Two volunteers who helped feed Central American migrants passing through Mexico were shot dead on Nov. 23 while talking in their car near the house where they lived in Huehuetoca, México state, according to human rights defenders speaking at a Nov. 26 press conference. The victims were identified as Adrián, a local resident who described himself as a transvestite, and Wilson, a Honduran migrant who was granted a humanitarian visa by the government in November after testifying to the Assistant Attorney General's Office for Special Investigations on Organized Crime (SEIDO). Human rights defenders asked the media not to use the volunteers' last names in order to protect their families.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) hosted a special event on Nov. 14 in Washington, DC to present a plan that El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—Central America's "Northern Triangle"—are proposing as a response to the spike earlier this year in immigration to the US by minors from their countries. The "Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle: A Road Map" was originally released in September and is similar to programs announced at a July summit in Washington. However, the IADB event, with US vice president Joseph Biden and the three Central American presidents in attendance, "was the real 'coming out' party for the proposals," the DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) wrote in its "Americas Blog."

Colombian Gen. Ruben Dario Alzate resigned on Dec. 1, one day after his release by FARC guerillas who had captured the top official unarmed in rebel-controlled territory. Alzate appeared on national television to give his first public statement after the kidnapping of Nov. 16 and subsequent 14 days of captivity. The general, whose capture had puzzled the military and President Juan Manuel Santos, said his decision to enter known rebel territory, ignoring all security protocol, had been his own decision and that he would resign. "For my military honor, and love and respect for the institution, I have requested my retirement from active duty,” said Alzate, who had had several meetings with Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón and the military high command since arriving from the jungle the pervious afternoon. The peace talks with the FARC were resumed in Cuba on Dec. 1 after negotiators agreed to find ways to "de-escalate" the armed conflict before resuming the original agenda. (Colombia Reports, Dec. 1)

A harrowing report on National Public Radio Nov. 9 points to the possibility that the crackdown on favela gangs in the prelude to this year's contentious Brazil World Cup may have actually been a police extermination campaign of favela youth. On June 11—one day before the World Cup opened—two officers of the Military Police picked up three Black teenagers in Rio de Janeiro's Zona Norte. The three hadn't committed any crime, although they did have a history of petty offenses. The officers drove them up to the wooded hills of the Morro do Sumaré area, above the city. One was shot in the head and killed. One was shot in the back and left for dead. Another escaped. We know what happened because the officers left their patrol car cameras on, and the videos appeared on Brazil's Globo TV. One officer taunts the youths: "We haven't even started beating you yet and you are already crying? Stop crying! You are crying too much! Be a man!" The officers are then heard saying "Gotta kill the three of them." And finally: "Two less. If we do this every week, we can reduce their number. We can reach the goal." The "goal" was apparently a crime-reduction target ahead of the World Cup.

On Nov. 20 tens of thousands of protesters marched through downtown Mexico City in the fourth National and Global Day of Action for Ayotzinapa, demanding the return of 43 missing students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' College, located in Ayotzinapa in the southwestern state of Guerrero. The students were abducted the night of Sept. 26-27 in the Guerrero city of Iguala de la Independencia, apparently in a joint action by municipal police and local drug gangs; three other students were killed in the incident, along with three bystanders. The Nov. 20 demonstration, which also marked the official anniversary of the start of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, coincided with the arrival in the capital of three caravans led by parents of the missing students; the parents had spent a week traveling through different parts of Mexico to increase public awareness about the disappearances.

Mexico's northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, right on the South Texas line, continues to suffer the worst of the narco-violence that has been tearing the country apart for years—but with little media attention, as the local press is too terrorized by the cartels to even cover them. Now, courageous "citizen journalists" who have been taking up the slack are being targeted. Daily Beast on Oct. 21 noted the case of a crusading micro-blogger in the border town of Reynosa who went by the handle "Felina" (@Miut3) and used a photo of Catwoman as her Twitter avatar. Felina was an administrator of reader-generated Valor por Tamaulipas, which aggressively reports the frequent shoot-outs, slayings and abductions—in defiance of threats from the narcos. Last year, one narco-gang even distributed leaflets throughout Tamaulipas offering a reward of 600,000 pesos ($48,000) for anyone who would reveal the names of the site's administrators. Finally, on Oct. 8, Valor por Tamaulipas received the following tweet: "We're coming very close to many of you watch out felina." It wasn't a bluff...

At least 10 people were shot dead by a group of masked men on motorbikes accompanied by two cars the early morning of Nov. 5 in several impoverished suburbs of Belém, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Pará. Residents reported on the massacre by social media while it was in progress, warning people to stay indoors. Some of the killings may have been targeted, but in other cases the attackers apparently shot randomly at people on the streets. The incident came just hours after the Nov. 4 shooting death of Antônio Marco da Silva Figueiredo, a corporal in an elite military police unit, the Metropolitan Tactical Patrol (ROTAM). "There is a big probability that if there was not active police involvement" in the subsequent massacre, "then there were people who already passed through the police," Anna Lins, a lawyer from Pará Society for the Defense of Human Rights (SDDH), told a reporter. "It was summary execution."

Colombia's government Nov. 17 suspended peace talks with the FARC after the apparent capture of an army general by the guerillas. President‎ Juan Manuel Santos demanded the return of Brig Gen Ruben Dario Alzate Mora "safe and sound." The president told Reuters: "Tomorrow negotiators were to travel to another round of talks in Havana. I will tell them not to go and that the talks are suspended until these people are released." (BBC News, Nov. 17)