Marco Aurelio Lorenzo, an activist Catholic priest based in western Honduras, has filed a criminal complaint charging that he and his two brothers were tortured by eight police agents the day after Christmas.
Center-right Honduran president Pepe Lobo intends to have the country return to Petrocaribe, a program through which Venezuela provides oil to other Caribbean countries at favorable terms.
Alfredo Landaverde, a former adviser to the Honduran government on security and drug trafficking, was shot dead by unknown gunmen on a motorcycle as he was driving in Tegucigalpa.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has withdrawn a 2010 order for the Guatemalan government to suspend operations at Goldcorp Inc.’s controversial Marlin gold mine.
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.
