Ramiro Rivera Gómez, vice-president of the Environmental Committee of Cabañas (CAC) and a local leader in the community struggle against the gold mining projects proposed by Pacific Rim, was assassinated on Dec. 20 in the Trinidad neighborhood of Ilobasco, in El Salvador's Cabañas department.

The proposal by Porfirio Lobo, winner of Honduras' disputed presidential election on November 29, 2009, for an "amnesty for all" of those involved in the June coup d'état violates the country's international obligations and undermines the rule of law, Human Rights Watch said Dec. 11. The election was organized by the de facto government, and has been recognized only by the United States and four Latin American countries. The ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, urged his supporters to boycott the vote.

Walter Trochez, 25, a well-known LGBT activist in Honduras who was an active member of the National Resistance Front against the coup d'etat there, was assassinated on the evening of Dec. 13, shot dead by drive-by killers in central Tegucigalpa. Trochez, who had already been arrested and beaten after participating in a march against the coup, had been very active recently in documenting and publicizing homophobic killings and crimes committed by the forces behind the coup. He had been trailed for weeks before his murder by thugs believed to be members of the state security forces.

Students at North American campuses are demanding that their universities drop licensing agreements with the Oregon-based Nike, Inc sportswear manufacturer unless 1,800 workers for two Nike contractors in Honduras get legally mandated back pay and severance packages worth more than $2 million. Officials at Purdue University in Indiana announced on Dec. 2 that they were reviewing the situation, and on Dec. 7 University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor Biddy Martin said she was giving Nike four months to clear up problems with alleged labor abuses.

At a meeting on Dec. 3 at the headquarters of the Union of Workers of the Brewery Industry and the Like (STIBYS) in Tegucigalpa, 300 members of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d'Etat, a coalition of Honduran grassroots organizations, agreed not to end a five-month struggle that they started on June 28 when the military removed President José Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya Rosales from office. "We're going to continue the struggle, but only for the Constituent [Assembly], not for the restitution [of Zelaya]," general director Juan Barahona told the Agence France Presse (AFP) wire service, referring to demands for a convention to rewrite the country's 1982 Constitution. The Resistance Front also said it would institute a "pause" in its daily street demonstrations, although it was planning a march for Dec. 11.

On Dec. 4 the French wire service AFP reported that with 57% of the votes from Honduras' Nov. 29 general elections officially counted, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) had revised its earlier turnout estimate down from 61.3% to about 49%. Two days later, on Dec. 6, the CNN cable news network reported that it had gotten figures from TSE spokesperson Roberto Reyes Pineda showing that participation was at 56.6%, with 2,609,754 people voting out of a total of 4,611,000 registered voters. The TSE has to provide the final results within 30 days of the election. (Diario el Tiempo, Venezuela, Dec. 4; AFP, Dec. 4; CNN, Dec. 6)

At about 10 PM on Nov. 29, Honduras' Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) announced at a press conference that Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo Sosa of the center-right National Party (PN) had won the presidency in the general elections held that day; Hondurans also voted for deputies to the National Congress and the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) and for members of the nation's municipal governments. With 8,682 ballot boxes counted, about 60% of the total, Lobo had won 52.29% of the votes, while his main rival, Elvin Santos of the badly divided Liberal Party (PL, also center-right), trailed with 35.74%. The remaining three candidates got less than 3% each; more than 6% of the votes were blank or invalid. The TSE projected that the turnout was 61.3% of the voting population, about six percentage points higher than in the 2005 elections.

Thousands of campesinos blocked highways in western Guatemala on Nov. 25 to press a demand for the government to allocate 350 million quetzales (about $42 million) to the National Lands Fund (Fontierras) for renting farmland to be used by more than 100,000 campesino families. The protesters stopped traffic on six highways in Cuatro Caminos, Totonicapán, Los Encuentros, and La Cumbre at kilometer 123 of the Las Verapaces and Las Victorias road, between Quetzaltenango and Colomba Costa Cuca. According to José Hernández—one of the leaders of the Coordinating Committee of Regional, Campesino and Independent Organizations, which called the protest—every two hours the protesters were opening the roads up and letting traffic pass for one hour. The organizers said 10,000 campesinos took part; the police estimate was 5,000.