After an 18-day trial, a Guatemalan court has sentenced former general Pedro Pimentel to 6,030 years in prison for his participation in the Dec. 6, 1982 massacre of 201 civilians--most of them women and children--in the village of Dos Erres in the northern department of Petén. The sentence, 30 years for each of the victims plus 30 years for crimes against humanity, was made public the night of March 12.

Leaders of the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group reached an agreement with the Panamanian government the night of March 15 that would ban mining in the group's territory and limit hydroelectric projects. The accord is the latest development in a struggle between the Ngöbe-Buglé and rightwing president Ricardo Martinelli that started in February 2011 and led to major demonstrations and the deaths of two protesters in February of this year.

Nicaragua's National Assembly observed International Women's Day on March 8 by unanimously passing a law which requires political parties to have women as at least 50% of their candidates for municipal posts. The government's special attorney for women, Deborah Gradinson, said Nicaraguan society remains in many ways "tolerant" of violence against women, with at least 17 women murdered so far in 2012 by partners, former partners or acquaintances. The María Elena Cuadra Movement of Working and Unemployed Women reported that only half of the 81 cases of women killed by violence in 2011 ever reached a court. "Justice for women, no more impunity" should be the slogan for the day, according to human rights activist Vilma Núñez.

Leaders of the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group suspended talks with Panamanian officials and resumed their blockade of the Pan American highway on March 1 after four young protesters were wounded by rubber bullets near the National Assembly building in Panama City. The Ngöbe-Buglé and their supporters had shut down traffic in the western provinces of Chiriquí and Veraguas for more than a week starting on Jan. 30 but lifted the roadblocks on Feb. 7 when the government of rightwing president Ricardo Martinelli agreed to hold talks on their demands to ban all mining and hydroelectric projects from Ngöbe-Buglé territories.

US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on Feb. 28 defended the US-backed war on the drug cartels, despite the growing violence in Mexico and Central America. On a five-day tour of the region, Napolitano insisted in a joint press conference with Mexican Interior Minister Alejandro Poire that the US and Mexico would maintain "a continuing effort to keep our peoples from becoming addicted to dangerous drugs.... It's a different type of crime and it's a different type of plague, but that's also why it is so important that we act not only bi-nationally, but in a regional way, to go after the supply of illegal narcotics."

In a ceremony broadcast on national television from the presidential residence in Tegucigalpa on Feb. 17, Honduran president Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa and National Agrarian Reform Institute director (INA) César Ham signed an accord with two campesino organizations to finance the purchase of land for campesino cooperatives in the Lower Aguán Valley in the north of the country. The government has presented the land deal as at least a partial solution to long-running disputes in the Aguán that have left more than 50 people dead over the past two years.

A federal immigration judge in Florida decided Feb. 23 that former Salvadoran defense minister Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova can be deported for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during El Salvador's civil war. Judge James Grim found that Vides assisted in both the killing of four US churchwomen in 1980 and the torture of two Salvadorans, who testified against him in hearings last spring in the Orlando immigration court. Although this was not an official order for Vides' deportation, it is a confirmation that the government has the ability to deport him based on charges brought against him by the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit of the US Department of Homeland Security.

Hundreds of relatives of inmates who burned or suffocated to death at the Comayagua prison fire in Honduras forced their way into a morgue in Tegucigalpa Feb. 20 to demand the remains of loved ones. The group, mostly women, pushed past security guards, entered the morgue, broke into a refrigerated container and opened at least six body bags. (The Guardian, Feb. 10) Relatives of those who went missing in the conflagration have converged on Tegucigalpa from around the country, and are being housed on the premises of the government aid agency INFOP, as they await word from the Public Security ministry on the fate of their loved ones. They are reportedly facing poor conditions there, with inadequate food, water and shelter. (Red Morazánica de Información, Feb. 21)