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.
In a major victory for Costa Rica’s environmental movement, the country’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision canceling a concession for an open-pit gold mine in Crucitas de San Carlos.
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.
Some 300 light automatic rifles and 300,000 5.56-caliber bullets disappeared from a Tegucigalpa warehouse in August or September; they’d been in the custody of a special operations police group.
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.
A dispute between the government of right-wing president Ricardo Martinelli and the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group flared up again as the National Assembly began to debate changes to the Mining Code.
Honduran and international groups are forming an organization to monitor and prevent rights violations in the Lower Aguán Valley, the site of numerous violent land disputes, where dozens of people have been killed over the past two years.
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.
Honduran police discovered an illegal shipment of arms from the US in Puerto Cortés, the country’s main port, in the violence-plagued north, torn by land conflicts as well increasing activity by drug smugglers and criminal networks.
