Former Guatemalan vice president Eduardo Stein was named by new Honduran President Porfirio Lobo last week to head a "Truth Commission" to examine the June 2009 coup d'etat that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and the circumstances leading up to it. Formation of the Commission was a condition of the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord brokered by Costa Rica last year to end the Honduran crisis. (DPA, Feb. 4) The Popular Resistance Front of Honduras, which mobilized to oppose the coup, issued a statement rejecting the Truth Commission. Front coordinator Juan Barahona called it an attempt to "whitewash" (limpiarse) the coup, and re-establish diplomatic recognition and aid from the international community. (ABN, Venezuela, Feb. 7)

On Feb. 1, Gregoria Crisanta, an opponent of the local Marlin gold mine, was detained by police in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, San Marcos department, Guatemala. She was presented before a local magistrate, and arrest orders related to vandalism at the mine were apparently issued retroactively, a legal irregularity. As she was being transfered to San Marcos town, the regional capital, the police vehicle was stopped by a roadblock erected by the local populace, and Crisanta was liberated. There was no violence.

The International Trade Union Confederation and its affiliates within Guatemala's Indigenous and Rural Movement (MSICG) issued a statement strongly condemning the murder of Pedro Antonio García, a member of the Malacatán Municipal Workers Union, which is affiliated to the Confederation of Trade Union Unity of Guatemala (CUSG). The murder took place Jan. 29 as García was on his way home in Malacatán, San Marcos department. The assassination comes after Malacatán municipal workers, led by García, organized actions on Jan. 5 and 6 to demand the payment of salaries and other benefits owed to them from 2009. (ITUC, Adital, Feb. 2)

As incoming Honduran president Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo was inaugurated with a celebration at a Tegucigalpa stadium Jan. 27, some 250,000 marched to the city's airport to see off ousted President Manuel Zelaya, who was flying to the Dominican Republic under terms of an agreement reached with the new administration. Zelaya was escorted from the Brazilian embassy by Dominican President Leonel Fernández. The resistance movement pledges to carry on the struggle, now for "refounding" the country with a new constitution. (Los Necios, Jan. 31; Rights Action Jan. 27)

Guatemalan authorities have issued an arrest warrant for former president Alfonso Portillo, after the US government requested his extradition Jan. 24 to face charges of money laundering. Portillo, who was president of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004, has been charged in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on information provided by former members of Portillo's government. Portillo is accused of taking $15.8 million from funds designated for the Guatemalan Ministry of Defense and siphoning it into bank accounts in Europe and Bermuda.

The Chinese news agency Xinhua, citing "local media," reports Jan. 16 that the Honduran congress approved a decree to grant amnesty to de facto president Roberto Micheletti and others involved in last June's military coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya. However, actual local media (Radio Progreso, Jan. 15; El Heraldo, Tegucigalpa, Jan. 12) report that the National Congress voted Jan. 12 to put the issue off until a new congress convenes after president-elect Porfirio Lobo Sosa takes power later this month.

An investigation by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) has concluded that activist attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg planned his own assassination. The findings by the UN-affiliated agency apparently exonerate President Alvaro Colom of any implication of complicity in the lawyer's death.

Honduran Prosecutor General Luis Alberto Rubi on Jan. 6 filed charges against six military chiefs in connection with the ouster of president Manuel Zelaya in June. The prosecutor general's office filed abuse of power charges before the Honduran Supreme Court against armed forces commander Romeo Vásquez Velásquez (a School of the Americas graduate), air force commander Luis Javier Prince (also an SOA graduate), army commander Miguel Ángel García, naval commander Juan Pablo Rodríguez, high command sub-chief Venancio Cervantes, and brigade general Carlos Antonio Cuéllar. According to the charges, the six violated the Honduran constitution when they seized Zelaya and put him on a plane to Costa Rica because the charter prohibits the forcible removal of a citizen. The court has three days to decide whether to take up the case.