Guest

The police tried to impede Trinidad Ruiz from looking for the bodies of her husband and son. They were disappeared by paramilitary forces on March 23, 2012.  Manuel Ruiz, age 56, and Samir Ruiz, age 15, were executed. Their bodies were dumped in a river and discovered more than four days later by the surviving members of the Ruiz family who were accompanied by Colombian and international human rights organizations. More than eight months later, Mrs. Ruiz and her family are still searching for justice in the highest profile murder of 2012 in Colombia.....

On May 11 in rural Honduras, a late-night anti-narcotic mission involving American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents and U.S.-owned equipment resulted in the death of four people—two of them pregnant women, a fourteen-year-old boy and a 21-year-old man.  One of the leading Honduran human rights organizations, COFADEH, released this detailed report, calling the event “unacceptable and reprehensible.”

In a surprise move, the Guatemalan government has announced the effective closing of the “Peace Archives,” one of the most active and important institutions created in the wake of the 1996 peace accords to promote peace, truth and reconciliation. According to Guatemalan press accounts, the Secretary of Peace Antonio Arenales Forno stated that by June 29 the government would “cancel [labor] contracts for which I see no justification and end the functions of an office that I find makes no sense.”

Many of the displaced residents of Buenaventura live in the La Playita neighborhood. The homes sit on stilts over the water, and the roads usually flood in the daily rains. (Christian Fuchs — Jesuit Refugee Service/USA)

(Buenaventura, Colombia) May 21, 2012 — Between the Western-most range of the Colombian Andes and the Pacific Ocean in the Department of Valle de Cauca lays the city Buenaventura — Colombia's principal port city and also one of its deadliest. 

While there are few international headlines that highlight the ongoing nearly 50-year-long armed conflict, Buenaventura has received massive numbers of displaced Colombians in recent years fleeing violent displacement by armed groups. Buenaventura also has one of the highest rates of intra-urban displacement, and struggles with a 60% unemployment rate.