Guatemalan authorities March 2 arrested three top anti-narcotics officials—days before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to visit the Central American nation to discuss Drug War strategy. Baltázar Gómez Barrios, chief of the National Civil Police (PNC), was detained along with "Drug Czar" Nelly Judith Bonilla and her advisor Fernando Carrillo at the Division of Anti-Narcotics Analysis and Information (DAIA). They are accused of running a corruption ring linked to a gun-battle last April between traffickers and police over a 700-kilo consignment of confiscated cocaine in Amatitlán. Five DAIA agents were killed in the gun-fight, and 13 have been since been arrested in connection with it. (NYT, FT,* Siglo XX1, Guatemala, March 3; El Periodico, Guatemala, March 2)

Thousands of Guatemalan public school teachers blocked roads on Feb. 22 to push their demand for the government of President of Alvaro Colom to give them a 16% pay raise this year. According to Joviel Acevedo, head of the 80,000-member National Teachers Assembly (ANM), the protesters obstructed highways connecting Guatemala with Honduras, El Salvador and México, and blocked roads accessing Guatemala City. Amilcar Montejo of the Municipal Transit Police (PMT) told reporters the blockages had caused chaos in various routes leading to the center of the capital. A group of unionists including Acevedo occupied the Education Ministry (Mineduc).

The new Honduran government of President Porfirio Lobo brought fresh corruption charges last week against the exiled Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted as president by last June's coup d'etat. Prosecutors charged Zelaya with diverting $1.5 million in welfare funds to his campaign for a referendum on reforming the constitution. Zelaya said in a statement from the Dominican Republic that the charges "seek personal revenge and worsen the political persecution against me, forgetting national reconciliation." (AP, Feb. 27)

Thousands of adherents of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) marched in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa Feb. 25 to protest the slaying of civil resistance leaders under what they still consider to be the "de facto regime" of President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo despite the change in government last month. The rally concluded in front of the National Congress building, where the march was blocked by a military cordon.

Honduran President Porfirio Lobo is not invited to the second Summit of Latin American and Caribbean Unity, organizers of the regional confab announced. Mexico, which will host the event on February 22-23 in the resort city of Cancún, said the Honduran government should be recognized by the Organization of American States (OAS) before it can take a seat at the summit. (RIA-Novosti, Press TV, Feb. 21)

On Feb. 11 the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d'Etat, a coalition of grassroots organizations that formed after the June 28 coup in Honduras, issued a communiqué charging that Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa was planning to lay off a large number of public employees and that the National Association of Public Employees of Honduras (ANDEPH) had received threats that its current leadership might be replaced. The Lobo administration was on its way to "intensifying the application of the neoliberal model, which would allow [big business owners] to go on concentrating wealth at the cost of [labor] exploitation, and the theft and destruction of natural resources." (Communiqué #47, Feb. 11)

Four campesinos were wounded, two with bullets, on Jan. 27 when police and private security guards attacked members of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) at the Río Aguán in Trujillo municipality, near La Ceiba in northern Honduras. Antonio Estrada was shot in his left eye, and Rosendo Reyes was hit in the leg; both were hospitalized in La Ceiba. The incident occurred the day Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa of the National Party began his four-year presidential term."

Despite the supposed normalization of Honduras since the transfer of power to President Porfirio Lobo last month, grave human rights abuses targeting opponents of last year's coup d'etat continue unabated. On Feb. 15, Julio Funes Benítez, a member of the water and sewage workers union SITRASANAA and a local leader of the anti-coup National Resistance Front, was shot dead in the city of Comayagüela by four unknown men in a taxi.