In the latest Honduran police scandal, an ex-agent is prime suspect in the kidnapping and murder of journalist Angel Alfredo Villatoro. He had been shot twice in the head, and media reported that the body was dressed in a police uniform.
Private and public university students in Mexico have united to protest media coverage of the upcoming presidential elections—and the likely victory of Enrique Peña Nieto, candidate of the former entrenched and authoritarian ruling party.
While continuing to fight for a complete educational overhaul at home, Chilean students are also expressing solidarity with a similar struggle in Canada’s Quebec province.
An international mobilization is demanding release of a Chiapas schoolteacher convicted in the killing of seven police agents. The only witness against him was the local mayor’s son, who later admitted giving false testimony in exchange for a bribe.
The body of Honduran journalist and LGBT rights activist Erick Alex MartĂnez Avila was found near Tegucigalpa, and another journalist, Alfredo Villatoro, was kidnapped two days later.
Peru’s military marked the 15th anniversary of a commando raid that freed 71 hostage held by leftist rebels—while controversy continues about charges that the rebels were executed after surrendering.
A new US military training center in Chile will be used for exercises “clearly oriented toward the control and repression of the civilian population,” more than 20 human rights groups say.
Controversial Nicaraguan revolutionary Tomás Borge, the last of the group that founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front, died in a Managua military hospital at age 81.
Port-au-Prince assembly plant owners warned workers not to march on May 1, and rewarded them if they stayed at work by paying out an unprecedented $12 for a day’s work.
Tens of thousands of unionists and campesinos joined the independent unions’ annual march in Mexico City, while the mineworkers union may have won in a six-year confrontation with the government.
As workers mobilized throughout the hemisphere, Peru and Venezuela marked May Day by raising the minimum wage. Chile and Cuba said they would maintain the current wage levels.
The Haitian Parliament’s lower house abruptly ended a session when a group of armed men in uniforms entered the legislature’s grounds. They claimed to be vets from the disbanded Armed Forces of Haiti.
