Mexico's Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (PRODH) held a press conference in Mexico City on Oct. 23 to announce the release of a report on the alleged torture of Israel Arzate Meléndez, a resident of Ciudad Juárez in the northern state of Chihuahua, by state police and the military. According to the report, Tortured, Imprisoned and Innocent, two soldiers arrested Arzate on Feb. 3, 2010, charging him with participation in the massacre of 15 youths in Ciudad Juárez's Villas de Salvárcar neighborhood the previous Jan. 30. The report says the soldiers took Arzate to a military installation, stripped him naked, tied up his hands and feet, placed a plastic bag over his head and tortured him with electric shocks to get him to confess to involvement in the killings.

An Oct. 8 report on Yale University's Environment 360 website, "In the Land of the Maya, A Battle for a Vital Forest" by William Allen, states that "In Guatemala's vast Maya Biosphere Reserve, conservation groups are battling to preserve a unique rainforest now under threat from Mexican drug cartels, Salvadoran drug gangs, and Chinese-backed groups illegally logging prime tropical hardwoods." The Maya Biosphere Reserve covers approximately the northern third of what Allen calls the "Selva Maya," Central America's largest remaining expanse of rainforest, which stretches across the northern half of Guatemala and also extends into the Mexican state of Chiapas to the west and the country of Belize to the east. More taditionally, the forest is called El Petén within Guatemala and the Selva Lacandona on the Mexican side of the border. Allen cites Guatemala's National Council for Protected Areas (CONAP) to the effect that international criminal networks are now the biggest threat to the Selva Maya. Cattle ranching and logging have long been eating into rainforest—but now in a convergence with organized crime:

With representatives from the Colombian government and FARC rebels currently engaged in "phase two" of the peace talks in Oslo, conservative politicians in Colombia warn of evidence that factions of the guerrilla army in the country's south are not willing to participate in the peace process. "We urge the government and the guerrillas to say if the Southern Mobile Bloc and the Teofilo Forero Mobile Column are in the peace process, because they are still recruiting and trafficking drugs," said Sen. Carlos Ramiro Chavarro. Conservative Party president Efrain Cepeda. "The dialogue needs to be with 100% of the guerrillas to be legitimate." The agenda of "phase two" of the negotiations focuses on five overlapping points: agrarian reform, guarantees of political participation, ending the armed conflict, drug trafficking, and the rights of victims.

For the second time in less than two years, an indigenous community in the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacán has erected barricades and seized control of security matters. Located in the Purépecha highlands of the Pacific coast state, the small community of Urapicho in Paracho municipality has been under the self-declared control of the people for about a month now. The news was publicized last week with the posting of a video on YouTube that shows armed and masked men, some clothed in military-style camouflage clothing, attending a sand-bagged checkpoint, where motorists are searched. Two masked spokespersons explain the reasons for the uprising and the goals of their movement.

On Oct. 10, the US Justice Department announced the seizure of more than $31 million in funds allegedly "connected to an international money laundering scheme run by a drug trafficking organization operated by members of the Sánchez-Paredes family," a Peruvian clan deemed by US law enforcement to be a drug trafficking organization (DTO). The funds were held in nine US banks, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase, none of which have been charged with any wrongdoing. Additional moneys in three Peruvian bank accounts have also been frozen. The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York found that the family was using its gold mining interests as a front for cocaine trafficking:

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos on Oct. 12—recognized in Latin America as Día de La Raza—issued an official apology to indigenous communities in the Amazon for deaths and destruction caused by the rubber boom beginning a century ago. From 1912 to 1929 the Peruvian firm Casa Arana, led by rubber baron Julio César Arana with British backing, exploited rubber near La Chorrera in what is now Colombia's Amazonas department. Up 100,000 people were killed and communities devastated in the operations, with indigenous rainforest dwellers forced into slave labor and slain or displaced if they resisted. The situation was brought to the world's attention following an investigation by British diplomat Roger Casement, who had previously documented similar atrocities in the Belgian Congo.

Guatemalan authorities on Sept. 26 arrested the presumed leader of a Zetas cell in the region along the border with Mexico, where the group's incursion has recently forced the displacement of local residents. Daniel Juan Nicolás, AKA "El Mono" was apprehended in the municipality of Santa Cruz Barillas in the department of Huehuetenango, near the border with Mexico, reported La Prensa Libre. Prior to his arrest, Juan Nicolás allegedly directed the Zetas' operations in the town of Sinlaj for ten months. The town reportedly served as a place to store shipments of drugs and arms, and was home to a Zetas training camp.

Mara Salvatrucha, the Salvadoran street gang that got its start in the heart of Los Angeles' Koreatown, has been officially designated by federal authorities as a "transnational criminal organization." MS-13, as it's also known, "is being targeted for its involvement in serious transnational criminal activities, including drug trafficking, kidnapping, human smuggling, sex trafficking, murder, assassinations, racketeering, blackmail, extortion, and immigration offenses," the US Department of the Treasury stated. That means the federal government can use "economic sanctions" against the gang, which has also established a foothold in El Salvador. The designation gives the Treasury Department the power to freeze any financial assets from the gang or its members and prohibits financial institutions from engaging in any transactions with members of the group.