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.
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.
Managers at two factories in northern Honduras owned by the US clothing firm Delta Apparel, Inc. are continuing to threaten women employees suffering from work-related injuries, according to the Honduran Women’s Collective (CODEMUH).
Between 200 and 600 soldiers and national police agents reportedly raided the campesino community of Rigores in Honduras’ conflicted Lower Aguán Valley, breaking into homes, destroying belongings and hitting both adults and children.
Honduras armed forces chief Gen. René Osorio Canales claims police and soldiers were ambushed by “people with high-caliber weapons, people who have dedicated themselves to guerrilla activities” in the conflicted Lower Aguán Valley.
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.
