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. RenĂ© 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.
Members of the Colombian National Police began training Salvadoran, Mexican, Honduran and Guatemalan police and attorneys general at the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador—raising sharp criticisms from rights activists.
Activist Mahadeo (“Emo”) Sadloo was shot dead at his automobile tire shop in eastern Tegucigalpa; just one day later, activist journalist Medardo Flores was gunned down near his farm in the north.
US diplomats suspected in 2004 that the business owner at the center of land disputes in the Lower Aguán Valley may have been involved in three drug-related incidents at one of his properties.
Dole Food Company has settled with some 5,000 former banana workers in Nicaragua who said their health had been damaged by prolonged and unprotected exposure to the pesticides Nemagon and Fumazone.
Honduran campesino leader Pedro Salgado and his wife, Reina MejĂa, are the latest victims in a decade-old struggle for land in the Central American nation’s conflicted Lower Aguán Valley.
El Salvador’s Supreme Court blocked the extradition of nine high-ranking military officers accused of overseeing the 1989 “Jesuit Massacre,” defying Interpol “red notices” for the suspects that had been issued at the request of Spanish authorities.
A group of men armed with guns wounded seven indigenous campesinos during an hour-long attack on an encampment in the Polochic Valley in the northeastern Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz.
Campesino leader Secundino Ruiz was shot dead as he was leaving a bank in Tocoa in the northern Honduran department of Colón. This was the 12th killing in the Aguán Valley in a week.
