Some 500 Honduran soldiers and police agents reportedly occupied the regional office of the National Agrarian Institute (INA) in Sinaloa community, Tocoa municipality, Colón department, on the morning of Nov. 23. Apparently the security forces were searching for arms in the office, which is located in northern Honduras' Lower Aguán Valley, the site of protracted and often violent disputes over land ownership. The INA is a semi-autonomous government agency charged with implementing agrarian reform; no arms were found in the office.

With 49 legislative deputies present, Costa Rica's congress voted unanimously on Nov. 9 to approve revisions to the Mining Code that would ban open-pit mining of heavy metals in future projects. The revisions would also end the use of toxic substances such as cyanide and mercury in mining. President Laura Chinchilla, who declared a moratorium on new mining projects soon after she took office in May, is expected to approve the revisions.

Nicaragua has refused to withdraw troops from a disputed island along the river border with Costa Rica, and is asking Internet giant Google not to change its maps with respect to the contested Isla Calero. The request came from Nicaragua's foreign minister, Samuel Santos, in a letter sent to Jeffrey Hardy at Google, a copy of which was made available to the press.

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.