Editor’s Note: This story was a Finalist for a 2019 Livingston Award, for excellence in international reporting. In July 2019, it also received an Honorable Mention by the National Press Club for the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence, which recognizes excellence in reporting on diplomatic and foreign policy issues. SAN SALVADOR—At around 2 a.m. on a Sunday this past May, Ricardo Canenguez sent his girlfriend, Damaris Perez, a text message with a license plate number. The plate belonged to the car of a police officer who, Canenguez said, had harassed him—and struck him—for no apparent reason while he [...]
On Sept. 26, in a tense, crowded courtroom in Guatemala City, a three-judge panel ruled unanimously that genocide and crimes against humanity occurred in the Maya-Ixil region of northern Guatemala in 1982 and 1983, at the height of the country’s civil war. But in a split 2-1 vote, the court determined that the defendant, retired Gen. Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, did not bear criminal responsibility for the crimes and acquitted him on all charges. Ixil witnesses who testified during the trial described the court’s ruling as “bittersweet” and vowed to continue their fight for justice. This was the second acquittal [...]
In the hierarchy of global attention, problems affecting Latin America rank well below the various political dramas and turmoil unfolding in the United States, Europe and the Middle East. But that high threshold cannot obscure the daunting reality in the region. Latin America today is facing three simultaneous, largely unrelated migration crises, placing enormous pressure on already limited resources and testing the stability, durability and effectiveness of its leaders, values and institutions. Large numbers of people are currently fleeing for their lives from three separate conflicts in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Central America’s so-called Northern Triangle, which includes El Salvador, Guatemala [...]
