Costa Rica will celebrate Mother's Day on Wednesday, August 15th, 2012 with a national holiday, on the same day that the Roman Catholic faithful celebrated the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Heaven. Mother's Day in Costa Rica has always been one of the country's most important holiday celebrations, and while it has seen a number of transformations from a deeply religious eve...

The Teribe fight for this land in Costa Rica. Pablo Sibar, a grassroots leader from the Teribe native tribe of Costa Rica celebrated the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples on August 9th with a protest before the National Assembly. He has been doing so over the last ten years, sometimes at the steps of the Assembly, others just outside the Presidential Office in Zapote. Mr. Sibar...

Back in the water. Source: Ministry of Public Safety A leatherback turtle that was trapped by poachers in Costa Rica is once again swimming the waters of the Caribbean thanks to the quick action of Fuerza Public officers, who also apprehended four suspects. Tortugero National Park is a sanctuary for the sea turtles that massively arrive in the northern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica for nesting....

Reaching out to the community in San Ramon. Source: Fuerza Publica Officials from the Ministry of Public Safety and Fuerza Publica are seeking assistance from law enforcement experts in Brazil and the Embassy of the United States of America to improve community police efforts and to combat corruption among their ranks. Costa Rica has been working towards the improvement and modernization of Fuer...

The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, will visit El Salvador from 13 to 17 August 2012. “During my mission, I will analyze the situation of indigenous peoples, who are among the most vulnerable and marginalized groups worldwide,” said Mr. Anaya. This will be the first visit to El Salvador by an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council...

Deep in the Mosquitia jungle of Honduras, the US Forward Operating Base Mocoron is at the heart of one of the most active narco-trafficking routes in Latin America. Soldiers at Mocoron are fighting on the newest front in the US war on drugs. We spent two days at the base. An hour after we arrived, a helicopter made a dusty landing. On board were US-trained elite Honduran Air Force person...

There is no such thing as a free lunch. What is being borrowed today so that the state can continue carrying on with its criminal rate of consumption, will have to be paid for tomorrow, of course, with interest. The analyst Juan Carlos Hidalgo, on his blog Por la Libre in Elfinancierocr.com, rightly describes the issuance of Eurobonds that the Costa Rican Congress has just approved, as wh...

Honduras' Congress is set to approve a bill to establish a new elite military police unit to fight organized crime, known as the "Tigers," according to a legislator. Representative Augusto Cruz Asencio said Congress would approve the legislation in a matter of days, and that there was consensus among lawmakers that the new unit was necessary to improve security, reported La Tribuna. Arme...

“Chepe Luna,” the trafficker who has done the most to develop El Salvador’s drug trade, was freed just one day after being arrested in Honduras, in the latest of his series of narrow escapes from the law. Jose Natividad Luna Pereira, known as “Chepe Luna,” was arrested by Honduran police at 11:30 a.m. on August 7 in the offices of his company Transportes Ulua, in Tegucigalpa, as La Prensa r...

Three Belizean businessmen have been blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). On Tuesday, August 7th, the State Department sent out a release under the heading “Treasury Targets Belize-Based Operatives of Chapo Guzman Sanctions Directed Against the John Zabaneh Drug Trafficking Organization Linked to the Sinaloa Cartel”. The release goes on t...

Alejandro Duron's life changed in minutes when the envelope appeared under his front door. The note inside demanded that the 34-year-old systems analyst pay $2,500 for the privilege of remaining in the house in a high-end neighbourhood. It detailed Duron's daily routine so he would know the threat was serious. "If you don't pay, we will kill you," the message warned. He and his girlfrien...

Guatemala does not have enough guns to arm the latest crop of police graduates, pointing to the financial factors holding back the reform and expansion of the force. Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said that the authorities were trying to find guns to equip 1,503 new police agents who graduated on August 1. He suggested that they could share guns with off-duty police, and said that...

The Costa Rican courts yesterday ruled in favor of APM Terminals in two lawsuits opposing its takeover of the Moin Container Terminal (TCM). The lawsuits were brought against the company and the Costa Rican government by the Atlantic Port Authority union, representing dockworkers, and the National Banana Workers union, which were intended to block the awarded concession for the new terminal...

Interpol issued a red notice for international eco-fugitive Paul Watson on Tuesday at the request of Costa Rican authorities, making him a wanted man worldwide. The Toronto-born founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) skipped bail in Germany in late July, where he'd been arrested on a Costa Rican warrant for a violent 2002 confrontation with shark hunters. He'd been arrested...

A total of 25 high school students from the Honduras Technical Institute in Tegucigalpa were arrested on July 30 when the National Police broke up a protest by about 100 students on the Armed Forces Boulevard in the Villas del Sol neighborhood. The protesters were demanding that the government pay out a promised transportation subsidy. When police agents used tear gas and nightsticks to disper...

Maybe it is attacked. Maybe it is damaged. Maybe mines appear and traffic is halted. In the event that any of those scenarios ever occur at the Panama Canal — the 51-mile waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans — militaries from across the world want to be ready. So on Monday at Mayport Naval Station, personnel from more than a dozen nations came together to begin working out a ...

UNCTAD’s eRegulations programme, which helps countries cut red tape and ensure transparency for business rules and procedures, should be expanded to all 28 member countries of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), the Organization has announced.​ The eRegulations programme is currently implemented in six ACS nations: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, f...

Authorities in Honduras must immediately investigate the attack on the house of a radio journalist in the state of Yoro, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. José Encarnación Chinchilla López, a reporter for Radio Cadena Voces in the city of El Progreso, told reporters that he was certain he was the target of the attack, according to news reports. Two men on a motorcycle shot at...

A man suspected of being the "main operator" of Colombia's Norte del Valle drug cartel in Nicaragua and who was the subject of an arrest warrant issued in June 2011 has been arrested, the National Police said. Bismarck Jiron Lira, who had more than $500,000 in his possession, was detained Saturday morning in an upscale neighborhood in south Managua, National Police spokesman Fernando Borge ...

Last month in Dallas, Texas, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested a man from El Salvador who had a criminal conviction for aggravated sexual assault on a 6-year-old child. The 57-year-old citizen and native of El Salvador arrested by ERO's special operations team in Dallas is just one example of the more than 4,400 convicted crim...

El Salvador’s government announced that the police were going to slow the rate of operations to catch large numbers of suspected criminals, but denied that this was in response to recent demands made by gang leaders. Security Minister David Munguia Payes said that the number of large-scale operations would be scaled back in the coming days, prioritizing the capture of those accused of the m...

A new decree banning the public possession and transportation of weapons in northern Honduras, a key drug trafficking region, is intended to cut violence in the area though critics argue it will prevent farmers involved in a violent land struggle from arming themselves in self-defense. The decree passed August 1 and prevents civilians from carrying weapons in public or in vehicles in Hondur...

Panama — Led by smugglers armed with knives and machetes, Mayra Reyes and 14 other Cubans sloshed through swamps and rivers and suffered hordes of mosquitoes as they struggled across the notorious Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, the only north-south stretch of the Americas to defy road-builders. After walking for three days, the group reached the foot of a steep, scrubby mountain. T...

The Honduran finance minister has stepped down after his wife was arrested with the equivalent of some $50,000 in her car, a violation of embezzlement laws. Police stopped Dinora Arambury, wife of Hector Guillen, as she headed from the capital to the city of San Pedro Sula on Monday. Arambury was briefly arrested after police found over a million Honduran lempiras in cash in a suitcase. ...

The Costa Rica Star previously reported on the Karina Bolaños Youtube video. Men and women are getting their picture taken with hand-written signs stating, “We are all Karina” to show support for the Vice-Minister Karina Bolaños, who was dismissed after a video where she appears in underwear speaking to an undisclosed lover surfaced. Karina was black-mailed for years regarding this video, a...

Honduras - In the capital of one of the world’s most dangerous countries, a hooded, masked man jumped out of a car on an assault mission. His target: a crumbling wall on a garbage-strewn corner. With his accomplice acting as lookout, the man plastered a giant black-and-white reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” — wielding a pink pistol. In minutes he was gone. The city’s self-...

Nicaraguan prosecutors have accused alleged members of the Charros gang, linked to the murder of Argentine folk singer Facundo Cabral, of laundering more than $1 billion in the country. The network, led by Costa Rican Alejandro Jimenez, alias "El Palidejo," is accused of laundering over $1.11 billion in illegal profits through Nicaragua's financial system between 2005 and 2012. The charg...

An online video showing a now-former Costa Rican official in her underwear has sparked a debate over the privacy of government workers in the Central American country -- and cost the official her job this week. The video shows Karina Bolanos, who had been Costa Rica's vice minister of culture and youth since 2006, lying on a bed in her underwear and apparently talking to her lover. "I mi...

Guatemala and Mexico have the smallest military budgets as a percentage of GDP in Latin America, according to Mexican newspaper Excelsior. Excelsior reported that Mexico’s armed forces receive 0.49 percent of GDP, while Guatemala’s receive just 0.40 percent. At the other end of the list are Chile, with 2.43 percent of GDP spent on the military, and Colombia, with 2.3. The United States, mea...

This morning, the front page of the New York Times featured an article titled “South America Sees Drug Path to Legalization,” which discusses the growing debate on alternatives to the drug war. Throughout Latin America, both former and current heads of state are demanding that the full range of policy options be expanded to include alternatives that help to reduce the prohibition-related crime...

Two Dutch companies say they have been awarded a $720,000 ((EURO)587,000) contract by the Nicaraguan government to study the feasibility of building a rival to the Panama canal that would travel through Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Since the early 1800s, the so-called "Nicaragua Canal" has been considered a serious possibility as a route that could link the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, tho...

High school students from the Technical Institute Honduras were evacuated yesterday by police with tear gas and clubs, demanding a bonus payment at the boulevard of the Armed Forces in this capital. According to reports published by the digital media and elheraldo.hn and latribuna.hn at least five of the young participants in the protest were arrested by National Police. Jorge Jimenez, o...

More than 3,000 women have been murdered in Honduras in the past decade with more than 90 per cent of those never being investigated, according to a latest report. The country, which is already deemed the world's deadliest by the United Nations, has seen the number of female deaths skyrocket. What's even more shocking is that 40 per cent of those are thought to have happened in the last ...

Expats living in Costa Rica will, at some point in their lives, hear about an urban horror story about the neighborhoods that make up the populous Hatillo district of San Jose. The story will often be accompanied by a piece of unsolicited advice about how it's not a safe place for a foreigner to venture into, despite the fact the 2000 census determined that 6.5 percent of the population in Hat...

Managua - The citizens' verification process in Nicaragua to improve voters' registers for the November 4 municipal elections, entered its second day on Sunday. Nearly 4,296 Verification Centers nationwide opened early today, so citizens over 16 can check the correct inclusion of their names and address in the electoral roll. In case of any mistake, voters are eligible to rectify their p...

The Japanese government has confirmed that it asked Germany to arrest and extradite Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson just days before the environmental activist jumped bail and fled the country. The Japanese Embassy in Berlin said Friday in a statement that it submitted documents July 19 to the German Foreign Ministry in "which the Japan Coast Guard requested the detention of Paul Watson wi...

One of the 200 peasants taking part in an occupation of a palm-oil plantation in Bajo Aguan, a region on Honduras’ Caribbean coast, was killed Friday by private security guards, his comrades said. Guards at the Los Laureles property unleashed a “massive” volley of gunfire against 37-year-old Israel Garcia, the leader of the Muca peasants organization told Efe. “People who were near him s...

The conflicts in the border of Panama and Costa Rica at Paso Canoas remains due to the placing of chains by the State Border Service (SENAFRONT) in that area, which has led to meetings of the parties in order to discuss the situation. Members of the Paso Canoas Chamber of Commerce, the governor of the Chiriqui province, Aixa Santamaria, and authorities of both nations and Costa Rican trader...

Israel's SDE Wave Power Plants company and El Salvador's El Esplendor Development Corp announced today an alliance to execute Wave Power Technology in El Salvador and California. SDE is a world leader in the planning, building and marketing of power stations that produce power from sea waves. SDE was recently selected by a team of international scientists in PESWIKI website, an extension...

Salvadoran diplomat Hector Silva Avalos tells the story of a botched operation to capture the drug lord known as 'Chepe Luna,' leader of the Perrones drug gang. Its failure points to corruption at the highest levels of El Salvador's police. The story of a failed 2005 attempt by Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, and US authorities to capture the "transportista" kingpin Jose Natividad Luna Pereira, ali...