But the allusions are obvious to Slobodan Milosevic's notorious June 28, 1989 speech at the Plain of Blackbirds which signaled the start of his long camapign against the province's Alabanian majority and also marked the beginning of Yugoslavia's self-destruction. It is amazing that the media accounts are not picking up on this. From AP, June 29: