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MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The classical definition of a hero is a person who puts himself at risk for the benefit of others. That certainly describes Adolfo Calero, who died June 2 at the age of 80. The obituaries of this remarkable man hardly do justice to his courage, perseverance, faithfulness and humility. Here is the Adolfo Calero I knew, admired and called a friend for nearly three decades: A graduate of Holy Cross High School in New Orleans and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., he was a devout Roman Catholic and educated to be a...

Say what you want about Senator John Kerry, nobody ever called him lazy. He landed in Congress and immediately rolled up his sleeves and spat on his hands. The Nicaraguan people must end up like the Cuban and Vietnamese! Toward this end the man was tireless. The vision inspired him to such a staggering work load, energized him to such a frantic pace, and propelled him to such legislative feats, that his colleagues -- even the pinkest -- gaped in envy and awe. Back in the mid 80’s Nicaragua was the pinkos' latest City on a Hill, Daniel Ortega their...

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales. PICTURES: ATF "Gunwalking" scandal timeline In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder...

Small government and free-market capitalism are about to get put to the test in Honduras, where the government has agreed to let an investment group build an experimental city with no taxes on income, capital gains or sales. Proponents say the tiny, as-yet unnamed town will become a Central American beacon of job creation and investment, by combining secure property rights with minimal government interference. “Once we provide a sound legal system within which to do business, the whole job creation machine – the miracle of capitalism – will get going,” Michael Strong, CEO of the MKG Group, which will...

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

Investors can begin construction in six months on three privately run cities in Honduras that will have their own police, laws, government and tax systems now that the government has signed a memorandum of agreement approving the project. An international group of investors and government representatives signed the memorandum Tuesday for the project that some say will bring badly needed economic growth to this small Central American country and that at least one detractor describes as "a catastrophe." The project's aim is to strengthen Honduras' weak government and failing infrastructure, overwhelmed by corruption, drug-related crime and lingering political instability after...

Barring a major international crisis, the outcome of the 2012 U.S. presidential election will have very little to do with foreign policy. It certainly won’t have much to do with U.S. policy toward Latin America, a region that both President Obama and Governor Romney have largely ignored in their campaign speeches. All of this is understandable, but also rather unfortunate. Leave aside the obvious foreign-policy challenges in the Middle East and Asia (Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, China, and so forth): The next administration will surely have to make important decisions about our own hemisphere. For example, Washington must decide whether its...

The last surviving founder of the Sandinista guerrilla movement that overthrew Nicaragua's U.S.-backed right-wing dictatorship in 1979 has died. Tomas Borge Martinez was 81. First Lady Rosario Murillo said in a simultaneous broadcast on Radio Ya and other stations that Borge Martinez died late Monday.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- A former member of an elite Guatemalan military force extradited from the United States last July was sentenced to 6,060 years in prison Monday for his role in the killings of 201 people in a 1982 massacre. Pedro Pimentel Rios was the fifth former special forces soldier sentenced to 6,060 years or more for what became known as the "Dos Erres" massacre after the northern Guatemala hamlet where the killings occurred during the country's 1960-1996 civil war.

Last week, the Honduran National Congress passed a law allowing the military to perform police functions, and Assistant Secretary of State Maria Otero visited Honduras with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Todd Robinson, to promote security initiatives. The United States is advancing a regional security strategy which apparently is oriented toward the militarization of Central America and the participation of private security contractors in policing, a strategy also being promoted for the region by the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) and former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The murder of a Honduran national university...

First it was Venezuela, then Bolivia, then Ecuador, then Nicaragua. Now it’s my native Peru. One by one, largely unremarked here, Latin America’s nations are turning to the authoritarian Left. Ollanta Humala, who won yesterday’s presidential run-off, is typical of the breed of modern caudillo. A cashiered former army officer, he had concocted an angry and aggrieved programme which mingled ethnic nationalism, hostility to private enterprise, nostalgia for pre-Columbian times and anti-Chilean revanchism..... Humala’s opponent in the run-off was Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the man who, as president in the 1990s, closed down Congress and gave himself autocratic powers, and...

Now overgrown by jungle, the ancient site was once the thriving capital of the Maya civilization Had we been traveling overland, it would have taken two or three days to get from the end of the road at Carmelita to El Mirador: long hours of punishing heat and drenching rain, of mud and mosquitoes, and the possibility that the jungle novice in our party (that would be me, not the biologists turned photographers Christian Ziegler and Claudio Contreras) might step on a lethal fer-de-lance or do some witless city thing to provoke a jaguar or arouse the ire of the...

MEXICO CITY – The most fearsome weapons wielded by Mexico’s drug cartels enter the country from Central America, not the United States, according to U.S. diplomatic cables disseminated by WikiLeaks and published on Tuesday by La Jornada newspaper. Items such as grenades and rocket-launchers are stolen from Central American armies and smuggled into Mexico via neighboring Guatemala, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City reported to Washington. The assertions appear in embassy cables written after three bilateral conferences on arms trafficking that took place between March 2009 and January 2010 in Cuernavaca, Mexico; Phoenix; and Tapachula, Mexico, respectively. The cables’ authors...

Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his powers. Nor are his more recent alliance with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his long-standing relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua -- both of whom are busy trampling their constitutions and moving toward dictatorship -- well understood. And the fact that all three governments support the Revolutionary Armed...

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LA CASAS, Mexico – Mexican authorities have discovered 219 migrants squeezed into a trailer truck in the southern state of Chiapas. The Chiapas state government says in a statement that the driver and another person tried to bribe police who stopped the truck. The statement Thursday said most of the migrants are from Central America but six are from Sri Lanka and four are Nepalese. Thirty-three are women and nine are minors. The statement said police chased down the truck Wednesday when the driver refused to stop for inspection at a checkpoint. The migrants were being deported...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Extradited Hacker Sentenced to 10 Years in Federal Prison for Masterminding First-Ever Hack Into Internet Phone Networks Defendant Also Ordered to Pay Over $1 Million in Restitution NEWARK, NJ—The first individual ever charged with hacking into the networks of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers and reselling hacked VoIP services for a profit was sentenced today to 120 months in prison, United States Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced. Edwin Andres Pena, 27, transmitted over 10 million minutes of unauthorized telephone calls over the victims' networks. Pena, a Venezuelan citizen, fled the United States...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Dozens of undocumented immigrants were taken into custody Friday morning, and two men were arrested for holding them against their will. Authorities said 35 immigrants, including a 12-year-old boy, were discovered in a home on La Rica Avenue in Baldwin Park. Officials arrested the two alleged captors Thursday night. Both men are from Guatemala and were taken into federal custody. When officials arrived, they found 30 juvenile males and five adult females inside an 800-square-foot home. Officials said the hostages were being held at the house until family members paid a ransom for their release. According...

Colombian patriot and brave national hero Alvaro Uribe has now retired from the presidential office he first took in 2002... when Colombia was nothing short of a failed state. How did he do? Besides the fact that he all but defeated the FARC rebels and numerous drug cartels over his eight years, Uribe's presidential approval rating has hovered between 60-70%... as recently as 2008 hitting an astounding 91%... George W Bush honored his accomplishment, principles, and valor with a Presidential Medal of Freedom... while today's radical Democrats refuse to support Colombia's great strides with even a free-trade pact. But as...

Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times' often heroic international journalist, has stuck his inquisitive snout into dangerous situations throughout his career. But admitting that there's a white reporter's burden in writing about Africa is among the braver things he's done. It's the bold revelation of a messy little secret not so mysterious to those of us in the profession. In a YouTube post answering reader's questions - good, interactive idea - Kristof picked this one: "Your columns about Africa almost always feature black Africans as victims, and white foreigners as their saviors." After naming some Africans he's mentioned in...

MAP OF THE DAY: Tropical Storm Agatha Kills Over 100, And It's Heading For The Gulf Of Mexico Joe Weisenthal Jun. 1, 2010, 8:31 AM The NOAA has predicted a very active hurricane season this year, and the oil disaster in the Gulf only heightens the concern. Things are getting off to a bad start. This weekend, Tropical Depression Agatha killed over 100 in Central America. And look, it's heading through the Gulf of Mexico. Map via MonkeyFister.[snip]