A Guatemalan judge ordered former dictator Efrain Rios Montt to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in the killing of more than 1,700 Maya villagers.
Tourists are flocking to Mexico for the “end of the Maya calendar,” but Maya elders protest that they are barred from performing ceremonies at the archeological sites.
Mexican drug cartels that use cattle ranching to launder narco-profits as well as Chinese-backed illegal timber gangs are eating into Guatemala's vast Maya Biosphere Reserve.
Guatemalan authorities arrested a colonel and eight soldiers over the extrajudicial killings of eight indigenous protestors in the department of Totonicapan last week.
Guatemalan authorities arrested the presumed leader of a Zetas cell in the region along the Mexican border, where the group's incursion has forced the displacement of local residents.
Seven were killed and some 40 wounded when security forces attacked a protest road blockade by Maya indigenous campesinos in the Guatemalan highlands.
Drug trafficking and violent crime in Central America and the Caribbean threaten the rule of law in those regions, according to a report by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime.
Charges were dropped against 10 campesino opponents of a hydro-electric project on Maya lands in Guatemala, but other leaders remain in prison and face death threats.
The US praised the decision of Guatemala’s Constitutional Court allowing former president Alfonso Portillo to be extradited to the US on charges of embezzling foreign donations.
Swiss prosecutors announced that Erwin Sperisen, former commander of Guatemala's National Police, was arrested in Geneva and will stand trial for extrajudicial killings.
A court in Guatemala City sentenced Pedro GarcÃa Arredondo, former chief of the National Police, to 70 years in prison for the 1981 disappearance and torture of a university student.
The military forced 100 impoverished families to move out of land in Guatemala City where they’d lived since January—and removed them again when they tried to settle nearby.
