After a two-day trial, on Dec. 12 Haitian judge Emmanuel Tataye sentenced Jean Remy Demosthene and Joubert Saint Juste to life at hard labor for the Dec. 3, 2001 murder of journalist Brignol Lindor in the southwestern city of Petit-Goave…. Read moreHaiti: journalist’s killers sentenced
Rights activists in Guatemala are denouncing the Dec. 17 decision by the country’s Constitutional Court finding that the government of Spain has no standing to bring charges against five Guatemalan generals and two civilians accused of genocide. The court also… Read moreGuatemalan court: no extradition for war criminals
Felipe Alvarez, a member of a local Community Development Council (COCODES), was shot dead on his way to work in the early morning of Dec. 8 near his home in Microparcelamiento El Naranjo in the southern Guatemalan department of Escuintla…. Read moreGuatemala: community leader murdered
On the evening of Dec. 12 Melanie del Carmen Salgado Lopez was assaulted by an unknown man near the entrance of her home in Mexico’s Federal District (DF, Mexico City). He pushed her against the wall, grabbed her by her… Read moreMexico: legal defense activist assaulted
On Dec. 10 some 400 police broke up a demonstration by the unemployed in Mexico’s southern state of Tabasco. Some 300 people were blocking an avenue in Villahermosa to demand benefits that PRI governor Andres Granier Melo had promised to… Read moreMexico: unemployed protest in Tabasco
Some 1,000 members of the Federation of Socialist Campesino Students of Mexico (FECSM) blocked the Sun Highway in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero for more than an hour on Dec. 11 to protest plans by state education secretary Jose… Read moreMexico: student protests continue in Guerrero
At a Dec. 9 ceremony hosted by outgoing Argentine president Nestor Kirchner in the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, the heads of six South American countries signed an agreement formally creating the Bank of the South, a development bank to… Read moreSouth American nations unveil Bank of the South
After a 10-year trial, on Dec. 12 Bolivian judge Angel Arias sentenced three former officers to 30 years for their involvement in the 1980 military coup in which Luis Garcia Meza overthrew President Lidia Gueiler. Socialist leader Marcelo Quiroga Santa… Read moreBolivia: sentences for 1980 coup
On Dec. 15, tens of thousands took to the streets of La Paz to cheer President Evo Morales and celebrate Bolivia’s new constitution. Simultaneously, tens of thousands took to the streets of the eastern lowland cities Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni… Read moreDueling referendums on Bolivia’s future
The White House is hoping Congress will pass the Bush administration’s request for an initial $550 million for narcotics enforcement in Mexico and Central America before the fast-approaching holiday recess. The proposed aid package, known as the “Merida Initiative,” has… Read moreCongress mulls “Plan Mexico”
On Dec. 10, some 150 people marched to the federal building in Hartford, CT, to demand an end to immigration raids. Activists were upset about the arrest of 21 Brazilian immigrants in early November in the city’s Parkville neighborhood in… Read moreHartford: marchers protest ICE raids
A Mexican citizen who is in the US legally has filed the first lawsuit challenging the aggressive immigration-enforcement efforts of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona’s Maricopa County, charging unlawful detainment and racial profiling. The suit seeks a declaratory judgment that… Read moreArizona’s anti-immigrant Sheriff Arpaio in racial profiling suit
