The arrest of campesino leader Ramiro Choc has ignited a bitter conflict between the authorities and the Mayan Qeqchí community of Livingston, in the eastern department of Izabal. Choc was arrested and accused of trespassing as the leader of a group of landless campesinos who occupied a finca claiming that as indigenous people they had ancestral rights over the land in June last year. The Qeqchí community retaliated by taking 29 police agents hostage for two days. The government has branded the Qeqchí campesinos as “terrorists”, exacerbating tensions between both parties. In recent years, Izabal has seen an increase in land disputes as mining corporations, agribusiness and the tourism industry seek to displace indigenous communities from this resource-rich region. This latest conflict has made it clear that agrarian disputes will continue if the new Colom administration fails to address campesino demands.

The pact between President Daniel Ortega's Sandinistas (FSLN) and ex-president Arnoldo Alemán's liberals (PLC) once again reared its head in late February. Past intrigue surrounding the FSLN and PLC has laid in the hands of the Supreme Courts of Justice. But this time it fell to the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), which ruled twice in the past two weeks against Eduardo Montealegre, the leader of the ALN, the country's most potent third party. After Montealegre spent more than two years as president of the ALN, Sandinista and “Arnoldista” judges in the CSE ruled that the convention which elected him to the head of the party was suddenly null and void. With no where else to go, Montealegre will now run for mayor of Managua on the PLC ticket.

By Asier Andrés

Translated by James Wilson

A new panel will work to declassify military documents that should shed light on killings, torture and other human rights violations during Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war. The archives will likely include details on the role of the military and presidential guards, both of which have been accused of carrying out atrocities during the war that ended in 1996 and killed some 200 thousand people, mostly indigenous Mayans. The announcement has caused uproar in Guatemala's staunchly conservative and pro-military establishment which argues that these documents are confidential and therefore cannot be declassified.

As a staunch advocate of free market economics, President Torrijos has signed free trade agreements with many of Panama's Asian trading partners as well as its regional neighbors. A new FTA with Guatemala is the latest of such agreements and aims to boost Panamanian exports to Guatemala, its second most important trading partner in the isthmus. However, the balance of payments between the two countries has been negative for Panama over the past few years and critics argue that the treaty will have a limited impact on the economy.

On March 1, 2006, El Salvador was the first country to step up and sign CAFTA. Now, only two years later, government officials are already finding cause for celebration. They have carted out an impressive spread of statistics - on first look it seems that exports to the US have grown dramatically and the bilateral trade deficit has tumbled. But closer analysis reveals there is little more to this than statistical manipulation. It is probably too soon to make any definite claims about what the treaty has done to trade, but the statistics to date are not very positive.