A group of Costa Rican environmental activists held a "Cultural Festival for Life" on Nov. 2 to conclude a hunger strike they began on Oct. 8 against the projected Las Crucitas open-pit gold mine in San Carlos in the north of the country. The hunger strike started with 14 activists encamped in front of the Presidential Residence in San José; all but two had dropped out for medical reasons by Nov. 1, when striker David Rojas was taken by ambulance to the state-run Carlos Durán Clinic to be treated for serious dehydration and gastritis. The remaining striker, Andrés Guillén, apparently decided to end the action the next day.

Guatemala's Environment Ministry filed a criminal complaint on Sept. 28 against Montana Exploradora de Guatemala, SA, for possible pollution of the Quivichil River at the controversial Marlin mine near the San Miguel Ixtahuacán community in the western department of San Marcos. According to the complaint, Montana, a subsidiary of the Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc, acted without government authorization on Sept. 23 when it discharged water which might contain heavy metals used in the gold extraction process. The Environment Ministry also asked the Foreign Ministry to notify the Mexican government, since the Quivichil flows into Mexico.

Representatives of Honduran unions and grassroots movements agreed on Oct. 30 to schedule a series of actions over the next two weeks around four issues: the national minimum wage, a law suspending pay increases for teachers, restrictions on pay increases for other public employees, and proposed legislation to allow temporary work.

A Guatemalan judge sentenced two former national police officers to 40 years in prison Oct. 28 over the February 1984 disappearance of union leader 27-year-old Fernándo García, the first case to use evidence discovered in abandoned police archives. García, an organizer at the Cavisa maquiladora, was on his way to work when he was shot, taken to a police hospital and never seen again. Evidence in the archive, found covered in bat droppings in a rat-infested former munitions dump in Guatemala City in 2005, implicated police officers Hector Ramírez and Abraham Gómez. "Everything indicates that the accused were definitely in the place where Fernando Garcia was detained," Judge Odilia González said at the hearing.

On Oct. 22 three Costa Rican environmental activists marked two weeks on hunger strike against the projected Las Crucitas open-pit gold mine in San Carlos in the north of the country. Some 14 activists from two organizations, the North Front Against Mining and the Not One Mine Coordinating Committee, began the action on Oct. 8 in an encampment in front of the Presidential Residence in San José. Most of the 14 ended their fast for medical reasons but continued to support the three remaining strikers.

On Oct. 22, Costa Rica dispatched a group of some 70 heavily armed national police to the northern border following claims of an incursion by Nicaraguan soldiers, who were reported to be causing damage to local properties. The police troops apparently found no evidence of an incursion, but Costa Rican Public Security Minister José María Tejerino said a contingent will be permanently stationed at Barra del Colorado border outpost as a preventative measure.

After 90 days of negotiations with unions and other social organizations, on Oct. 10 the government of right-wing Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli approved an agreement to rescind a controversial law and replace it with a package of six separate laws. The original Law 30—which was passed in June and quickly became known as the "sausage law" because so many different measures were stuffed into it—ignited strikes and protests by unions and environmental groups that resulted in at least two deaths in July and forced the Martinelli government to negotiate.

US president Barack Obama personally apologized by phone to Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom on Oct. 1 shortly after the US revealed that the US Public Health Service had purposely infected Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis and gonorrhea in a 1946-48 experiment to test the effectiveness of penicillin in fighting sexually transmitted diseases. The program exposed some 1,500 Guatemalans to the diseases, and 696 were reportedly infected. It is not clear how many of them received medical treatment.