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.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) has withdrawn a 2010 order for the Guatemalan government to suspend operations at the controversial Marlin gold mine, according to a Dec. 19 press release from the Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc. The action follows a petition by the Guatemalan government saying its monitors had determined that "no proof exists that there is any situation presenting a threat of serious or imminent harm to persons or that there is a probability that any damage will materialize, and therefore there does not exist a situation of extreme seriousness or urgency to avoid irreparable harm to persons as a result of operations at the Marlin mine." (Goldcorp, Dec. 19, via the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch)

El Salvador's Foreign Minister Hugo Martínez held a ceremony at El Mozote village to ask survivors' forgiveness for the "blindness of state violence" on Dec. 10, anniversary of the 1981 massacre there. "This event seeks to honour the memory of hundreds of innocent people who were murdered 30 years ago here in El Mozote and in nearby towns," said Martínez. El Salvador is today governed by the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), the former guerilla movement that won the country's election in 2009. (BBC News, Dec. 10)

Human rights organizations in El Salvador noted the anniversary of the 1981 massacre at El Mozote, decrying continued impunity after 30 years. Between Dec. 11 and 13 of that year, at least 966 unarmed men, women and children were killed at the village in Morazán department after it was occupied by a special US-trained counter-insurgency unit of the Salvadoran army, the Atlacatl Battalion. Said a statement by the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL): "On the 30th anniversary of the events, the surviving victims continue to assert their rights to truth, justice and reparation. Nonetheless, none of the persons responsible for perpetrating the massacre have been tried for these acts to date."

Honduran radio journalist Luz Marina Paz Villalobos and a driver identified as her cousin were killed Dec. 6 in a hail of bullets fired by men on two motorbikes as they sat in their car preparing to leave for work from her home in the San Francisco de Comayagüela district of Tegucigalpa. Paz, 38, hosted a morning program, "Three In The News," broadcast on the Honduran News Channel, where she often discussed politics and drug trafficking, and had been an outspoken critic of the 2009 coup d'etat.

In a major victory for Costa Rica's environmental movement, on Nov. 30 the First Chamber of the country's Supreme Court upheld a lower court's November 2010 decision canceling a concession for an open-pit gold mine in Crucitas de San Carlos near the Nicaraguan border. The Supreme Court's ruling also nullified Environment and Energy Ministry executive decree 34801, with which former president Oscar Arias Sánchez (1986-1990 and 2006-2010) had declared the mine, owned by the Canadian company Infinito Gold Ltd., a matter of "national interest." The court told the Public Ministry to "start an investigation to determine whether it is proper to pursue a criminal case against" Arias, former vice president Roberto Dobles Mora and six other former officials.