Soldiers are deployed across Honduras as the coup-installed regime holds presidential elections Nov. 29 that the civil resistance has pledged to boycott. The days leading up to the polls have seen numerous instances of violence and repression. Ángel Fabricio Salgado Hernández, 32, is in critical condition after soldiers fired on his car at close range and with no warning or order to stop at a checkpoint near the headquarters of military high command at Comayagüela Nov. 27. Salgado lost control of the vehicle when he was hit, crashing into a taxi and injureing several bystanders, including 45-year-old woman, who was also hit by a stray bullet. She is now also hospitalized in serious condition. Amnesty International is calling on the Honduran Human Rights Prosecutor to urgently investigate the incident. (Honduras en Resistencia, Nov. 29; Vos el Soberano, AI, Nov, 28)

Guatemalan foreign minister Haroldo Rodas announced Nov. 21 that Guatemala was not going to recognize the general elections to be held in Honduras Nov. 29 under the de facto regime installed after the June 28 removal of President Manuel Zelaya. He added that Guatemala would not send observers to the elections. Spain is also planning not to send observers because it "cannot support" elections under these conditions, foreign ministry sources told the Spanish wire service EFE Nov. 21.

On Nov. 17 the US-based United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) announced an agreement with Russell Athletic of Atlanta for the sports apparel maker to rehire 1,200 workers it laid off in January when it closed its Jerzees de Honduras plant soon after the workers joined a union. Russell, a subsidiary of Kentucky-based Fruit of the Loom, is to open a new maquiladora (tax-exempt assembly plant producing largely for export) in the same area as the old plant, the Choloma region of the northwestern Honduran department of Cortés. The new plant will be called Jerzees Nuevo Día ("Jerzees New Day").

Four people were arrested for trespassing on the US Army's Fort Benning base in Columbus, Georgia, on Nov. 22 as thousands marched through pouring rain in an annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). The school trains Latin American soldiers; SOA Watch, which sponsors the protests, says SOA graduates are among the region's most notorious human rights violators. Organizers didn't give a crowd estimate this year, but Columbus police said there were 4,732 protesters at 10 am, down from 7,497 at the same time in 2008. The largest demonstration to date was in 2006, when SOA Watch reported 22,000 participants; 286 activists have served up to two years in prison for civil disobedience at the base since the protests began in 1990.

After two hours of resistance Nov. 19, some 150 troops of Panama's National Police entered the Naso indigenous community of San San Drui in Bocas del Toro province, using tear gas to allow bulldozers and other machinery of the Ganadera Bocas company to destroy several small structures at the settlement of La Trinchera. The structures had been recently rebuilt after a similar confrontation at the contested piece of land in March. Naso leaders say the police had no judicial order to carry out the eviction, but had the political support of the provincial governor, Simón Becker, and Justice Minister José Raúl Mulino. The eviction leaves some 200 people without shelter in the middle of the rainy season. Two remaining structures at the settlement were destroyed by the cattle company's machinery the following day, with the area still occupied by police troops.

A Sandinista party member was killed and an undetermined number of Liberal Party opposition followers injured in clashes between rival demonstrators on highways around Nicaragua Nov. 21. Rafael Anibal Luna Ruiz, a 42-year-old mechanic, died in the northern town of Ciudad Dario from wounds suffered when he was hit with stones thrown by opposition supporters on the highway from Matagalpa to Esteli. The Sandinistas were headed to Managua for a rally in support of President Daniel Ortega, while the Liberal supporters were returning from a rally in the capital against him.

In a press conference in Managua, Nicaragua, on Nov. 13, the mayor of San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second largest city, confirmed that he was no longer running for another term in general elections scheduled for Nov. 29. "The people don't believe in this process, because these are elections where absolutely nothing is going to get elected," Mayor Rodolfo Padilla Sunceri said. A member of the center-right Liberal Party (PL), Padilla joined a growing number of candidates who have withdrawn from the race in order to protest the control of the process by a de facto government put in place after a military coup removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office on June 28. Padilla was the frontrunner in polls taken before the coup. The Nov. 29 general elections are intended to elect the president, the 128 members of the National Congress, 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), and members of the country's municipal governments.

Students from the Student Revolutionary Front (FER-29) and the University Popular Bloc closed off one of Panama City's main arteries for more than an hour on Nov. 11 to protest what they said were plans to open US military bases in Panama. Police agents dispersed the demonstrators with water cannons and tear gas and arrested 16 students, most of them from the Arts and Trades College. On Nov. 12 Governance and Justice Minister José Raúl Mulino told reporters that the four bases the students were protesting would be "100% Panamanian." They are to be under the control of the Air-Navy Service (SENAN) and the National Border Service (Senafront) as part of the agencies' effort to control the transport of narcotics through Panama, he said. "They are not military bases."