Two men on a motorcycle gunned down Honduran campesino activist Matías Valle Cárdenas on Jan. 20 as he was leaving his home in Quebradas de Arena, Tocoa municipality in the northern department of Colón. Valle was a leader in the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), one of several campesino groups fighting for land redistribution in the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Hondruas. More than 50 campesinos and private security guards have been killed in Aguán land conflicts over the past two years. Valle's murder came just three days after the killing of attorney José Ricardo Rosales in the northern city of Tela shortly after he reported abuses by local police.

Guatemalan judge Carol Patricia Flores ruled on Jan. 26 that there was sufficient evidence to try former military dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) for genocide and other crimes against humanity. Some of the worst atrocities in a 36-year counterinsurgent war occurred during the time that Ríos Montt headed the government, including killings in the Ixil Mayan region that amounted to genocide according to a 1999 report by a United Nations-backed truth commission. The specific charges against Ríos Montt are based on 72 incidents that caused 1,771 deaths under his military command. (Jurist, Jan. 27)

Former Guatemalan military dictator Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-83) is to appear before a judge on Jan. 26 in what could become a trial for genocide. Ríos Montt headed the government during one of the bloodiest periods in a 36-year counterinsurgent war that left more than 200,000 people dead, mostly civilians. After the fighting ended in 1996 Ríos Montt re-emerged as a politician, leading the right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) and holding a seat in Congress from 2000 until this month. The legislative position gave him immunity from prosecution, which has now ended.

Three unidentified men gunned down attorney José Ricardo Rosales the morning of Jan. 17 near his office or residence (the accounts differ) in the coastal city of Tela in the northern Honduran department of Atlántida. The murder came just four days after the San Pedro Sula daily El Tiempo ran a news report on Rosales' claim that Tela police agents had been abusing detainees. Rosales may also have offended the authorities by carrying out a successful defense of Marco Joel Alvarez ("Unicorn") against government charges that he was responsible for the March 2011 murder of radio and television journalist David Meza in the nearby city of La Ceiba. Meza had regularly criticized the police force on his programs.

Eight people, including four children, were murdered in the village of Regaderos, in Sabá municipality in the northern Honduran department of Colón, on the evening of Jan. 9. Seven of the victims were members of the same campesino family; the eighth was a man running errands. The attackers took the victims from the family's home to a field and killed them there with machetes and firearms. The youngest of the children was one year old; the others were seven, 12 and 15 years old. The attackers cut a part of the ear off each of the eight bodies. (El Tiempo, San Pedro Sula, Jan. 10)

Marco Aurelio Lorenzo, a Catholic priest based in the western Honduran department of Santa Bárbara, filed a criminal complaint with the Public Ministry on Jan. 4 charging that he and his two brothers had been tortured by eight police agents. Lorenzo said the attack occurred on Dec. 26 on a road between La Esperanza and San Miguelito, Intibucá department, as the brothers were driving to visit their parents in Yamaranguila, also in Intibucá. "They beat us on every part of our bodies," Lorenzo told reporters after filing the charges in the northern city of San Pedro Sula.

In a communiqué released on Dec. 24, center-right Honduran president Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa said his government intended to have the country return to Petrocaribe, a program through which Venezuela provides oil to other Caribbean countries at favorable terms. Honduras joined Petrocaribe in January 2008 during the presidency of José Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), but the oil shipments were halted after Zelaya was removed from office by a military coup in June 2009. Talks have been underway for restoring the deal as part of Honduras' improved relations with Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez Frias; the negotiations have reportedly advanced since President Lobo went to Caracas in early December for the founding of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

Alfredo Landaverde, a former adviser to the Honduran government on security and drug trafficking, was shot dead on Dec. 7 by unknown gunmen on a motorcycle as he was driving in Tegucigalpa. His wife, the Venezuelan sociologist and author Hilda Caldera Tosta, was wounded in the attack. Landaverde had been the executive secretary of the National Commission of Struggle Against Narcotrafficking (CNLN) and an adviser to the Security Secretariat and the Public Ministry. He was also a former legislative deputy for the Christian Democratic Party of Honduras (PDCH), of which he was president.