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.

In the early hours of Jan. 6, unknown assailants carried out an arson attack against the Garifuna-language community radio station Faluma Bimetu (also known as Radio Coco Dulce) at Triunfo de la Cruz in Tela municipality on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. The blaze gutted the studio and destroyed equipment. The international watchdog group Reporters Without Borders said the attack "confirms the persistent danger" to independent media under the Honduran de facto authorities, and that investigating the case will be a "test" for the new government that is to take power on Jan. 27.

According to local media, on Dec. 10 a Guatemalan court issued arrest warrants for the brothers Francisco José and José Estuardo Valdez Paiz in the May 10, 2009 murder of attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano. The Valdez brothers, who own pharmaceutical businesses and are reportedly distant relations of Rosenberg, are charged as the "intellectual authors" of the crime. Three of 11 people arrested in the case told the authorities that the brothers had contracted them to kill an alleged extortionist, who turned out to be Rosenberg. The suspects are thought to be out of the country.