By Wendy Anders Tourism to Guatemala for medical, health and wellbeing services brought in over US$66 million last year, and the sector is growing quickly. This year income from these specialized health services is expected to register 12.4 percent higher than last year’s sales, said the Guatemalan Export Associaction (Agexport) to Central America’s Summa business magazine. Experts estima...

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...

Guatemala yesterday welcomed into its market the U.S. application found in more than 70 countries and 480 cities. Among those who joined in congratulating the arrival of Uber to Guatemala was the United States Commercial Service. An Uber driver in Bogota. Wikimedia Commons "This country has all the potential to receive Uber, and we are sure that Guatemalans will find the benefit of a new al...

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...

By Wendy Anders The low-budget Mexican airline Volaris will launch its regional flights in and out of Costa Rica today, reported La Republica, a Costa Rican Spanish newspaper. Volaris will start its service by offering two daily flights to Guatemala from Alajuela's Juan Santamaría (SJO) airport; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Over the next three years the airline plans t...

REUTERS - A year after Guatemala passed a law banning child marriage, poor families who regard girls as a financial burden are still marrying them off as prolonged drought plunges many into deeper poverty, campaigners say. Guatemala has one of the highest rates of child marriage in Latin America, long driven by poverty and cultural acceptance especially among the country's Maya indigenous commu...

(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...

The Costa Rican police dismantled a gang of drug traffickers with links in Mexico and Guatemala, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security (MSP) said yesterday. ARCHIVE/FILE: Some 1,700 tons of cocaine is expected to pass through Costa Rican territory in 2016. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) "At the moment there have been 14 detained, after making 24 raids, and it ...

(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 ...

A seizure of over 9 million contraband cigarettes is made in Petén, Guatemala in March, photo courtesy of Belize's Corozal Daily, Facebook. Guatemala City, Oct. 20 — An Asian man has been arrested along with two Guatemalans in the capital of the Central American country after being accused of coordinating the entry of a container filled with cigarettes smuggled from China, judicial sources sai...

Guatemala City, Oct 19 — A group of Guatemalan women on Wednesday joined a global initiative against gender-based violence, taking part in a sit-in here to demand respect for their rights and an end to femicides. Reyna Sofia Lantan, the artist who participated in the protest in Guatemala City, from Facebook. Feminist Silvia Trujillo, who took part with around 30 other women in the brief sit...

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...

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...

Guatemala City, Oct. 8 — Some 800,000 young people in Guatemala neither work nor study, and therefore represent a "risk" to society and to themselves as their unemployment becomes permanent. Elementary school in Guatemala, Facebook. That was the alarm sounded in an interview by EFE with Veronica Spross, director of Entrepreneurs for Education, one of the 13 organizations that make up the NG...

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...

ICR-CRS Archive/FILE (Pictured: Workers at a multinational medical device manufacturing company's facility in Heredia, Costa Rica) By Wendy Anders The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in its most recent edition of an annual series on Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America (June 2016) reported that FDI flows to Central America were up by 6 pe...

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...

Wikimedia Commons Vinicio Cerezo, who in 1991 became the first Guatemalan head of state in four decades to hand over power to a democratically elected successor, said the Central American nation faces dangerous consequences due to a failure to fully implement the 1996 Peace Accords. "The danger for Guatemala is that our state becomes truly a failed state if we continue on this course," he s...

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...

Wikimedia Commons Austin, Texas, Jun 13 (EFE).- Hilda Ramirez is a Guatemalan Indian who has spent four months in a church that has provided her with sanctuary in this Texas city in order to prevent U.S. authorities from detaining her and complying with the deportation order issued against her and her 10-year-old son. She has no wish to return to Guatemala, from where she fled north in 2014...

Guatemala special forces soldiers on patrol. Wikimedia Commons Guatemala City, May 15 (EFE).- The Guatemalan government on the weekend denounced what it said was a new incident of the "excessive use of force by the Belizean army" after the detention of three Guatemalans for illegal gold mining in an operation that resulted in one of the men being wounded. In a brief communique released by t...

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...

Guatemala special forces soldiers on patrol. Wikimedia Commons Guatemala City, Apr 23 (EFE).- Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales will meet Saturday in the United States with OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro and the secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or IACHR, Emilio Alvarez Icaza, to ask that they investigate the death of a 13-year-old boy on the Guatemala-Belize bor...

Source: User jsbarrie Flickr Commons Guatemala City, Mar 14 (EFE).- Some indigenous people in Guatemala suffer under "contemporary forms of slavery," the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said Monday. "The working conditions of indigenous people continue to be of great concern since these workers are often "subjected to different forms of exploitation" such as "forced labor" or "slave...

Guatemala Police. Wikimedia Commons Guatemala City, Mar 6 (EFE).- A bomb evidently triggered by a cellphone exploded on a public bus in Guatemala, killing at least one person and injurin 17 on Sunday. The incident occurred early Sunday morning in San Jose Pinula, a town located 22 kilometers (14 miles) from the capital. Investigators with the National Civil Police and the Public Ministry...

Wikimedia Commons Guatemala City, Jan 6 (EFE).- Three officers of Guatemala's PNC national police are being held hostage at an indigenous community in the western province of Solola, where locals burned two patrol cars during disturbances sparked by the slaying of a resident by an off-duty cop, authorities said Tuesday. A PNC spokesperson told EFE that talks were begun on Tuesday in an atte...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Jan 5 (EFE).- Police officers in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas rescued 45 migrants from Guatemala and Honduras in Reynosa, located across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas, the Tamaulipas Coordination Group said. State police officers responding to a tip from the public went to a house in the border city's Puertas del Sol district, where people...

Guatemala has risen to become one of the world’s rum production hubs — from Ron Zacapa to Zaya, which was made in the country until moving its production (and Guatemalan recipe) to Trinidad. But a longtime player is Ron Botran, which has the advantage of several area rums in that it is aged at a high altitude and includes sugar cane grown in the country’s rich volcanic soil – touted as so-c...