The Sept. 9 election to replace Guatemalan President Oscar Berger featured more body bags than tangible ideas to improve the country. Now facing a Nov. 4 runoff election, voters are left with the tired choice between a military strongman and… Read moreGuatemalan elections: back to the future?
From the Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA (GHRC-USA), Sept. 11: José Emanuel “Pepe” Méndez Dardón, son of longtime human rights defender Amílcar Méndez, was shot to death in Guatemala City on the afternoon of August 17 by assailants with high caliber… Read moreGuatemala: son of human rights defender murdered
From CISPES via Upside Down World, Sept. 11: Eight members of the Salvadoran General Hospitals Union (SIGEESAL) were illegally arrested on September 4 for participating in a demonstration against the privatization of the national health system back on July 6…. Read moreEl Salvador: anti-privatization protesters jailed
On Sept. 13 Costa Rican vice president and planning minister Kevin Casas took a leave of absence pending an investigation by the Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) into charges that he used public resources improperly to support a campaign in favor… Read moreCosta Rica: CAFTA scandal hits veep
From the University of Arizona Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program via the Rainforest Foundation, Sept. 7: On September 4, 2007, Hurricane Felix hit land on the Northeast Coast of Nicaragua as a level 5 hurricane. Initial reports have told… Read moreEmergency fund appeal for devastated Nicaraguan indigenous community
Two residents, including an 11-year-old boy, are dead following riots at the village of Cubulco in Guatemala’s Baja Verapaz department. Protesters torched the home of the mayor, Rolando Rivera, and the village remains occupied by a large detachment of the… Read moreTwo dead in Guatemala riots
In the three days from Aug. 4 to Aug. 6, unknown assailants carried out three attacks against activists for the leftist Gathering for Guatemala (EG) party and two of its candidates in Sept. 9 national and local elections. The EG’s… Read moreGuatemala: activists killed as vote nears
El Salvador is sending its ninth contingent to join the US-sponsored occupation of Iraq on Aug. 7. The first Salvadoran troops joined the occupation in August 2003. The new contingent will have some 300 members, from the army’s elite Cuscatlan… Read moreEl Salvador sends more troops to Iraq
Human bones, organs and tissues will be considered commodities if the pending Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is ratified, Costa Rica’s Foreign Trade Ministry has acknowledged. The admission came in a statement released from Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz to… Read moreCAFTA to make human organs commodities
Some 5,000 campesinos, students and activists marched in the eastern Salvadoran port city of La Union on July 15 to protest plans to build two electric plants near the Conchagua Volcano. The Virginia-based AES Corporation, which controls most of the… Read moreSalvadorans march against power plant development
At least 12 people were injured and 59 arrested July 17 when Honduran police violently cleared several roadblocks set up by protesters demanding a new mining law. Salvador Zuniga, consultant to the Coordinator of Peasant and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras… Read moreAnti-mining protests repressed in Honduras
On July 11 Panama’s National Assembly voted 58-3 with one abstention to ratify a “free trade” accord (TLC, the initials in Spanish) which the government signed with the US in Washington, DC, just two weeks earlier, on June 28. The… Read morePanama: National Assembly passes trade accord
