In 2011, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) received 1,669 reports of torture and ill-treatment by police and security forces; up from 1,161 in 2010; 1,055 in 2009 and 564 in 2008. These figures cover reports of abuses by federal officials. In the last three years, Amnesty International has recorded reports of torture in all 31 states and the Federal District.

Whatever the internal contradictions of the Bolivarian process, the electoral victory of Chávez was the necessary starting point for addressing them, salvaging the social gains that have been introduced, and radically extending the breadth and depth of a radical conceptualization of democracy in the country and the region – that is to say initiating a transition to socialism.

The deaths of eight indigenous demonstrators taking part in a protest against the Guatemalan government in the southwestern province of Totonicapán have provoked outrage within the country and abroad. “The army should never be involved in actions of law and order,” said Helen Mack, the founder and president of the Myrna Mack Foundation. “Their doctrine is to kill, and what was happening there did not call for any killing.”

Hugo Chavez has won the Venezuelan presidential election with 54.42% of the vote against 44.97% for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. A spontaneous street party immediately kicked off in the centre of the Andean city of Merida, and a massive crowd of Chavez supporters began celebrating in front of the presidential palace, Miraflores, in Caracas.

Venezuelan elections are administered by the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) in accordance with the 1999 constitution. The system is electronic, standardized throughout the country and perhaps the most modern and secure in the world. "As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world," former President Jimmy Carter said last month at The Carter Center.

Today, as tensions rise between the Haitian government and the hundreds of thousands who continue to live in makeshift displacement camps in Port-au-Prince, many in Haiti and around the world are questioning both the impact and transparency of major NGOs, and specifically the Red Cross.

Since 2010, El salvador's Ministry of Education has eradicated illiteracy in six municipalities and hopes to declare the country's illiteracy rate to be 4 percent or less by 2014.This summer, CISPES accompanied the NLP for three weeks – visiting dozens of community literacy circles, promoting the program on local and national media, and helping conduct a literacy census – as the first international volunteer brigade to answer the government’s call and support the literacy program.

With her face covered, and with the support of a psychologist and a translator, a crying Rosa Pérez* told a court hearing this week that members of the army kidnapped her husband and turned her into a sex slave and servant in the Sepur Zarco military garrison in the municipality of El Estor in the northeastern province of Izabal. She and 14 other Q’eqchi Maya Indian women who were subjected to sexual and labour slavery between 1982 and 1986 testified at a preliminary hearing held this week in a court in the Guatemalan capital.