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.

At a press conference in Tegucigalpa on Sept. 29, a reporter asked conservative Honduran president Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa about calls from unions and grassroots organizations for a constituent assembly to rewrite the country's 1982 Constitution. "But what's the problem with that?" Lobo responded. "What's the problem?" The president said he considered it his "moral duty…to invite the sectors that promote it to hold a dialogue... Let's sit down and discuss [these things]. That isn't the problem."

The National Front of Popular Resistance and other organizations protested the participation of the Honduran de facto president, Porfirio Lobo, in the sessions of the UN General Assembly. In an open letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, the signatories state that Lobo's presence in the forum violates the spirit of the UN resolution of June 30, 2009, which condemned the coup in Honduras. The letter points out that the resolution remains in force, and charges that political persecution and human rights abuses continue in the Central American country. The letter also states that Lobo's government has given no guarantee for a safe return of ousted president Manuel Zelaya to Honduras. "Consequently, we reject the presence of Mr. Lobo in this forum, set up to ensure democratic freedoms, fundamental freedoms and human rights," reads the text. The letter was also signed by the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees, the Center for Women's Rights and FIAN-Honduras. (Inside Costa Rica, Sept. 24)

On Sept. 16 Miami federal district judge William Zloch sentenced former Guatemalan soldier Gilberto Jordán to 10 years in prison for concealing his role in a 1982 massacre when he applied for US citizenship. Jordán, a member of the notorious Kaibil counterinsurgency force, is one of 14 soldiers wanted in Guatemala for the brutal murder of some 250 campesinos in the village of Las Dos Erres, Sayaxche (or Libertad), in the northern department of Peten. He moved to Miami in 1990 and became a US citizen in 1999. Arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on May 5 this year, he pleaded guilty in July to charges of lying on a citizenship application. Ten years is the maximum sentence for the offense.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an agreement in principle in Tegucigalpa on Sept. 10 for a standby loan to the Honduran government. This gives the country immediate access to $196 million and will clear the way for loans of $80 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, $40 million from the World Bank, $52 million from the European Union (EU), $7 million from Germany and an unspecified amount from Taiwan.

On Sept. 9 military units began carrying out street patrols in Honduran cities, mainly Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the northern industrial center, in what the government said was an effort to help the police fight crime. The authorities didn't set an end date for the patrols, whose duties include searches of individuals and vehicles for drugs and illegal arms. "The idea is to fight without truce against crime and to bring tranquility to Hondurans," Minister Oscar Alvarez explained. (EFE, Sept. 10)