A judge in Nicaragua on June 20 ruled that the man who allegedly plotted the fatal attack on revered Argentine folk-singer Facundo Cabral last year will be charged in the Central American country for drug trafficking and money laundering. Costa Rican national Alejandro Jimenez Gonzalez AKA "Palidejo" is currently being tried in Guatemala, where Cabral was killed last year. The criminal court in Managua said it would prosecute another 20 people accused of running a trafficking network that stretched from Costa Rica to Mexico. Nicaraguan police arrested 11 of Palidejo’s associates last month—including Julio César Osuna, a former judge who once served on Nicaragua's electoral council. Osuna's brother was also among the detained.

Early in the mcrning of June 11 some 200 Honduran security agents--including Preventive Police, National Criminal Investigation Directorate (DNIC) agents and soldiers from the 105th Infantry Brigade—evicted campesinos occupying more than 4,000 hectares on three estates in San Manuel in the northern department of Cortés. About 30 people were arrested, mostly women, according to press reports, but DNIC sub-director Reinaldo Rubio said the agents only found 20 people at the site and arrested them for land usurpation. The eviction was authorized by a judge in the nearby city of San Pedro Sula.

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on June 13 dismissed a lawsuit filed by seven Guatemalans who alleged that they had been the subject of non-consensual human medical experimentation by the US Public Health Service. In its decision, the court found that under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) the US government is specifically exempt from liability for torts that occur outside of the US. Because the plaintiffs sued government officials who were acting in the capacity of their positions, the claim is automatically converted to a claim against the US government, and the court is bound by the FTCA. In his decision, Judge Reggie Walton acknowledged that "the Guatemala Study is a deeply troubling chapter in our Nation's history," but concluded that the court had no authority to provide relief. He suggested that the victims seek a remedy through political means. The Guatemalan government had reportedly requested that the US government provide out-of-court settlements before the lawsuit was filed, but the US did not respond.

Telma Yolanda Oqueli, a community leader in San José del Golfo municipality outside Guatemala City, was shot in the chest and gravely wounded by a gunman on a motorbike June 13. She was returning home from a protest vigil when she was intercepted by the two men on the motorbike. Residents of San José del Golfo and neighboring San Pedro Ayampuc have since March 2 been daily blocking the entrance to the Tambor/Progreso 7 Derivada run by Exploraciones Mineras de Guatemala, SA (EXMINGUA), local subsidiary of Canadian junior Radius Gold Inc. The North Metropolitan People's Resistance Front (FRENAM) is asserting the communities' right to a consultation, or local plebiscite, on the mining project. The project began exploratory operations earlier this year without any consent from the local population; nor has the government of Guatemala, carried out any consultation. Oqueli, a leader of the blockades, had received FRENAM has issued an urgent call for the Guatemalan state to guarantee of the communities. (Noticias Comunicarte, CoDev, June 13; MiMundo, June 4 via UDW)

After a 30-year struggle, on June 4 two indigenous Wounaan collectives in the eastern Panamanian province of Darién received titles from the government to their traditional lands. Puerto Lara and Caña Blanca were the first communities to benefit from Law 72, which was passed in 2008 to recognize indigenous communities that were left out of the process in which Panama created five comarcas, large, semi-autonomous regions for many of the country's indigenous peoples. Thousands of Wounaan and Emberá are awaiting titles in another 39 communities. Indigenous people in these communities say the lack of titles has left their territories open to invasions by ranchers and loggers. (Rainforest Foundation, June 1; RF, June 5)

The government of Honduran president Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa signed an agreement on June 5 under which some 4,000 hectares of farmland in the north of the country will be granted to members of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), a large campesino collective that has been staging land occupations in the area since December 2009. The government is to buy the land from cooking-oil magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum for some $20 million and resell it to MUCA members, who are to pay the government back with a loan from the private Banco Hondureño de Producción y Vivienda (Banhprovi). They will need to repay the loan in 15 years with a 6% annual interest rate after a three-year grace period.

A startling article in the New York Times May 8 noted that Honduras in late 2010 passed a constitutional amendment drawn up by the administration of President Porfirio Lobo that allows the creation of a separately ruled "Special Development Region" within the country—where the national state would have limited, if any, authority. The article, entitled "Who Wants to Buy Honduras?," portrays a vision for privately run islands of order and security amid the squalor and violence of the impecunious Central American country. This was apparently the brainchild of a young Lobo aide, Octavio Rubén Sánchez Barrientos, who was taken with the ideas of US economist Paul Romer, theorist of "economic zones founded on the land of poor countries but governed with the legal and political system of, often, rich ones."

With anger still growing in Honduras over the May 11 raid on the village of Ahuas that left four dead, the White House shows no sign of reconsidering the Central American Regional Security Initiative, under which the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Pentagon's Southern Command are coordinated with regional security forces. Officials boast the new cooperation is working, stating that last year the US monitored more than 100 small planes from South America landing at isolated airstrips in Honduras, with no interference. In contrast, two such flights were intercepted in May—including the one involved in the deadly raid at Ahuas. "In the first four months of this year, I'd say we actually have gotten it together across the military, law enforcement and developmental communities," William R. Brownfield, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, told the New York Times. "My guess is narcotics traffickers are hitting the pause button. For the first time in a decade, air shipments are being intercepted immediately upon landing."