Slide show presentation about the Binational Border Encuentro that addresses not only what migrants are facing when they reach the US border but the structural issues in their home countries that cause them to flee.

Women from CONAVIGUA - an organisation founded by women whose husbands were killed or disappeared during the armed conflict - and supporters protested Wednesday outside Congress in anticipation of the second reading. They vow to return when the bill is back on the agenda. "Victims have a right to justice. We reject any attempt to grant amnesty. We reject impunity," CONAVIGUA national coordinator Rosalina Tuyuc told reporters at the rally outside the Congress building on Feb 13.

The Q’eqchi women of Sepur Zarco were forced into sex slavery during Guatemala's civil war. The trial against the perpetrators ended in the conviction of senior military officers last year. Between 2008 and 2018, Guatemalan courts issued 16 verdicts in human rights cases linked to the 36-year civil conflict (1960-1996), convicting 33 former military officials, military commissioners, and former civil defense patrol members of a series of war crimes, including torture, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial execution, aggravated sexual violence, and sexual and domestic slavery. A proposed Amnesty Law would terminate all ongoing proceedings against grave crimes committed during the country’s civil war, free all military officials and guerrilla leaders already convicted for these grave crimes, and bar all future investigations into such crimes.

Despite corruption scandals and ongoing political instability stemming from a post-election crisis that was never resolved, the US has stood by President Hernández. Honduras was the home base for US counterinsurgency operations and regional military training in Central America during the Cold War...Home to the only US Southern Command joint task force in Latin America, with the exception of Guantanamo, and to several forward operating bases used by US forces, Honduras maintains its pivotal importance to the US in Central America. US government and military officials recently reiterated their support for President Hernández' administration. On January 22, US Vice President Mike Pence called Hernández to “reiterate the strong and collaborative relationship” between the two countries and commend the Honduran president on his response to recent migrant caravans.

U.S. funding for the region continues to support state security forces with track records of human rights abuses and violent repression of social movements...Deep institutional crises in the governments of the region leaves many wary of regional leaders’ will and ability to effectively administer funds in ways that will benefit populations in need. While the idea of a Marshall Plan for Central America sounds promising, it is unlikely to produce meaningful results without rethinking the ways foreign aid has been allocated and administered, critics say.

The revolution in Mexico raged on and borderland oil companies like Texaco began building their own private border walls to protect their holdings. Then, in April 1917, the month the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law a set of sweeping constraints on immigration generally, including literacy tests, entrance taxes, and quota restrictions. From that point on, the border sharpened— literally, as lengths of barbed wire were stretched ever further on either side of port-of-entry customs houses. What follows is a chronology of both the physical fortification of the U.S.-Mexico boundary and the psychic investment in such a fortification—the fantasy, chased by both Democrats and Republicans for more than half a century.

Week of fasting, public witness calls for closure of Guantanamo Bay Prison. Let them go home!

“Tell Mom not to worry – I’m applying for asylum,” Espinal, 28, told his sister Patricia, who recounted the December phone call with tears streaming down her sun-scarred cheeks. “We must pray to God that they give it to me. I told them I can’t go back to Honduras because if I go back, they’re going to kill me.” Within weeks of reaching the US, however, he was deported back to his gang-infested neighborhood in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa – and the death threats that had prompted him to flee. But just over a week after his return, Nelson was shot dead on the street outside his home on 18 December 2018.

In a press conference that was given shortly after the release of the report, Prosecutor General Nestor Humberto Martínez and Interior Minister Nancy Patricia Gutierrez stressed that the state is no longer involved in the killing of social activists, contradicting multiple think tanks and a 2018 Interior Ministry report indicating that state officials continue to be involved in the violent persecution of social leaders...In the first 10 days of 2019, at least eight social leaders were assassinated.