On Feb. 11 the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d'Etat, a coalition of grassroots organizations that formed after the June 28 coup in Honduras, issued a communiqué charging that Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa was planning to lay off a large number of public employees and that the National Association of Public Employees of Honduras (ANDEPH) had received threats that its current leadership might be replaced. The Lobo administration was on its way to "intensifying the application of the neoliberal model, which would allow [big business owners] to go on concentrating wealth at the cost of [labor] exploitation, and the theft and destruction of natural resources." (Communiqué #47, Feb. 11)

Four campesinos were wounded, two with bullets, on Jan. 27 when police and private security guards attacked members of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) at the Río Aguán in Trujillo municipality, near La Ceiba in northern Honduras. Antonio Estrada was shot in his left eye, and Rosendo Reyes was hit in the leg; both were hospitalized in La Ceiba. The incident occurred the day Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa of the National Party began his four-year presidential term."

Despite the supposed normalization of Honduras since the transfer of power to President Porfirio Lobo last month, grave human rights abuses targeting opponents of last year's coup d'etat continue unabated. On Feb. 15, Julio Funes Benítez, a member of the water and sewage workers union SITRASANAA and a local leader of the anti-coup National Resistance Front, was shot dead in the city of Comayagüela by four unknown men in a taxi.

Former Guatemalan vice president Eduardo Stein was named by new Honduran President Porfirio Lobo last week to head a "Truth Commission" to examine the June 2009 coup d'etat that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and the circumstances leading up to it. Formation of the Commission was a condition of the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord brokered by Costa Rica last year to end the Honduran crisis. (DPA, Feb. 4) The Popular Resistance Front of Honduras, which mobilized to oppose the coup, issued a statement rejecting the Truth Commission. Front coordinator Juan Barahona called it an attempt to "whitewash" (limpiarse) the coup, and re-establish diplomatic recognition and aid from the international community. (ABN, Venezuela, Feb. 7)

On Feb. 1, Gregoria Crisanta, an opponent of the local Marlin gold mine, was detained by police in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, San Marcos department, Guatemala. She was presented before a local magistrate, and arrest orders related to vandalism at the mine were apparently issued retroactively, a legal irregularity. As she was being transfered to San Marcos town, the regional capital, the police vehicle was stopped by a roadblock erected by the local populace, and Crisanta was liberated. There was no violence.

The International Trade Union Confederation and its affiliates within Guatemala's Indigenous and Rural Movement (MSICG) issued a statement strongly condemning the murder of Pedro Antonio García, a member of the Malacatán Municipal Workers Union, which is affiliated to the Confederation of Trade Union Unity of Guatemala (CUSG). The murder took place Jan. 29 as García was on his way home in Malacatán, San Marcos department. The assassination comes after Malacatán municipal workers, led by García, organized actions on Jan. 5 and 6 to demand the payment of salaries and other benefits owed to them from 2009. (ITUC, Adital, Feb. 2)

As incoming Honduran president Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo was inaugurated with a celebration at a Tegucigalpa stadium Jan. 27, some 250,000 marched to the city's airport to see off ousted President Manuel Zelaya, who was flying to the Dominican Republic under terms of an agreement reached with the new administration. Zelaya was escorted from the Brazilian embassy by Dominican President Leonel Fernández. The resistance movement pledges to carry on the struggle, now for "refounding" the country with a new constitution. (Los Necios, Jan. 31; Rights Action Jan. 27)

Guatemalan authorities have issued an arrest warrant for former president Alfonso Portillo, after the US government requested his extradition Jan. 24 to face charges of money laundering. Portillo, who was president of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004, has been charged in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on information provided by former members of Portillo's government. Portillo is accused of taking $15.8 million from funds designated for the Guatemalan Ministry of Defense and siphoning it into bank accounts in Europe and Bermuda.