Pedro Pimentel Rios, a veteran of Guatemala’s eilte military unit, the Kaibiles, was deported by ICE back to the Central American nation for his role in the 1982 massacre of at least 162 villagers at Las Dos Erres, in the northern jungle department of Petén.
The Guatemalan government failed to comply with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ order to help more than 600 campesino families that had been evicted from land they were farming.
Famed Argentine folksinger Facundo Cabral, an icon of Latin American protest music, was shot to death by unknown gunmen who ambushed his car on the way to the airport in Guatemala City.
The Honduras Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the removal from office of former President Manuel Zelaya was a coup—but also that Zelaya’s referendum on constitutional change was “a point of no return” in the crisis.
Hundreds of debt-ridden small merchants and farmers in northern Nicaragua launched a human blockade on the main road between the Caribbean coast and the capital in Matagalpa department.
UN Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Gabriela Knau warned that a new law in El Salvador requiring its high court to issue unanimous judgments is an “attack” on judicial independence and the separation of powers.
The UN announced its approval of the arrest of Gen. Hector Mario López, former Guatemalan armed forces chief accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during his tenure from 1982-3.
Juan Francisco Durán Ayala, a young opponent of the local Pacific Rim gold mine in El Salvador’s Cabañas department, was found dead days after his disappearance last week—and quickly buried by authorities in a mass grave.
Campesino organizations from the Lower Aguán Valley marched in Tegucigalpa to protest the killings of Aguán campesinos and to demand that the government keep its land distribution promises.
The Guatemalan government is planning not to honor a year-old order from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) to suspend operations at the Marlin gold mine in the western department of San Marcos, according to… Read moreGuatemala: government said to OK Goldcorp mine
Talks on a Mexico-Central America free trade zone wrapped up as long-standing regional political disputes were officially resolved. But increased integration comes with stepped-up “anti-crime” military efforts.
Thousands of Hondurans gathered at Tegucigalpa’s Toncontín International Airport to greet former president Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya (2006-2009) as he returned from a 16-month exile.
