Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom has ordered the release of military archives from the country's brutal 1962-1996 civil war. "We are going to make public all military archives...so the truth can be known, and so that once and for all we can build on truth and justice," Colom said. The move was praised by victims' survivors, who had urged the move to help determine the whereabouts of killed or "disappeared" kin. The documents will be reviewed by a panel to decide which should be declassified under a constitutional requirement that state material be made public unless release would compromise national security.

Several hundred Guatemalan campesinos took 30 police officers hostage [Feb. 21] in response to the jailing of a local farm leader and to demand that land they had been occupying for the last 10 years be legalized by the Guatemalan government. According to Rolando Yoc, the human rights office's chief advocate, the local campesinos also believe that a powerful person is trying to displace them.

From the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Feb. 21:

On Tuesday, February 19, 13 political activists arrested last July in the town of Suchitoto were set free, and all charges against them were dismissed. This victory for the "Suchitoto 13" comes on the heels of the initial charges of "acts of terrorism" being dropped on February 8, following a drawn out, 7-month investigation. The terrorism charges, enabled by El Salvador's 2006 Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism, were universally denounced by human rights organizations in El Salvador and around the world, and carried a potential sentence of up to 60 years in prison.

From the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Feb. 21:

In a recent visit to the United States, Salvadoran president Antonio Saca expressed concern about the findings of a recent US intelligence report, which predicts that Venezuela will intervene in El Salvador's 2009 elections. In his Annual Threat Assessment, US Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell states that "we expect [Venezuelan president Hugo] Chávez to provide generous campaign funding to the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador in its bid to secure the presidency in the 2009 election."

On Feb. 11, the Nicaraguan navy captured the Honduran-flagged fishing boat Seas Star just east of the 82nd meridian in the Caribbean Sea. The 82nd meridian is claimed by Colombia as the border between its territorial waters and those of Nicaragua—a claim currently being contested by Managua before the World Court. Four crew members were onboard the Seas Star, with a full catch. A Nicaraguan police source said the crew was engaged in "piracy of the natural resources of Nicaraguan territory, and were detained in our jurisdictional waters."

Airomi Smith, a university student and a leader in Panama's largest union, the Only Union of Construction and Similar Workers (SUNTRACS), was killed in Colón on Feb. 12 by a gunshot to the abdomen from a police weapon. Smith's death came during one of a number of demonstrations the union had been holding to oppose the high cost of living and to demand better safety conditions at construction sites; some 50 construction workers have died in job-related accidents in the past two years. Eliseo Madrid, a member of a National Police (PN) division known as "The Lynxes," was ordered detained on Feb. 14 in connection with Smith's death; another police agent, Marcos Perez, was summoned as a witness.

From the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Feb. 13:

El Salvador's Attorney General last Friday [Feb. 8] requested that charges of "acts of terrorism" be dropped against 13 peaceful protesters arrested at a demonstration against water privatization last July in the town of Suchitoto. After more than six months of investigation into the events of July 2, 2007, the Salvadoran government was unable to substantiate its original terrorism accusations, which carried a potential sentence of up to 60 years in prison. The charges fell under the jurisdiction of El Salvador's 2006 "Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism," which was championed by the US Embassy in San Salvador. Human rights experts in El Salvador and on the international level uniformly concluded that the Suchitoto protest was lawful and denounced the terrorism charges.

The Nueva Vida Women's Cooperative Maquiladora (COMAMNUVI), a Nicaraguan women's sewing cooperative in Ciudad Sandino, just outside Managua, says that it is about to lose its land. According to the cooperative, a certain Yelba Carvajal is suing in court to take over the land because of a typographical error in COMAMNUVI's land title; the cooperative says it purchased the land from another cooperative in the 1990s and that Carvajal bought some other land from the same cooperative.