Mexican federal police on Oct. 4 announced the apprehension of a fugitive Gulf Cartel operative, Eduardo Francisco Villatoro Cano AKA "Guayo"—wanted in Guatemala for a bloody attack on police earlier this year. Guayo was captured in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, capital of southern Chiapas state, bordering Guatemala. Guatemalan authorities hold him responsible for a June armed attack on a National Civil Police post in Salcajá, Quetzaltenango, in which nine officers were killed.  He was arrested along with his cousin, Édgar Waldiny Herrera Villatoro AKA "El Gualas." Although both men are Guatemalan nationals, they were said to be serving as agents of Mexico's Gulf Cartel. They were turned over to authorities in Guatemala, where President Otto Perez Molina said the Gulf Cartel network in the country has now been dismantled.

Three men allegedly linked to Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, accused of conspiring to distribute a thousand kilograms of cocaine in the US and Europe, face trial in a federal court in Concord, New Hampshire, after being extradited from Spain. According to network Univisión, the accused were apprehended in the Spanish port of Algeciras in August 2012. One defendant, Manuel Jesús Gutiérrez Guzmán, has been identified as a cousin of Joaquin Guzman AKA "El Chapo"—the Sinaloa Cartel's notorious fugitive kingpin. Another, Rafael Humberto Celaya Valenzuela, was a candidate for public office in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, with Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). (Latino Post, Proceso, Proceso, Sept. 4)

Kaqchikel indigenous authorities in the central Guatemalan pueblo of San José Nacahuil, just outside the capital, are protesting the government's response to a Sept. 8 massacre in which 11 residents were killed and 15 injured as gunmen shot up a cantina. Some of the bodies were found in the bathroom where patrons attempted to hide from the attack; others were chased out into the street and gunned down. Governance Minister Mauricio López told reporters the killings could be the work of youth gangs or maras linked to the drug trade. But traditional Kaqchikel leaders issued a statement reading: "We are strongly opposed to the statement of the Minister of the Governance that blamed gangs, which is completely false. It is premature to make statements without having initiated an investigation." (Global Voices, Sept. 10; AFP, Sept. 9; BBC News, AP, Sept. 8)

A panel of Guatemala's Civilian and Mercantile Appeals Court issued a restraining order on July 24 that is likely to keep Vancouver-based Tahoe Resources Inc. from opening its El Escobal silver mine in August as scheduled. The court backed a complaint filed by Kelvin Jiménez, a member of the indigenous Xinka group, that the Energy and Mining Ministry failed to deal with 250 appeals against the operation when it granted a 25-year license for the mine on April 3. The court's decision gave the ministry three days to begin proceedings on the appeals. The Legal and Environmental Action Center (CALAS), a Guatemalan organization that assisted Jiménez in the legal action, said the July 24 decision would suspend operations at the mine; a spokesperson for Tahoe downplayed the ruling, saying the company's Guatemalan subsidiary, Minera San Rafael, would appeal, although the spokesperson admitted that the process might take several weeks.

Some 1,000 or more indigenous and campesino Guatemalans demonstrated on July 5 in San Juan Sacatepéquez municipality, about 30 km northwest of Guatemala City in Guatemala department, to protest the inauguration of a cement processing plant. According to José Tucuy, a member of the leadership group for 12 local communities, the plant will affect 64,000 residents, who are mostly members of the Kaqchikel Mayan group. Protesters said the plant will contaminate the environment and use up scarce water resources. The plant is part of a "mega-project…a highway of several kilometers that will pass through our community, destroying our woods and forcing people to migrate to other places," another resident, Ramona García, told reporters. "My family doesn't eat grey cement, my family eats corn," the protesters chanted.

Guatemala's President Otto Pérez Molina said he is considering imposing a state of emergency in Salcajá, Quetzaltenango department, after an armed attack on a substation of the National Civil Police (PNC)  left eight officers dead and their commander abducted June 14. Authorities said the slain officers were disarmed, made to face down on the ground, and then shot in the head, execution-style. Pérez Molina attributed the attack to drug gangs operating in the area, with possible links to Mexican criminal networks such as the Sinaloa Cartel or Los Zetas. Jorge Santos of the International Center for Human Rights Research (CIDH), set up to secure political rights after Guatemala's civil war, said he hoped "this terror will not lead to greater levels of social control by the executive."

More than 160 civil society organizations—claiming representation of hundreds of thousands of citizens in Mexico, Central America and the United States—sent an open letter to the OAS General Assembly meeting in the Guatemalan city of Antigua this week,  calling for alternatives to the so-called "war on drugs" that guarantee respect for human rights. "Our organizations have documented an alarming increase in violence and human rights violations," the letter states. "While we recognize that transnational crime and drug-trafficking play a role in this violence, we call on our governments to acknowledge that failed security policies that have militarized citizen security have only exacerbated the problem, and are directly contributing to increased human suffering in the region."

As the  Organization of American States (OAS) summit opens under tight security in the historic Guatemalan city of Antigua—some 2,000 army and National Police troops deployed—fighting narco-trafficking is certain to top the agenda. Secretary of State John Kerry will be in attendance, with US Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske—prepared to oppose initiatives to reconsider the "war on drugs," including from Guatemala's otherwise arch-conservative President Otto Pérez Molina. But it remains to be seen if the summit will take up the iconoclastic recommendations of a draft report on drug policy released by the OAS last month. When the ground-breaking report was issued, OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza asserted, "this is not a conclusion but only the beginning of a long-awaited discussion." As the Guatemala summit opened June 3, he reiterated that the report will not be officially adopted by the international body, but that "it will be only a platform for discussion." This equivocation will doubtless be welcome in Washington, given the report's open dissidence from generations of "drug war" dogma.