The Chinese firm Camc Engineering (CAMCE) was awarded the contract to build a major oil facility on Nicaragua's Pacific coast—a key project of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). The contact was announced in a Managua press conference April 27 by representatives of CAMCE and ALBA Nicaragua SA (ALBANISA). The complex to be built at Miramar outside Puerto Sandino, León department, is a centerpiece of the Venezuela-led ALBA, but has languished since being first announced in 2007. The facility will have a storing capacity of 1.8 million barrels of oil, and a processing capacity of 150,000 daily barrels. In addition to a refinery, it will include 15 tanks for fuel oil, diesel, jet-al (aviation fuel), gasoline and liquid gas. It is projected to double Nicaragua's oil intake capacity, as well as supplying other Central American nations. Venezuelan engineers will help oversee construction. (Inside Costa Rica, April 28; La Voz de Sandinismo, April 26; Downstream Today, Oct. 25, 2011)

In a dramatic show of force, more than 3,500 Honduran campesino families occupied land in estates in different parts of the country early in the morning of April 17 to demand implementation of an effective national agrarian reform policy. The mobilization, the Honduran activity for the International Day of Campesino Struggles, was organized by a coalition of 10 campesino groups, including the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) and the Honduran branch of the international rural workers' movement Vía Campesina. In a statement issued on April 17, the organizers said protesters had occupied a total of 12,000 hectares in eight of the country's 18 departments: Cortés, Yoro, Santa Bárbara, Intibucá, El Paraíso, Choluteca, Comayagua, and Francisco Morazán.

On March 29 the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation, joined with two Honduran union federations to file a petition with the US Department of Labor's Public Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA) asking the US to push the Honduran government to address labor violations. Evangelina Argueta Chinchilla, representing Honduras' General Workers Central (CGT), and Francisco Joel López Mejía, deputy general secretary of the smaller Independent Federation of Workers of Honduras (FITH), traveled to Washington to file the petition.

Four Honduran campesinos were killed and 11 were wounded in an ambush March 29 at the Marañón estate, near the city of Trujillo in the northern department of Colón. The victims were members of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), one of several organizations struggling to gain farmland in the Lower Aguán Valley. MUCA vice president Juan Chinchilla told the Associated Press wire service that the victims "were leaving for work and were traveling in various vehicles where they were attacked by armed men without having a chance to flee or defend themselves." About 50 campesinos have been killed in the Aguán region since 2009, mostly in disputes with major landowners; some died in unexplained violence sometimes attributed to criminal gangs. (AP, March 29, via Univision) (Juan Chinchilla himself was the victim of a kidnapping in January 2011.)

Some 1,500 indigenous campesinos arrived in Guatemala City on March 27 after an eight-day, 214-kilometer walk from Cobán, Alta Verapaz department, to promote their demands for land, debt cancellation and a halt to mining operations. Supporters joined them as they approached the capital, and the number of marchers eventually swelled to about 10,000, forming a line that stretched for 6 km. The protesters announced that they would stay encamped in the central Plaza de la Constitución until their main demands were met.

After an 18-day trial, a Guatemalan court has sentenced former general Pedro Pimentel to 6,030 years in prison for his participation in the Dec. 6, 1982 massacre of 201 civilians--most of them women and children--in the village of Dos Erres in the northern department of Petén. The sentence, 30 years for each of the victims plus 30 years for crimes against humanity, was made public the night of March 12.

Leaders of the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group reached an agreement with the Panamanian government the night of March 15 that would ban mining in the group's territory and limit hydroelectric projects. The accord is the latest development in a struggle between the Ngöbe-Buglé and rightwing president Ricardo Martinelli that started in February 2011 and led to major demonstrations and the deaths of two protesters in February of this year.

Nicaragua's National Assembly observed International Women's Day on March 8 by unanimously passing a law which requires political parties to have women as at least 50% of their candidates for municipal posts. The government's special attorney for women, Deborah Gradinson, said Nicaraguan society remains in many ways "tolerant" of violence against women, with at least 17 women murdered so far in 2012 by partners, former partners or acquaintances. The María Elena Cuadra Movement of Working and Unemployed Women reported that only half of the 81 cases of women killed by violence in 2011 ever reached a court. "Justice for women, no more impunity" should be the slogan for the day, according to human rights activist Vilma Núñez.