Nine former Salvadoran military officials accused in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests, including ex-Defense Minister Rafael Humberto Lario, were handed over to a court in El Salvador after Spain issued international arrest warrants.
The US Coast Guard announced the interception of a so-called “narco submarine,” while in a joint patrol of Caribbean waters with the Honduran armed forces. Four crew members were detained with 7.5 tons of cocaine.
Nery Jeremías Orellana, 26, the manager of Radio Joconguera in the town of Candelaria, in the western department of Lempira, Honduras, was gunned down on his way to a regional meeting of community radio stations.
Pedro Pimentel Rios, a veteran of Guatemala’s eilte military unit, the Kaibiles, was deported by ICE back to the Central American nation for his role in the 1982 massacre of at least 162 villagers at Las Dos Erres, in the northern jungle department of Petén.
Famed Argentine folksinger Facundo Cabral, an icon of Latin American protest music, was shot to death by unknown gunmen who ambushed his car on the way to the airport in Guatemala City.
The Honduras Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the removal from office of former President Manuel Zelaya was a coup—but also that Zelaya’s referendum on constitutional change was “a point of no return” in the crisis.
Hundreds of debt-ridden small merchants and farmers in northern Nicaragua launched a human blockade on the main road between the Caribbean coast and the capital in Matagalpa department.
Juan Francisco Durán Ayala, a young opponent of the local Pacific Rim gold mine in El Salvador’s Cabañas department, was found dead days after his disappearance last week—and quickly buried by authorities in a mass grave.
Talks on a Mexico-Central America free trade zone wrapped up as long-standing regional political disputes were officially resolved. But increased integration comes with stepped-up “anti-crime” military efforts.
Ousted Honduran president Mel Zelaya and incumbent Porfirio Lobo signed a pact that will allow Zelaya to return to the country and “normalize” relations with the OAS. The next day, another journalist was shot in Tegucigalpa.
Guatemalan police arrested a presumed leader of the Zetas narco-paramilitary network who authorities say is likely commander of the assassin squad that carried out this week's grisly massacre of 27 farmworkers.
Guatemalan authorities announced the discovery of 27 bodies—all but one decapitated—at a ranch in the northern jungle of Petén. The victims were farmworkers who were apparently massacred by a Zeta narco-trafficking cell.
