IRTF News

In July it will be two years since four residents of the El Triunfo de la Cruz community, Tela, Atlántida, were kidnapped by men in military and police clothing. Families in the community continue to wait for news and to be reunited with their loved ones. Garifuna fighter and leader Clara Flores told Radio Progreso that the long wait is extremely painful. She says that every morning when she passes by the community selling bullets, she remembers how Snyder Centeno, one of the disappeared, would buy and they would talk about the community reality. “Remembering that is still painful because we live in constant anxiety, waiting to find out where they are, what has happened to their lives. It doesn't matter what government is, if our rights continue to be violated, we will continue to fight. We demand that the government be able to strengthen our autonomy,” she says.

On Thursday, The Honduran Parliament conferred the National Heroine title to the Indigenous Lenca environmentalist Berta Caceres, who was murdered in March 2016 for defending the rights of her community over the Gualcarque river. "Our decision seeks to recognize and preserve the legacy of Caceres for Honduras," legislators stated and urged the national educational system to include the life of this environmentalist in its programmatical contents.

Colombia’s upcoming presidential elections on May 29 are taking place at a time of great tension, rising insecurity, economic challenges, polarization, and distrust in government. These elections also mark the first time a socially-progressive candidate, Gustavo Petro, in a country ruled by the right and moderates for decades, has the possibility of winning the presidency. This is an overview of some of the main human rights and security challenges facing Colombia that the next President will need to address, and how U.S. policymakers can support them in doing so.

After decades in which Honduras served as a bridge state along the cocaine highway from South America to the United States, coca plantations are now spreading across the country like an invasive plant whose seeds are carried in the wind. In 2021, authorities eradicated a record amount of coca plants. This year, hardly a week has gone by without the discovery of another plantation, and authorities are already on the verge of shattering last year’s record. Cocaine production in Honduras is still in its infancy and unlikely to ever come close to the levels of the biggest three cocaine producers: Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. But if left unchecked, it could give rise to a new generation of drug traffickers, and refortify clans of old, much like the shifting of drug routes from the Caribbean to Central America did at the turn of the century.

More than a dozen gunmen opened fire in two bars in the central Mexican city of Celaya late on Monday, killing at least 11 people in an apparent gangland shooting, local officials and media said. Seven women and three men were killed at the scene in shootings in two bars, according to a statement by security officials in Celaya, Guanajuato state, which said the attack happened in the Valle Hermoso neighborhood. An eleventh victim, a woman, later died at the hospital, according to a state government spokesperson. Two other people were wounded.

Mexico’s immigration enforcement is increasingly militarized with the armed forces and National Guard now accounting for more migrant detentions than immigration agents, according to a report published Tuesday by six nongovernmental organizations. The human rights and migrant advocacy groups, among them the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic State of Law, say that many of the detentions are also arbitrary, based on racial profiling and have led to abuses. The armed forces are supposed to just be supporting immigration agents in their work, but the organizations found that they are now responsible for the majority of detentions.