During the Heritage Foundation's recent event Insecurity in Honduras and the Upcoming Elections: What's at Stake for Central America, panelists Ambassador Roger Noriega of Vision Americas, Eric Olson of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society laid out their concerns about the upcoming electoral processes in Honduras and El Salvador. Ambassador Noriega pointed to a "new strain" of Latin American populism that seeks the...

At least 23 bodies with gunshot wounds and hands bound have been found in western Mexico where drug cartels, vigilantes and and security forces have been fighting for much of the year. The bodies were discovered on an abandoned property near the town of Buenavista Tomatlan in Michoacan state along with a sign indicating they may have been members of the Knights Templar cartel, state prosecutor's spokesman Alejandro Arellano said. The area near the Jalisco state border has suffered a wave of...

The Mexican government should ensure that the process of developing a national database of the disappeared is thorough, efficient, and transparent, Human Rights Watch said today. Development of the database should be coupled with serious investigations to determine the fate of thousands of people who remain unaccounted for. The government announced in February 2013 that it was revising a database of more than 26,000 people reported disappeared or missing (extraviadas) that had been compiled by...

A small-town Mexican mayor known for speaking out against drug gangs has been found dead on a roadside. The director of the Association of Local Authorities of Mexico said on Friday that Ygnacio Lopez Mendoza, the mayor of Santa Ana Maya in the western state of Michoacan, had been abducted, tortured and killed. His body was discovered in his truck in the neighbouring state of Guanajuato. Michoacan has been dominated for years by the Knights Templar drug cartel. Its members routinely extort...

Honduran government officials should publicly repudiate recent criticism of two leaders of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Human Rights Watch said today. The officials should protect the right to speak out about human rights abuses and to express opinions and concerns about the country’s upcoming elections. On a November 5, 2013 episode of the Honduran television talk show “Frente a Frente,” the host, Renato Álvarez, read from what he said was a leaked diplomatic...

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro congratulated his Colombian counterpart, Juan Manuel Santos, and Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) for the agreements reached in the peace talks taking place in Havana, Cuba. During a public event the Venezuelan president said he had talked to Santos to congratulate him for the progress made so far, and stressed that Venezuela fully supports Colombia's peace process, AVN reported.

MADRID -- Nine additional members of Basque separatist group ETA were freed Friday following a ruling by the Spanish National Court, even though prosecutors asked to wait for a ruling from the country's highest court. The releases follow an Oct. 21 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which found illegal the method by which Spain calculated the time to be served. That had resulted in ETA members staying in jail far longer than the length of their original sentences. The nine...

The presidential nomination of Elias Antonio (Tony) Saca in El Salvador seems to be aimed at improving the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front's (FMLN) prospects of extending their stay in power, rather than at returning Saca to the presidency, said his former party colleagues, who accuse the leader of participating in a leftist conspiracy to divide the Salvadoran right. Saca, who ruled the country between 2004 and 2009, is currently in the third place, with polls showing that around...

(Montevideo) - The founding of a global federation of domestic workers is a sign of the growing strength of the movement, and a key moment to assess progress for workers long excluded from basic labor protections, the International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN), the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and Human Rights Watch said today. There are an estimated 53 million domestic workers worldwide - the majority of whom are women and girls, and many of whom are migrants. In the...

(Bogotá) - Internally displaced Colombians face killings and widespread death threats for attempting to reclaim their land, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Abuses targeting displaced families for trying to return home almost always go unpunished, as do the original crimes of forcing them off their land and stealing it. The 184-page report, documents killings, death threats, and new incidents of forced displacement committed against displaced Colombians in relation...