Taipei, Jan. 7 — The president of Taiwan on Saturday embarked on a trip to Central America, with controversial stopovers in the United States, in a bid to strengthen the island nation's ties with Latin America after the re-emergence of its diplomatic war with China. Tsai Ing-wen, accompanied by businessmen and officials, will travel to Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador - four of Ta...

By Wendy Anders Two police officers were detained Tuesday as part of an investigation into the escape of 10 suspected Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) gang members from a Salvadoran police delegation, said the director of the National Civil Police (PNC), Howard Cotto, to EFE. Costa Rican police reported yesterday they have tightened security along the country’s northern border which could prove to be...

By Wendy Anders Paris, France-based JCDecaux, the world’s number one outdoor advertizing company, and Top Media, leader in the outdoor advertizing sector in Central America, signed an agreement last week to merge their activities, said the companies in a press statement In the new venture, JCDecaux-Top Media, 71 percent of the capital is owned by JCDecaux and 29 percent controled by Top Medi...

The creation of protected areas and parks in Central America aimed at conserving tropical forests has pushed indigenous people off the land they have nurtured for generations, researchers said on Friday. Protected areas are more effective when the rights of indigenous people living on the land are formally recognized, said the report released on the sidelines of a U.N. conservation conference i...

San Salvador, Dec. 5 — Some 10,800 people have disappeared in El Salvador since 2010 due to violence attributed to gangs. This is 8,000 more than those officially registered as disappeared during the country’s civil war that lasted between 1980 and 1992. None of these have been reported by police as "found." Mara Salvatrucha Gang, El Salvador, file photo. The year in which the greatest numb...

Thomas Reuters Foundation - Nearly two in every five pregnancies among girls in El Salvador aged 10-12 are the result of rape and incest but the rapists nearly always go unpunished, a U.N. agency has said. Girls under 12 are four times more likely to get pregnant as a result of rape by stepfathers and relatives, mainly fathers, grandfathers, uncles and cousins, than girls aged 13 to 17, the U....

A 7.2 earthquake in the Ritcher scale struck El Salvador at 12:43 p.m. at a depth of 33 kilometers, some 96 miles southwest of Puerto Triunfo, El Salvador, and was felt in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Guatemala. No injuries or damage have been reported, the Salvadoran Environment and Natural Resources Ministry said. The Nicaraguan government issued a tsunami alert for the country's entire Pacific...

(Reuters) - Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have agreed to join forces and seek support from Mexico to forge a joint strategy in response to Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidency, El Salvador's foreign minister told Reuters on Wednesday. Trump's election upset has sent shockwaves through Mexico and Central America, which rely heavily on U.S. remittances and bilateral trade.President-elec...

(EFE).- Reporters crowd behind yellow ribbons to record with their devices the brazen way that organized crime and street gangs spill blood on the streets of Central America's Northern Triangle, but the indifference of the government and of the media leave these journalists in the line of fire as well. The region made up of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras is considered one of the deadliest ...

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica, Oct. 19 — A recent study paints a panoramic picture of a surging global trade in illicit cigarettes that is funding groups from Hezbollah and Hamas to the Central American Los Zetas cartel. Contraband cigarettes in Singapore, Facebook, photo for illustrative purposes. The study, "From Ant Smuggling to an Elephant in the Market,” was conducted by CID Gallup for the Cost...

Washington, Oct. 14 — El Salvador came out on top last Friday in its long-running arbitration dispute with OceanaGold Corporation, a Canadian-Australian gold and copper mining company. A gold mine in Myanmar, to give an idea of what even the beginning of such an operation looks like. Photo for illustrative purposes, source - Facebook. The company had sought $250 million in compensation for ...

OCTOBER 17, 2016: The Austrailian immigration department devised a proposal for Australia to take refugees from Central America as part of a U.S.-led program. Honduras peasant lawyer killing, file photo. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made the announcement during a speech to President Barack Obama's invitation-only, high-level summit on refugees and migration in New York in September durin...

Cancun, Mexico, Oct 15 — Mexico has signed a memorandum of understanding with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras that lays the groundwork for a joint plan to support migrant workers, Mexico's Labor and Social Welfare Secretariat said. Suger cane workers. Under the Temporary Migrant Labor Program, workers from the three Central American countries will be authorized to work in Mexico for a p...

Tegucigalpa, Oct 14 — Amnesty International presented a report last Friday in Honduras that puts much of the blame for the worsening refugee crisis in Central America on the governments of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Honduras home owners are vulnerable to gang extortion, photo for illustration. "Although countries like Mexico and the U.S.A. are utterly failing to protect Central Am...

Thomson Reuters Foundation/by Anastasia Moloney - Gang violence has become so deadly in parts of Central America that many people are living in what is a war zone, Amnesty International said on Friday, adding that some migrants who have fled danger are killed within weeks of being deported home. Every year violence at the hands of gang members drives tens of thousands of people, including child...

NIcaraguan forces. File photo By Patricia Pernas for EFE Governments in Central America, one of the world's most violent regions, are expanding the role of their militaries in civilian affairs and increasing their weaponry, thus posing a threat to democracy, an expert told EFE. "This strengthening of the armed forces does not come in response to national security problems," Alberto Mora,...

By Wendy Anders This morning in Geneva, Switzerland, Costa Rica’s Security Minister Gustavo Mata reiterated Costa Rica’s wholesale commitment to the effective implementation of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is a multilateral treaty regulating international trade in conventional weapons, according to the United Nations website that entered into force in Dec...

MS-13 tattoo (El Salvador) - Wikimedia Commons The governments of the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) will create a tri-national force to combat organized crime, with a special target on gangs, following an agreement signed Saturday in the Salvadoran capital by defense and security authorities. The proposal, called "Elite Security Group" was sugges...

By Wendy Anders Mexican soldiers fighting the Drug War. Wikimedia Commons A recent political analysis of the region raises questions about the continuation of a militarized approach to illegal drug trafficking in an era where the decades long US sponsored “war on drugs” has been repeatedly called a failure. From 2004-2014 the United States provided $768 million in police and military aid...

By Wendy Anders The second case of a zika-infected microcephaly baby was confirmed in the Central America nation of El Salvador on Friday, stated Salvadorean health officials at a live press conference. This makes El Salvador the seventh country in the Americas to confirm a zika-linked microcephaly case. “More than 91 percent of zika will not lead to micrcephaly,” stated Violeta Menjívar,...

Thousands of Cuban migrants remain in shelters across Costa Rica. (CIDH/Twitter) By Wendy Anders After months of behind the scenes meetings and dialogue, the eight Central American Integration System (SICA, in Spanish) members met last week on Roatán Island, Honduras and welcomed Costa Rica back. At the June 28-30 meeting, leaders agreed to a forward-looking agenda that convinced Costa R...

Archive San Salvador, Jun 7 (EFE).- The former director of El Salvador's penitentiaries, Nelson Rauda, was sent to prison on Tuesday for allegedly forming part of a network that authorized privileges and perks for imprisoned gang members during a truce with those groups from 2012-2014. Rauda, who had been a fugitive since early May - when authorities arrested 18 people, including top police...

Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Apr 24 (EFE).- Colombian and U.S. authorities seized 1,850 kilograms of cocaine in two operations conducted in Guatemalan and Salvadoran waters, arresting four Ecuadorians and two Colombians, Bogota authorities reported Sunday. The first anti-drug operation was carried out in Guatemalan waters by Colombia's Dijin and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, suppor...

(CRS Archive) El Salvador has deployed a heavily armed special police force to hunt down gang leaders who have made the Central American nation one of the world's most violent and deadly places to live, leading to record numbers of Salvadorans seeking refugee abroad including here in Costa Rica, El Salvador’s government said Wednesday. The force includes 600 army commandos and 400 specially...

Roses now adorn the spot where the Jesuits were gunned down on the UCA's campus on Nov. 16, 1989. They were planted by Obdulio Ramos, husband to Julia Elba Ramos and father to Celina Ramos, who were killed along with the Jesuits. Photo by Charles Barry. Jesuits.org Washington, Feb 5 (EFE).- A U.S. district judge on Friday approved the extradition to Spain of a retired Salvadoran army officer w...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Nov 17 (EFE).- The United States last week received the first Central American children whose asylum requests were approved as part of a program launched almost a year ago, a State Department spokesman told EFE on Tuesday. "Six minors from El Salvador arrived last Thursday. They are the only ones to have arrived so far," Rubani Trimiew, spokesman for the Bureau...

Members of the brutal street gangs widely known as Maras continue to wreak havoc in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras -- but why haven’t they taken root in Costa Rica as well? MS-13 and M-18, the two strongest and most widespread Mara gangs, were spawned in the 1980s in poor Los Angeles neighborhoods by disaffected Central American youth. Most were transplanted to the US by their families, de...

I live in the Zaragoza region, one of the poorest areas in central El Salvador. We have limited economic development opportunities for our people, yet one of the highest rates of population density in the country. While grappling with poverty, our municipality must also deal with gang activity and school violence. In order to respond to this situation, my school joined with 12 other schoo...

To arrive to a new place in the dark is like tasting a new food with a blindfold on. You can feel the edges, but a full color appreciation isn’t possible until daylight arrives. Night time in the small town of La Pirraya on an island in Jiquilisco Bay is quiet; the fishermen and their families gather in small compounds preparing the days catch and saving energy for an early rise the next day. ...

Five months into a historic ceasefire between El Salvador's street gangs, Investigators profile the complex history of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). While the MS-13 is more commonly associated with menacing tattoos and violent initiation ceremonies,  Investigation into the gang's history shows that this was not always the case. When starting out at the bottom of the food chain in ...