El Salvador's government held a ceremony at El Mozote village to ask survivors' forgiveness—just as an ex-military commander takes over as Public Security Minister in a move apparently prompted by the US embassy.
Rights groups in El Salvador noted the anniversary of the massacre of 966 villagers at El Mozote by a US-trained battalion, decrying continued impunity after 30 years. The authors of the massacre are known, but protected by an amnesty law.
Honduran radio journalist Luz Marina Paz Villalobos and her driver were killed in a hail of bullets fired by men on two motorbikes in Tegucigalpa. Her morning news program had frequently taken on drug trafficking and corruption.
The government of Belize quietly granted US Capital Energy drilling rights to protected Maya lands in Sarstoon Temash National Park. The move comes in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling that recognized indigenous territorial rights.
Electoral violence was reported in the north as Sandinista candidate and incumbent President Daniel Ortega was re-elected to lead Nicaragua. Hugo Chávez hailed Ortega’s victory while the US State Department expressed concern about “irregularities.”
Retired military general Otto Pérez Molina emerged victorious from run-off elections for the presidency of Guatemala, vowing a crackdown on crime and drug-related violence. Pérez Molina is accused of having overseen genocide in the 1980s.
Judicial authorities in Guatemala declared ex-president Oscar Humberto Mejía Victores a fugitive and ordered his arrest to face charges of genocide for massacres carried out during the country’s civil war in the 1980s.
Nicaraguan newspaper El Nuevo Diario said one of its reporters, Silvia González, has fled to the US following threats from ruling Sandinista party supporters over her coverage of the death of an ex-contra commander who took up arms again.
President Barack Obama has included El Salvador and Belize on the list of 22 countries ranked as “Major Illicit Drug Transit or Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries,” for the first time placing all seven Central American nations on the annual list.
El Salvador’s President Mauricio Funes won praise from leftist supporters of his FMLN government with his decision to recognize Palestinian statehood—but also won protest with his move to send troops to Afghanistan to back up NATO’s mission.
Members of the Colombian National Police began training Salvadoran, Mexican, Honduran and Guatemalan police and attorneys general at the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador—raising sharp criticisms from rights activists.
El Salvador’s Supreme Court blocked the extradition of nine high-ranking military officers accused of overseeing the 1989 “Jesuit Massacre,” defying Interpol “red notices” for the suspects that had been issued at the request of Spanish authorities.
