In a significant setback for Chilean prosecutors, judges in Cañete in the central province of Arauco voted on Feb. 22 not to convict 17 indigenous Mapuche activists on "terrorism" charges relating to a fire and an attack on a prosecutor, Mario Elgueta, in Tirúa in October 2008. The judges acquitted most of the defendants of all charges, but they found four of the activists—Héctor Llaitul, Ramón Llenaquileo, José Huenuche and Jonathan Huillical—guilty of attempted homicide, a common crime, in the attack on Elgueta.

Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's militarization of the struggle against drug trafficking is "a war from above" largely for the benefit of US interests, according to a letter published on Feb. 14 and written by Subcommander Marcos, the spokesperson of the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), which is based in the southeastern state of Chiapas.

A US diplomatic cable released by the WikiLeaks group on Jan. 29 has raised new questions about possible corruption in the de facto regime that ruled Honduras between the June 28, 2009 coup against then-president José Manuel ("Mel') Zelaya Rosales and the Jan. 27, 2010 inauguration of current president Porifirio Lobo Sosa.

Chief US federal district judge José Fusté sent Puerto Rican Bar Association (CAPR) president Osvaldo Toledo Martínez to prison on Feb. 10 for refusing to pay a $10,000 fine for contempt of court. This was the latest incident arising from a federal class action suit that challenges the bar's use of compulsory dues to buy life insurance policies for all its members. CAPR supporters say the association has discontinued the practice and the suit is politically motivated.

On Feb. 15 some 5,000 members of Panama's Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group held a day of national protests against changes to the Mining Resources Code that they said would encourage open-pit mining for metals by foreign companies. The protests, organized by the People's Total Struggle (ULIP), started at 10 AM in San Félix, in the Ngöbe-Buglé territory in the western province of Chiriquí. Demonstrators interrupted traffic on the highway leading to Costa Rica and reportedly attacked Deputy Labor Minister Luis Ernesto Carles, who had been sent to talk with them. At noon there were demonstrations in front of the Banco General in Santiago, Veraguas province, and the Aquilino Tejera Hospital in Penonomé, Coclé province. Actions continued in the afternoon with protests at the Central Avenue in Changuinola, Bocas del Toro province, and at Vía España in Panama City.

On Feb. 7 Haiti's Immigration and Emigration Service issued a diplomatic passport for former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004), who has lived in exile in South Africa since he was forced from office in 2004. The passport is good for five years, with an expiration date of Feb. 6, 2016. Aristide's US lawyer, Ira Kurzban, arrived in Haiti several days earlier to pick up the document for his client. (Radio Kiskeya, Haiti, Feb. 7)

Some 100 members of Los Zetas, a Mexican drug gang, had settled in the north central Guatemalan city of Cobán, capital of Alta Verapaz department, by early 2009 and were enjoying protection from "corrupt" police who were reportedly "allied with traffickers," according to a Feb. 6, 2009 confidential diplomatic cable by US ambassador Stephen McFarland. The cable was one of about 3,000 US diplomatic cables from the WikiLeaks organization that were given to the Mexican daily La Jornada because they dealt with issues relating to Mexico. The Los Zetas gang grew out of a group of Mexican Special Forces soldiers, some of them reportedly trained in counterinsurgency by the US military.

The left-of-center Mexican daily La Jornada announced on Feb. 10 that it had received some 3,000 US diplomatic cables from Sunshine Press Productions, which is presided over by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The cables deal with Mexican issues and provide "a window on the background and the tone of the bilateral relation between Mexico and the US," La Jornada's editors wrote. The paper said it "has taken on the task of reading, systematizing and treating [the material] journalistically." (LJ, Feb. 10)