A private guard shot Honduran campesino Miguel Alonso Oliva dead on April 1 when a group of campesinos attempted to occupy an African palm farm in the northern Honduran department of Colón, according to the German-based organization FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN). The victim was a member of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), a group based in the Aguán River Valley that has fought since 2001 for some 20,000 hectares of land it claims were bought illegally by a group of influential landowners, Miguel Facussé, Reinaldo Canales and René Morales. Morales holds the title to the farm where the April 1 killing took place.

On Feb. 26 the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) charged that the government of Costa Rican president Oscar Arias Sánchez had in effect "illegally established a 'yellow' (unrepresentative, undemocratic, employer-run) trade union" for the 1,500 dockworkers at the Atlantic coast city of Limón. The government's interference in the union—"in contravention of…conventions 87 and 98" of the United Nations' International Labor Organization—is intended to bring about "the kind of privatization that has led to joblessness and misery in Limón's sister port of Caldera" on the Pacific side, the ITF said.

On March 23, just as a group of seven Honduran lawyers were presenting information to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in Washington DC concerning systematic abuses against the members of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), a death squad comprised of heavily armed men wearing ski masks and civilian clothes killed a prominent FNRP figure in an attack on the school where he worked. José Manuel Flores, a teacher at Tegucigalpa's San José del Pedregal high school, was assassinated in front of his students.

From Amnesty International, March 23:

Amnesty International on Tuesday urged authorities in El Salvador to repeal an amnesty law that protects those responsible for thousands of killings and disappearances during the country's 12-year armed conflict, including the killing of Catholic priest Monsignor Romero on 24 March 1980.

Unidentified gunmen killed Honduran journalist Nahúm Palacios Arteaga in the city of Tocoa on the night of March 14—the third deadly attack against the Honduran press in the last two weeks. Palacios, 34, a journalist for Channel 5 TV and Radio Tocoa in the Atlantic region, was driving home when two cars pulled alongside his vehicle. At least two unidentified individuals fired several times with AK-47 assault rifles,, according to Honduran press accounts. The journalist died at the scene, while a companion seated next to him was severely wounded.

On March 12 hundreds of Honduran soldiers, police and agents of the National Criminal Investigation Directorate (DNIC) removed thousands of families from some 200 manzanas (about 340 acres) of land they were living on in the Montes de León, La Mesa, Santa Rosa and Loarque Sur neighborhoods in Comayagüela, Tegucigalpa's twin city. Deputy Police Commissioner Leandro Osorio said the operation was in compliance with an eviction order issued by a Tegucigalpa court. According to authorities, the land belongs to the Social Fund for Housing (FOSOVI) and was occupied illegally. After the residents were removed, bulldozers destroyed their homes, built mostly from materials like sheet metal and pieces of wood.

After lengthy negotiations on Feb. 26, Guatemala's new education minister, Dennis Alonzo, and Joviel Acevedo, head of the 80,000-member National Teachers Assembly (ANM), reached an agreement settling a wage dispute that had set off a series of militant actions starting Feb. 22. Thousands of teachers tied up traffic throughout the country and occupied a central plaza in Guatemala City to push their demand for a 16% pay increase this year, including an 8% raise the government had failed to provide in 2009.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ended a five-day tour of Latin America March 5 with a stop in Guatemala, where she promised the assembled Central American leaders more Drug War aid—and repeated her call for them to recognize the new government of Porfirio Lobo in Honduras. "We support the work that President Lobo is doing to promote national unity and strengthen democracy," Clinton said at a news conference, announcing that the US will restore aid to Honduras. Lobo himself attended the meeting—seeming to signal a step toward normalizing relations with Guatemala and El Salvador. Costa Rica and Panama, also in attendance, have already recognized the Lobo government. The Nicaraguan government of Daniel Ortega, who did not attend the meeting, is unlikely to do so. Also on hand were the presidents of Belize and the Dominican Republic. (NYT, CSM, March 5)