China signed a free trade agreement with Costa Rica—a country that only established diplomatic ties with the Asian giant in 2007, and the third in Latin America to sign an FTA with Beijing.
The pro-government Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo reports that Honduran president Porfirio Lobo Sosa has ordered a “strong militarization” of the lower Aguán River Valley.
A private guard shot a Honduran peasant dead when a group of campesinos attempted to occupy an African palm farm in Colón department .
On Feb. 26 the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) charged that the Costa Rican government in effect “illegally established a ‘yellow’ trade union” for 1,500 dockworkers.
Several thousand marched in Tegucigalpa to demand an end to the escalation of repression, and against the neoliberal policies of the new Honduran government.
Amnesty International urged authorities in El Salvador to repeal an amnesty law that protects those responsible for thousands of killings and disappearances in the country’s armed conflict.
Unidentified gunmen killed Honduran journalist Nahúm Palacios Arteaga in the city of Tocoa—the third deadly attack against the Honduran press in the last two weeks.
Hundreds of Honduran soldiers, police and agents of the National Criminal Investigation Directorate removed thousands of families from lands they were living on outside Tegucigalpa.
After lengthy negotiations on Feb. 26, Guatemala’s new education minister, Dennis Alonzo, and Joviel Acevedo, head of the 80,000-member National Teachers Assembly (ANM), reached an agreement settling a wage dispute that had set off a series of militant actions starting… Read moreGuatemala: teachers’ strike settled
In Guatemala for a Drug War summit, Hillary Clinton called for recognition of the new Honduran government—and was accused by Hugo Chávez of “planting seeds of discord.”
Guatemalan union leaders and their families filed a lawsuit in New York, accusing the world’s biggest beverage company of complicity in violence against labor leaders.
Guatemalan troops and DEA agents destroyed 319 million opium plants and 250,000 marijuana plants in San Marcos department, considered a “sanctuary” of drug cultivation.
