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

GUATEMALA: Anthropologists Seek Answers About "Disappeared" From Bones.

MIAMI HERALD SPECIAL/    Perhaps 200,000 people were killed during Guatemala's 36-year-old civil war. At least 45,000 people "disappeared" - abducted, killed and bodies never recovered. Now anthropologists are are sifting thru the mud of a mass grave to find skulls, femurs and ribs for signs of violence. The bones were dumped in Guatemala City during the height of the civil war. "These people would be picked up, questioned and tortured. And their families couldn't go claim the bodies because they feared for their own lives,'' said Fredy Peccerelli, forensics chief. "It's not just here. There are cemeteries around the country'' with the bodies of the disappeared." (Foto: mass grave site)