From the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Feb. 13:

El Salvador's Attorney General last Friday [Feb. 8] requested that charges of "acts of terrorism" be dropped against 13 peaceful protesters arrested at a demonstration against water privatization last July in the town of Suchitoto. After more than six months of investigation into the events of July 2, 2007, the Salvadoran government was unable to substantiate its original terrorism accusations, which carried a potential sentence of up to 60 years in prison. The charges fell under the jurisdiction of El Salvador's 2006 "Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism," which was championed by the US Embassy in San Salvador. Human rights experts in El Salvador and on the international level uniformly concluded that the Suchitoto protest was lawful and denounced the terrorism charges.

The Nueva Vida Women's Cooperative Maquiladora (COMAMNUVI), a Nicaraguan women's sewing cooperative in Ciudad Sandino, just outside Managua, says that it is about to lose its land. According to the cooperative, a certain Yelba Carvajal is suing in court to take over the land because of a typographical error in COMAMNUVI's land title; the cooperative says it purchased the land from another cooperative in the 1990s and that Carvajal bought some other land from the same cooperative.

In December, we noted the World Court ruling on the long-standing dispute over the San Andrés Islands in the Caribbean—held by Colombia but claimed by Nicaragua. The New York Times reports Feb. 1 on the emergence of an independence movement on San Andrés, in repudiation of both Colombian and Nicaraguan claims. Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe recently inaugurated a new hospital on the island unsubtly named "Amor de Patria" (Love of Fatherland), and sent 12,000 troops to march through the streets in last July's Colombian independence celebrations. But many Raizals, the English-speaking African descendants of the archipelago, are coming to support what the Times calls a "nonviolent separatist movement."

From the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Feb. 1:

On January 7, employees of Radio Cadena Mi Gente, a progressive radio station based in San Salvador, received death threats via telephone calls made to the station. Despite the assurance of Rodrigo Ávila, then-Director of the National Civilian Police (PNC), that he had “all intentions” of investigating the threats, no investigation has yet moved forward. Ávila made a similar commitment last year in response to the murder of Radio Cadena Mi Gente employee Salvador Sánchez. However, Sánchez’s murder remains unresolved.

Guatemalan human rights activist Amilcar Mendez and his wife, Miriam Dardon, began an open-ended hunger strike on Jan. 12 in Guatemala City to protest impunity for the 21,509 homicides that took place in the four-year administration of outgoing president Oscar Berger. One of the victims was the couple's son, José Emanuel "Pepe" Mendez Dardon, who was murdered on Aug. 17, 2007, on his way home from work in Guatemala City.

Wilber Funes

From the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Jan. 11:

FMLN mayor assassinated in Usulután
Wilber Moises Funes, mayor of Alegria, Usulután, was assassinated on January 9 while visiting community projects in the Las Casistas area of his municipality. A member of the FMLN opposition party, Funes was shot along with municipal staff member Zulma Rivera. Rivera was killed immediately, while Funes died in transit to a hospital in Santiago de Maria.

On Dec. 20 El Salvador's Legislative Assembly approved a request by President Antonio Saca to extend the presence of Salvadoran troops in Iraq until Dec. 31, 2008. This will give Saca the authority to send two more six-month rotations; Salvadoran soldiers have been part of the US-led occupation force in Iraq since August 2003. El Salvador, which has lost five soldiers, is the only Latin American country with troops in Iraq. The leftist Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN) opposed the extension, which was supported by Saca's Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA); 46 of the Assembly's 84 deputies voted for keeping troops in Iraq. (El Diario-La Prensa, NY, Dec. 22 from AP)

As part of a new partnership with Nicaragua's Sandinista President Daniel Ortega, Iran and Venezuela have announced a plan to help finance a $350 million deep-water port at Monkey Point on the country's remote Miskito Coast—envisioned as the first step towards a "Dry Canal" corridor of pipelines, rails and highways across the country to the Pacific port of Corinto. Iran recently established an embassy in Managua, and is boasting new cultural exchange programs in Nicaragua to encourage trade and investment. A Dec. 17 account from Iran's official news agency IRNA noted a visit to Managua by Ezzatollah Zarghami, president of Iranian state radio and television, who pledged to make programming available for local broadcast. However, the Iranian presence is being met with suspicion by the indigenous inhabitants of the Miskito Coast, who have always jealously guarded their local autonomy. From a Dec. 18 San Antonio Express-News account of a recent visit by an Iranian team to Monkey Point, arriving in Nicaraguan army helicopters: