A DEA agent shot a man to death in Honduras during a raid on a smuggling operation—marking the first confirmed time the DEA has killed during an operation since the agency began deploying teams to Latin America.
Alejandro Jimenez Gonzalez AKA “Palidejo,” accused in the slaying of Argentine folk-singer Facundo Cabral in Guatemala last year, has been indicted on drug trafficking charges in Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
Some 200 Honduran security agents descended on a campesino encampment in an early-morning raid in the northern department of Cortés, destroying homes and shops and arresting 30 people, mostly women.
A federal judge in the District of Columbia dismissed a lawsuit filed by seven Guatemalans who alleged that they had been the subject of non-consensual human medical experimentation by the US Public Health Service.
Telma Yolanda Oqueli, leader of protest blockades at EXMINGUA gold mine near Guatemala City, was shot in the chest and gravely wounded by gunmen on a motorbike. Local residents demand their right to be consulted on the mine.
After a 30-year struggle, two indigenous Wounaan collectives in the eastern Panamanian province of Darién received titles from the government to their traditional lands—but clashes over logging in the territory continue.
The Honduran government signed an agreement granting campesinos some 4,000 hectares of farmland in the conflicted north of the country—far less than the government agreed to provide in an accord two years ago.
Honduras passed a constitutional amendment drawn up by the administration of President Porfirio Lobo that allows the creation of “Special Development Regions” within the country—where the national state would have limited, if any, authority.
With anger still growing in Honduras over the Miskito Coast drug raid that left four dead and villagers terrorized, the White House shows no sign of reconsidering the Central American Regional Security Initiative.
Having dismissed a case brought under CAFTA, a World Bank tribunal granted Pacific Rim Mining jurisdiction under El Salvador’s own investment law to sue the Central American republic for failure to approve a mine opposed by local campesinos.
The Guatemalan government has begun a process virtually closing down the agency in charge of preserving and investigating military and police records from the country’s bloody 1960-1996 civil war.
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.
