Central America, Honduras, Latin America: Week in Review
Honduras: Conflicting Accounts Of Fatal DEA Operation
May 18, 2012 By Staff
Top Story — As protesters on the Miskito Coast of Honduras riot in the streets, U.S. officials are saying that agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration did not fire their weapons during a counternarcotics operation in Honduras that reportedly killed two men and two pregnant women in a river last week. The DEA officers accompanied Honduran security agents to the region on May 11 and say they intercepted 1,000 pounds of U.S.-bound cocaine. However, U.S. and Honduran officials and local residents presented conflicting accounts about who was killed and who was responsible in an incident that has outraged Hondurans and prompted some to set fire to government buildings in response. U.S. officials maintain that none of the U.S. agents fired a shot from the helicopter they shared with Honduran troops as they flew over the Patuca River in pursuit of a boat allegedly carrying drug smugglers. Local indigenous leaders insist that the people killed were not drug traffickers, but regular civilians, and have demanded that the U.S. withdraw its presence from Honduras.
Read more from the New York Times.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- A report released by Human Rights Watch on Wednesday said that the sexual harassment and assault of female farmworkers in the U.S. goes largely unreported because the women often fear retribution due to their immigration status.
- Mexican prosecutors charged eight people in the ritual murders of two ten year-old boys and and a 55 year-old woman as sacrifices to “Santa Muerte”.
- The U.S. Census Bureau reported that for the first time, total births of non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. have dropped below 50 percent of total U.S. births.
Caribbean
- Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, was approved for a visa to visit the U.S. for the Latin American Studies Conference in San Francisco next week.
- A North Carolina pastor was indicted for having sex with two minors while visiting Haiti as part of his ministry in 2009.
- A U.S. Coast Guard grad will be returning to his native Haiti eighteen years after the Coast Guard rescued the young man and his mother at sea while they were attempting to emigrate to the United States.
Central America
- At least one inmate was killed and 11 wounded in a prison riot in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, while they were allegedly holding a number of women hostage.
- Guatemalan authorities arrested three suspected members of the Zetas drug cartel in Guatemala after a gunfight on Wednesday.
- Salvadoran Foreign Minister Hugo Martínez said that a law to help protect Salvadoran migrants on their way to the U.S. and to deal with deportees sent back to El Salvador will soon enter into force.
Andes
- Colombian lawmaker Sigifredo Lopez was arrested for allegedly providing information to the FARC that would allow them to kidnap fellow legislators in a 2002 raid in which 11 were eventually executed.
- Ecuadoran authorities discovered a drug lab near the crash site of a Mexico-registered plane that crashed with $1.3 million in cash inside.
- A Peruvian consulting firm said that illegal gold mining has produced bigger profits in Peru than drug trafficking.
- Argentine rock group Los Pericos helped publicize theplight of a Sri Lankan man they found stuck for the last four months at Simón Bolívar International Airport of Maiquetia in Venezuela due to a lack of documents.
Southern Cone
- Chilean police arrested 70 people as thousands of Chilean students protested in the streets Wednesday to demand education reform.
- Brazil’s new freedom of information law went into effect on Wednesday to allow citizens free access to public data.
- Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner traveled to Angola Thursday to meet with Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and discuss a deal to trade Argentine food for Angolan oil.
- A Brazilian judge has sentenced a woman to jail time for publishing an offensive message on Twitter urging readers to kill Brazilians from the northeast for helping elect Dilma Rousseff as president.
Image: extremeboh @ Flickr.
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