Guatemala's Congress on Oct. 21 passed a law designating the Barrio 18 and MS-13 gangs as "terrorist organizations." The move came days after 20 Barrio 18 convicts broke out of the maximum-security Fraijanes II prison outside the capital. So far, only four have been recaptured. The new "Ley Anti-pandillas" provides for heavier sentences for gang members convicted of crimes such as extortion or recruitment of minors, and calls for the construction of more-maximum security prisons. 

United Nations human rights experts called on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s government on Oct. 3 to clarify the fate and whereabouts of more than 120 individuals who appear to have been forcibly disappeared after the violent suppression of anti-government protests in 2018. The experts also urged the state to cease using arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance as tools of political repression.

Kilmar Abrego García, released from extrajudicial detention in El Salvador, now fights deportation to Uganda. Hundreds of the Venezuelans sent by the US to the Salvadoran prison gulag have now been returned to Venezuela in a prisoner swap. But El Salvador remains on the growing list of human rights offendors cultivated by the Trump regime as surrogate detention states. The Trump State Department's farcical "Human Rights Report" seeks to sanitize dictator Nayib Bukele's anti-crime police state. And adding to the Orwellian nature of the Trump-Bukele axis, the US Justice Department has dropped charges against MS-13 leaders who collaborated in the consolidation of the new Salvadoran dictatorship. In Episode 293 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg exposes the perverse charade.

Panamanian construction workers, teachers' unions, and popular organizations launched an indefinite strike April 28 to protest the government's proposed reforms to the pension system and to demand an end to US interference in the country. Protestors, led by the construction union SUNTRACS, were met by police repression in various parts of the country, including tear gas aimed directly at students. In addition to fears that reforms to the country's social security system will lead to its privatization, the country's grassroots organizations believe that President José Raúl Mulino has undermined Panamanian sovereignty by not being firm enough in his negotiations with the Trump administration over control of the Panama Canal.

US-directed repression and counter-insurgency in El Salvador in the 1980s allowed the imposition of "free trade" or "neoliberal" regimes in the generations since then—ultimately culminating in the adoption of CAFTA. This, in turn, has exacerbated the expropriation of the traditional lands of the peasantry by the agro-export oligarchy. It also led to the hypertrophy of the narco economy and a new nightmare of violence, which Nayib Bukele has exploited to establish a new dictatorship. This dictatorship is now openly in league with Donald Trump, and has in fact become critical to his fascist agenda. In Episode 275 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg breaks down El Salvador's historical role as a laboratory of genocide and police-state methods for US imperialism, and the imperative of trans-national resistance.

The Trump administration's deportation policies took center stage this week as Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele visited the White House, courts continued challenging the legality of the deportations, and a Maryland senator travelled to El Salvador in an attempt to make contact with a man known to be wrongfully deported.

An eight-year-old Venezuelan girl died and 20 survivors were rescued by Panamanian authorities from a Feb. 21 shipwreck during a journey from Panama's northern port of Llano Carti to the Colombian border.

The Nicaraguan Human Rights Collective "Nunca Más" issued a report Dec. 10 charging that at least 229 individuals detained in the country for political reasons have endured various forms of torture and other acts that could be classified as "crimes against humanity" over the past seven years. The report documents claims of physical and psychological torture, arbitrary detention, forced disappearances, and other severe human rights violations committed by the Nicaraguan government. The victims, identified as individuals who were arrested during anti-government protests and in connection with opposition activities, have reportedly faced beatings, sexual violence, and prolonged solitary confinement.