Guatemala and Mexico plan to focus on relations beyond the areas of security and migration, the issues that have dominated the bilateral agenda in recent years, setting development goals jointly once Enrique Peña Nieto becomes the Mexican head of state in December, the Mexican president-elect and Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina said. Peña Nieto and Perez Molina met on Monday in Guate...

Two Colombians, including an ex-professional soccer player, died in an armed attack by unknown assailants at a restaurant in the Guatemalan town of Malacatan on the Mexican border, officials said Saturday. A spokesperson for the National Civil Police, or PNC, told reporters that the victims, identified as ex-professional soccer player Alex Montaño and Luis Henry Hurtado, were talking togeth...

The Belize Ministry of National Security has launched an investigation to determine how a Lebanese-American imam—said to have key Hezbollah links and who was wanted on a Texas warrant after skipping parole in the US—found his way into Belize and stole the identity of a dead Mennonite by obtaining an official copy of his birth certificate, which he used to obtain a passport and then a driver’s ...

On September 7, 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released a report that tracks the deterioration of coral reefs in the Caribbean over the past 39 years. The report indicates that live coral cover over some reefs in Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Florida Keys and the US Virgin Islands has dropped to less than 10%. These losses are thought to be driven by a combination o...

On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I am delighted to send best wishes to the people of Costa Rica as you commemorate 191 years of independence this September 15. On this day, Costa Ricans from all walks of life can celebrate your nation’s distinctive history as a crossroads for Mesoamerican, South American, and European civilizations, and your bright future as a ...

University of Washington graduate and Tacoma-native Jason Puracal has been released from prison and is out of Nicaragua, according to a family spokesperson. It's not clear whether he's in the U.S. yet. His family says he's in a safe, undisclosed location. On Wednesday, a three-judge appellate panel in Granada, Nicaragua vacated his conviction and 22-year prison sentence on charges that h...

September 9 marked six months since El Salvador’s gangs declared a truce, which reduced the average daily killings from 14 to 5.5, officials said. On March 9, under the mediation of Military Chaplain Fabio Colindres and former rebel commander Raúl Mijango, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 (M-18) gangs mutually agreed to cease the war, which had given the country the image of being...

Although shark finning has been banned in Costa Rica since 2001, a loop-hole has meant this legislation is proving impossible to enforce. As a global leader of environmental protection, we look to Costa Rica to provide an example to the world in stopping the cruel practice of shark finning. Shark numbers are dwindling and these beautiful creatures are dying pointless deaths. They are pulle...

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, said that the Central American Peace Plan presented by former President of Costa Rica Oscar Arias in 1987 “was an act of great audacity for the time”, in his comments at the inauguration of celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Central American Peace Plan in the National Theatre in San José (Costa Ri...

The biggest drug trafficking trial in Nicaragua’s history unfolds in a modest air-conditioned courtroom. The 24 defendants sit in a crowded dock, joking and waving to relatives. Behind them, police commandos wearing black hoods and toting assault weapons add unmistakable gravitas to the proceedings. Calling witness after witness, prosecutors lay out their case that a strip club operator, a ...

The National Competitiveness Program of Guatemala has announced that the Executive will introduce a draft bill to Congress to replace existing customs regulations. Under pressure from the Guatemalan business sector, the executive has presented a new initiative to Congress, which has already been agreed with various chambers of commerce, said Juan Carlos Pais, Presidential Commissioner for...

Nicaragua will no longer send military personnel to the US military's controversial Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), President Daniel Ortega said during a meeting with a delegation of human rights activists in Managua on Sept. 4. Nicaragua will be the first Central American country to withdraw from the school, w...

Thirteen Asians who spent 40 days adrift in the Pacific after their ship's engine broke down have been rescued by a Salvadoran trawler, immigration authorities said on Monday. A statement from the General Directorate of Migration said they were 11 Vietnamese and two Indonesians. They were spotted on Sept 3 by the fishing boat, and their ship was towed to waters near the Salvadoran port c...

For more than 24 hours last September, a Coast Guard helicopter and speedboat pursued drug traffickers and their contraband across the Caribbean Sea. Finally they caught up with the improbable vessel, the latest innovation in the decades-old drug war. It was a submarine. The low-slung, diesel-propelled vessel, painted a dark shade to blend with the water, was believed to be carrying several...

Marcos Aleman of the Associated Press has a story making the rounds on the horrific killing of five schoolboys in Santa Tecla, El Salvador. The boys were found in an unmarked grave three weeks after having disappeared. Authorities speculate that the boys were killed after having rejected an "offer" to join the MS-13. Six months after El Salvador brokered an historic truce between two rival...

The Government of Costa Rica presented to Congress the budget for 2013 by U.S. $ 12.888 million, 7.7% higher than in 2012 and will be financed with 43% debt. “The country can be assured that this bill was drafted in a very responsible and austere, meeting the commitments of the administration (of President Laura) Chinchilla with the different sectors of the population,” he said in a stateme...

For more than 15 years, Cruz Velasquez says he had found that life here – in Tacoma, in America. He found it in a job as a window installer that, by U.S. standards, pays near poverty levels but earns him more money than he’s ever made. He found it in Juana, a fellow illegal immigrant who bore him a daughter and a son – both American citizens, each delivered in good health at St. Joseph M...

An Israeli media outlet reported that Hezbollah has set up a training base in Nicaragua with the support of Iran, a widely unsubstantiated claim that continued the trend of over-hyping the threat of Islamic militant actions in Latin America. According to Israel Radio, some 30 members of the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah are training on a base in northern Nicaragua near the Honduras...

Latin American culture ministers are promoting an agenda based on strengthening their countries’ identities and restoring their traditions as a fundamental element of regional development. The 15th Ibero-American Conference of Culture Ministers ended Friday in the Spanish city of Salamanca, which has also played host this week to a gathering of education ministers and the Ibero-American Congres...

Michelle Bachelet, the Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, will on September 10th start a two-day visit to Costa Rica, at the personal invitation of President Laura Chinchilla. This will be Ms. Bachelet’s first visit to Costa Rica since she was appointed the Executive Director of UN Women. Michelle Bachelet’s schedule will get under way with a bilateral meeting with ...

The absolute trust that the majority of Costa Ricans once had in the officers of the Public Force has been diminishing through the years, giving way to an increase in the perception of greater insecurity in the country, according to reports from the United Nations Development Program (PNUD). The Public Force is aware of this change in perception and now dedicates part of its training to tea...

The staff of the National Roads Authority (CONAVI) prepare a flyby in the Guanacaste area to see the damage caused to the road infrastructure as a result of the powerful earthquake yesterday. Jose Luis Salas, head of CONAVI explained that there isn’t official reports yet of damages. Although in social networks there are pictures circulating of the bridge over the Rio Sucio in Sarapiqui, whi...

Police found a synthetic-drug lab in a rural area near the Mexican border, Guatemala's interior ministry said Wednesday. The facility in the village of San Isidro is the "largest and most-industrialized drug laboratory" dismantled in Guatemala in recent years, a ministry spokeswoman said. "The clandestine site was discovered by authorities in an area full of weeds, on whose edge they fou...

The Guatemalan government will open three new military bases intended to combat drug trafficking along its borders, another sign of the country’s military-heavy response to organized crime. The bases, located along Guatemala’s western and northern borders with Mexico, and in Puerto Barrios, the country’s main Caribbean seaport, are heavily trafficked by criminal groups, presidential spokesm...

Costa Rica is preparing an international tender for a 34 kilometer extension of the "Canal del Sur", in Guanacaste, and 52 kilometers of secondary canals. In approximately two months the administrative processes will be to completed allowing the National Groundwater Irrigation and Drainage Services (Senara in Spanish) to publish the tender for the redevelopment of the canal south of Arenal...

The modernization of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Canada and Costa Rica is in its final stages after progress was made in a fourth round of negotiations last week. This was announced yesterday by the Ministry of Foreign Trade (COMEX). Details related to market access are still pending. Costa Rica has emphasized its interest of including products in the trade-free zones to elim...

A Colombian woman known as "the queen of cocaine" for her prominence in the illegal drug trade in the 1970s and the star of Cocaine Cowboys was shot to death by gunmen, authorities said. Gunmen on a motorcycle shot Griselda Blanco, 69, twice in the head Monday as she was leaving a butcher shop in the northwestern city of Medellin, they said. Officials said Blanco had kept a low profile s...

The fallout from a 2010 incident over a historical territory in dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica continues to be a compass of relations between the administrations of Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega. The dispute is heavy on nationalistic sentiment but littered with corruption and administrational malfeasance. The latest development comes as Chinchil...

Evictions from homes, hotels and restaurants sited in protected or state-owned areas have been suspended for two years. In March this year, the Controller General's Office urged municipal authorities across the country to enforce the 1977 law prohibiting construction in the Maritime - Terrestrial Zone. The eviction and demolition activities started by the authorities, caused a stir espec...

Guatemala's claim to fame, apart from the ruins of the highly sophisticated Mayan civilisation, which present generations had nothing to do with, is that it is the country with the worst human rights record in the 20th century among all the countries in the Western hemisphere. I recall once going to interview the then secretary-general of Amnesty International, Thomas Hammarberg, and asking...

The Government of China and the Government of Costa Rica continue to expand relations. The aeronautical authorities of China and Costa Rica signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to facilitate the establishment of air connections that promote tourism and trade between both countries. This MoU was written and signed during the visit of President Laura Chinchilla, and the Minister of Tour...

Mr. Erwin Sperisen, a dual Swiss-Guatemalan national living in Geneva, was arrested on Friday, August 31, by the Genevan prosecuting authority. A criminal complaint had been lodged before Swiss authorities over four years ago for atrocities committed between 2004 and 2007, while Mr. Sperisen was the head of the National Civil Police of Guatemala (PNC). The coalition of NGOs working on the case...

Nicaraguan police announced Saturday the dishonorable discharge of three officers accused of raping a mentally retarded 12-year-old girl. Police spokesman Fernando Borge told reporters that the dismissed cops had been guarding the premises of the general secretariat of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, which the nation's President Daniel Ortega occupies as the seat o...

Russia is ready to welcome young military men from Nicaragua for a course of study and training, chief deputy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Alexander Postnikov said during his visit to Managua. He also said that Russia and Nicaragua agreed to boost military-technical cooperation. In Managua Mr. Postnikov led the Russian delegation at the celebrations dedicated to the 3...

President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, said that the resumption of dialogue between the government and guerrillas in Colombia is important for the purpose of converting Latin America and the Caribbean into a peaceful zone. In act for the anniversary 33 of the National Army, the statesman welcomed the decision of his Colombian counterpart, Samuel Santos, of resuming talks aimed at resolving ...

Guatemala has announced that ex-President Alfonso Portillo will be extradited to the US, removing any possibility he can use the country's notorious injunction, the "amparo," to halt future proceedings. Despite praise for the ruling, the country still has much to do to address its weak judicial system. Guatemala's Constitutional Court ruled unanimously on August 29, that former President Po...

Nicaragua and the European Union (EU) signed an agreement on Tuesday for the EU to provide aid to bolster Nicaragua's education. Under the agreement, the EU will grant 32 million euros (about 40 million U.S. dollars) to fund a countrywide educational program aimed at improving infrastructure, enrolment and quality of teaching staff. The fund will be provided in the next five years, Nicar...

Mexican and Belize officials have begun a two day meeting to discuss ways to combat transnational organized crime, an increasing concern for Belize, a country that has seen a marked increase in foreign gang activity over recent years. On August 30, officials from Mexico and Belize met in the Commercial Free Zone between the borders of both countries to begin the seventh Mexico-Belize Binati...

El Salvador’s elite anti-terrorism unit will join police in patrolling the bus routes most vulnerable to extortion by criminal gangs, but the security plan is expensive, and the transporation system will remain vulnerable as long as transactions remain cash-based. Police director General Francisco Salinas said that the anti-terrorism unit, known as CEAT, will be working with other elite pol...

President Laura Chinchilla announced a public tender of a contract for finishing the works on the stretch of road alongside the San Juan River, on the border with Nicaragua. The president said at a press conference that the government is looking for sources of funding in order to complete the work. The administration's plan is to have the process completed by the end of the year, so wo...