The Chilean Supreme Court convicted six ex-agents of the secret police of Augusto Pinochet for the imprisonment and kidnapping of a young member of the opposition in 1974.  The Working Group Against Forced Disappearance of Guatemala pushed for a bill to help determine the whereabouts of the victims of disappearance and provide compensation for those

Margarita Murillo was shot and killed in the village of El Planón, located within the municipality of Villanueva in northern Honduras.  She had been receiving death threats. 

Seizures by Nicaraguan National Police of nearly 20,000 illegal firearms during a recent five year span have been a key factor in reducing the homicide rate in the country, authorities said. 

A peace deal is unlikely by the end of year, according to the FARC’s top commander; President Santos thinks the war on drugs has failed, and that former President Uribe doesn’t want peace. 

In Colombia a murdered journalist’s body guards had been pulled, and another was killed in Honduras, while mayors were killed in Peru. 

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos opened a new session of Congress calling on lawmakers to back government efforts to strike a peace deal; he also signed a decree granting relief to millions of internally displaced persons; former President Álvaro Uribe defended impunity for former paramilitary members, while victims of paramilitary violence were angered by the

Young members of Chile’s largest party seek to update doctrine to acknowledge a “human rights deficit” dating back to the atrocities of the dictatorship. 

Sandinistas were ambushed on the 35th anniversary of the Revolution, while the opposition alleges police and military use of disappearances against their members. 

Jared Genser, a lawyer defending opposition leader Leopoldo López, submitted a brief to Juan Méndez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, about the conditions under which López has been held. 

Costa Rican exports are being high-jacked to camouflage drug shipments.