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)

Central American is again being hit by devastating floods, in a rainy season that has wreaked destruction across the isthmus. Officials in Guatemala have called off the search for 15 people missing after deadly landslides, fearing fresh mudlsides after the heaviest rains in 60 years. The decision by the Guatemalan disaster response agency CONRED Sept. 7 came as rescuers resumed their grim task of digging for corpses in a ravine next to the Pan-American Highway in Santa Ana Mixta, Sololá department.

Honduran police have blamed street gangs linked to Mexican drug cartels for the killing of at least 18 employees in a shoe factory in the northern industrial city of San Pedro Sula on Sept. 7. Up to four men armed with assault rifles burst into the factory and opened fire on the workers. All the victims were said to be young men. Several others were wounded. San Pedro Sula's police chief, Hector Mejia, said the attack was part of an escalating dispute between the rival Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18 gangs. "This massacre is linked to the drugs the gangs receive as payment from the Mexican and Colombian cartels for helping to move drugs through the country," Mejia told Reuters. (BBC News, Reuters, Aug. 17)

A Guatemalan judge ruled Sept. 8 that three soldiers charged in connection with a 1982 peasant massacre that left more than 260 dead will face trial. Of the 17 soldiers accused in the case, three were captured in Guatemala and four others have been detained in the US by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for illegally concealing their past military service and involvement in the killings on US immigration forms. The charges against the soldiers are based on the findings of a Truth Commission investigation monitored by the UN and completed in the late 1990s, which uncovered vast human rights abuses. The trials are the first for massacre crimes committed during the civil war years.

As of Sept. 1, Honduras' National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) said it had collected 1,019,765 signatures on petitions calling for a constituent assembly to rewrite the country's 1982 Constitution and for the safe return of former president José Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) from his exile in the Dominican Republic. One of the FNRP's coordinators, union leader Juan Barahona, called reaching the number "a triumph" and said he was "sure we'll pass the minimum goal we proposed of 1.25 million signatures" by Sept. 15, the final day of the campaign. (The population of Honduras is about 7.5 million, and there were 4.6 million registered voters in the country at the time of the November 2009 elections.)

Honduran president Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa announced on Aug. 30 that he had signed an agreement with the education workers' unions ending a 26-day strike by some 55,000 teachers. The job action was marked by militant demonstrations by the teachers and by repression by the police. The strikers were to return to work on Aug. 31.