According to Salvadoran Attorney General Luis Martínez, prosecutors are investigating the Minister of National Defense, David Munguia Payes and other senior officials of the army for the smuggling of weapons and other arbitrary acts.  

Venezuelans are using tear gas canisters fired by the thousands on the streets of Caracas to create sculptures in a competition seeking an artistic outlet in this year’s anti-government unrest in Venezuela. 

The Salvadoran Ministry of Defense cannot find a key document, while the new government says it will make combating extortion a high priority. 

Pope Francis received relatives of missing persons and victims of Operation Condor, a program started in Chile under former dictator Augusto Pinochet to repress political opposition throughout South America in the 1970s and 1980s. 

The Guatemalan legislature has resolved: in Guatemala there was no genocide. 

The levels of homicidal violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are higher than in some countries experiencing armed conflict. 

Mexicans proclaim their rights to defend themselves amid chronic government inaction in the face of violence by organized crime. 

In Brazil, Guatemala, and El Salvador past dirty wars continue to reverberate, while in Colombia and Mexico they never actually ended.  Current practices of political violence (or the threat of its use) and torture show clear continuities with the past. 

Paramilitary groups and so-called “self-defense” groups are active in Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador (as well as other counties).  Some are community-based while others have clear ties to organized crime and regional elites. 

Many observers in Brazil and Argentina are pointing to the futility of the “war on drugs.”