Recent decisions by El Salvador's President Mauricio Funes both both pleased and upset many in the Central American nation. The recognition of the Palestinian state in late August won support from many members of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and social movements who supported Funes in his 2009 campaign. The FMLN has maintained a long-time position of solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israeli occupation but this is the first time that the government of El Salvador will have diplomatic relations with the Palestinian government. While the Israeli embassy expressed “regret” over the decision, Funes emphasized that many countries in the world enjoy friendly relations with both Palestine and Israel and reiterated El Salvador’s support for Israel’s existence within internationally recognized and secure borders. The UN vote on Palestinian statehood is expected to happen later this month, and several Latin American nations have already formally recognized Palestine.

On Sept. 12, members of the Colombian National Police began training Salvadoran, Mexican, Honduran and Guatemalan police and attorneys general at the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador. According to the Colombian embassy in El Salvador, this week-long course specializing in anti-kidnapping and anti-extortion is meant to "share experiences among experts in the region." While extortion is recognized as a one of the principal crimes affecting the population in El Salvador and throughout Central America, critics have raised concern about the increasing role of Colombian police and military in Mexican and Central American policing, pointing to the abysmal human rights record of Colombian law enforcement, as well as the active role of the US State Department in facilitating and funding this collaboration through such institutions as the ILEA.

An unidentified man shot and killed Honduran activist Mahadeo ("Emo") Sadloo on Sept. 7 at his small automobile tire shop in eastern Tegucigalpa. Sadloo had been active in the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) from the time when the grassroots coalition was founded to oppose the June 2009 military coup against former president José Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009); he was also a strong supporter of teacher and student demonstrations in defense of public education. Zelaya called Sadloo's death a "political assassination" and a "declaration of war" against him and his supporters; the FNPR said it was "a political crime intended to demobilize and demoralize the Popular Resistance."

US diplomats suspected in 2004 that Honduran business owner Miguel Facussé Barjum may have been involved in three drug-related incidents at one of his properties, according to a secret US diplomatic cable released by the Wikileaks group on Aug. 30 of this year. The founder of the Grupo Dinant food product and cooking oil corporation and a member of a powerful family that includes media magnate and former Honduran president Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé (1998-2002), Miguel Facussé has been at the center of land disputes in the Lower Aguán Valley in the north of the country that have reportedly left 51 campesinos dead in the last two years.

Dole Food Company, a California-based agricultural multinational, announced in Managua on Aug. 11 that it had arrived at a settlement with some 5,000 former banana workers who said their health had been damaged by prolonged and unprotected exposure to the pesticides Nemagon and Fumazone, brand names for dibromochloropropane (DBCP). The settlement, arranged with Dole by the Texas-based law firm Provost Umphrey, covers 3,153 Nicaraguans, 780 Costa Ricans and 1,000 Hondurans; the former employees or their survivors—about 300 of the workers have died--should start receiving payment in two or three months. The amount wasn't disclosed.

Honduran campesino leader Pedro Salgado and his wife, Reina Mejía, were murdered on the evening of Aug. 21 at their home in the La Concepción cooperative, in Tocoa municipality in the northern department of Colón. Salgado was the president of the cooperative and a vice president of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), a leading organization in a decade-old struggle for land in Honduras' Lower Aguán Valley.

El Salvador's Supreme Court on Aug. 25 blocked the extradition of nine military officers accused of overseeing the 1989 "Jesuit Massacre," defying Interpol "red notices" for the suspects. The court said that Spain had not presented a formal extradition request, but Spain immediately protested that the Interpol warrants had been requested for the purpose of securing extradition for trial. Spanish Judge Eloy Velasco has sent El Salvador a letter seeking clarification of the suspects' status. The men surrendered to judicial in El Salvador voluntarily earlier this month, but are not formally under arrest, the high court said. The court did deny a claim by defendants that their detainments were arbitrary.

A group of men armed with guns wounded seven indigenous campesinos during an hour-long attack Aug. 10 on an encampment in the Polochic Valley in the northeastern Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz. Three campesinos were seriously hurt: Martín Pec Taycon, who was shot in the abdomen; Carlos Ical, with a leg wound; and nine-year-old Elena Tec, with a bullet in her foot. The men also set fire to the campesinos' homes and possessions. The campesinos identified the attackers as members of the security group of the Ingenio Chabil Utzaj S.A., an agribusiness owned by the Widmann family