EL SALVADOR/ HONDURAS/ GUATEMALA: Oppenheimer On Obama's Biggest Challenge.

                                      M.HERALD/ A.OPPENHEIMER / OPINION    


     U.S. officials believe that as mush as 50% of narco traffic now passes thru Central America, aka the
"Northern Triangle".
     OPPENHEIMER:   "Fifteen years after the end of Central America’s civil wars, this region is once again becoming the world’s most violent place, and a major source of drug trafficking, organized crime and illegal immigration to the United States.
    According to United Nations estimates, more than 15,000 people a year are dying in drug and human trafficking-related violence in Central America.
    Honduras is already the world’s most violent country, with a homicide rate of 67 per 100,000 people a year, four times higher than Mexico’s, the weekly The Economist reported recently."

FOR MORE:  B. Booth reports on how the three governments are creating a multinational security plan to cope with narco traffickers...and what they want from the USA.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/obama-to-visit-region-beset-by-drug-smuggling/2011/03/19/AB94PH2_story.html

CENTRAL AMERICA: Mexico's Dead Migrant Body Count Is... Just Beginning.

AP/ DIEGO MENDEZ /      Hundreds of people visited Central American governmental offices after news of the massacre of 72 migrants in Mexico, looking for missing relatives who had left hoping to reach the U.S. Some 21 bodies have been identified as Hondurans, 19 are of other nationalities, and 32... are unidentified.
"The true number of undocumented migrants killed in Mexico in recent years may never be known, but they would almost certainly dwarf the number discovered last week. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission said there were witness accounts of 198 mass kidnappings involving 9,758 migrants in a six month-period in 2009."

GUATEMALA: 2ND UPDATE: "Agatha's" Agony Continues.

LAHT/ NEW LINK/3 Junio/    Rescue crews are still digging out bodies from mudslides after Tropical Storm Agatha ravaged Central America, killing at least 184 with 90 missing, 87 injured and nearly 200,000 evacuees. Agatha deposited more than 3 feet of rain in Guatemala's mountainous west and in El Salvador, threatening the coffee crops in both nations. The storm may have caused wider material damage in Guatemala than Hurricane Mitch did in 1998, said a Red Cross official.