Central America in Minutes

Ep. 55, SPECIAL with LATINO USA: This year, the White House falsely claimed that millions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars were funding “sex changes” in Guatemala — a lie used to justify gutting USAID, which has provided aid worldwide for over 60 years. In this episode produced with Latino USA, we travel to Guatemala to uncover the truth, hear from local organizations caught in the controversy, and lear...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 54: On Thursday, four days after the Honduran election, representatives of two major parties denounced irregularities in the preliminary vote tally, which as of Friday morning gave the lead to Trump’s candidate Tito Asfura over Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party. In Honduras, electoral disputes have been waged with violence for almost two decades. Why has that n...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 53: One woman had no family left in Guatemala. Some men were snatched from their jobs. Every deportee was distraught, confused, or angry. When Guatemalans flip the coin of abandonment, they often find brutality on the other side. This seventh issue of Central America Monthly seeks to answer the question: What comes after deportation? In our podcast today, we present...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 52: Nayib Bukele has dealt with three U.S. administrations. He went from conservative darling to pariah under the early Biden years’ anti-corruption agenda. Outlasting and outmaneuvering the Democrats, Bukele bet on Trump’s return, catapulting him back to the seat of U.S. power. This special November episode of Central America in Minutes was written by Roman Gressie...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 51: In Honduras, questions about a militarized election deepen. The head of the Joint General Staff wants to run a parallel vote count on November 30. Meanwhile, the attorney general’s office announces its newest investigation into the National Electoral Council. In a new coup effort in Guatemala, an internationally sanctioned judge orders the removal of the preside...

Ep. 50, SPECIAL with LATINO USA: Thousands of immigrant children were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border during the first Trump administration. And while a court ruled the government should reunite these families, hundreds still remain apart. In this episode, we travel to Guatemala to meet a father who was deported from the U.S. without his 14-year-old son. In theory the famili...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 49: Guatemala’s former minister of governance, whose office oversees the police and prisons, resigns and leaves the country after the public learns of the escape from prison of twenty 18th Street gang members. In El Salvador, a new Law Against Money Laundering in fact significantly loosens controls. Attorney general Rodolfo Delgado argues compliance officers relied...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 48: Crackdown tactics emerging from El Salvador’s Casa Presidencial and the U.S. White House have something in common: the willingness to sow fear and enact cruelty onto a population deemed criminal or expendable. This sixth issue of Central America Monthly focuses on a single question: What is really happening in the world's most publicized prison system? Evide...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 47: Five months before new magistrates are chosen, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of Guatemala has been raided yet again amid arrests, a guilty plea, and accusations of bribery. Next year, the top seats at the TSE, high courts, and other crucial institutions are up for grabs. In Costa Rica, President Rodrigo Chaves skirts an effort by the Legislative Assembly...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 46: Salvadoran-born journalist Mario Guevara is set to be deported today, Friday, after his arrest in June, while covering protests in Georgia against the immigration raids of Trump’s first months. He was the only known journalist detained by ICE on U.S. soil. This special October episode of Central America in Minutes was written by Yuliana Ramazzini and edited by R...

Ep. 45, SPECIAL with LATINO USA: She was in labor, fainted, and woke up in handcuffs. In El Salvador, nearly 200 women have been incarcerated in the last 26 years after having obstetric emergencies, like miscarriages and stillbirths. Maria Hinojosa and producer Monica Morales-Garcia travel to the country to speak with women who have been incarcerated under El Salvador's anti-abortion laws, some of...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 44: On September 8, Temporary Protected Status for Hondurans and Nicaraguans came to an end, leaving more than 50,000 immigrants, who have been in the United States for over two decades, at risk of deportation. The Guatemalan Constitutional Court refused to grant provisional parole to publisher Jose Rubén Zamora, bouncing the decision of whether he will continue in...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 43: With under three months until election day in Honduras, alarm bells are sounding: lawfare and institutional capture threaten the credibility of the process amid efforts to veto civil society as electoral monitors. The chief campaign finance auditor has no budget. In a country where political violence has stained elections for the better part of two decades, four...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 42: Recent accusations by U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi about an “air bridge” for Venezuelan drug traffickers in Guatemala and neighboring countries draws sparring between the Guatemalan president and attorney general over who is really leading interdiction efforts. In Nicaragua, an opposition leader detained for more than a month is announced dead in custody a...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 41: A former magistrate and security chief was arrested by Costa Rican authorities and the DEA in their first extradition on drug trafficking charges. U.S. authorities also accuse him of informing the Rodrigo Chaves administration in 2023 of his ability to “guarantee the entry of cocaine into the country.” In El Salvador, as Nayib Bukele names an Army captain as min...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 40: In Guatemala, six officials were sentenced to prison for the gruesome 2017 death of 41 girls in a fire in the Hogar Seguro children’s home. Abuses and inhumane conditions leading up to the fire compounded with officials’ apathy to rescue them, stirring indignation in Guatemala over state complicity. The U.S. State Department claimed in its annual report that the...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 39: El Salvador’s Canal 10 has been transformed into a vehicle for institutional propaganda. Since its relaunch in 2020, the public television channel has been remade from a cultural station into a mouthpiece for President Nayib Bukele — a space without dissent, without opposition, without debate. This extended August episode of Central America in Minutes was produc...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 38: A prisoner exchange between the United States, El Salvador, and Venezuela sends 252 men deported by the Trump administration and imprisoned in Salvadoran megaprison CECOT back to Venezuela, in exchange for 10 U.S. citizens detained in Venezuela. A new investigation by InSight Crime reports that at least 23 environmentalists were killed in the country between 202...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 37: Cristosal, a leading human rights organization in Central America, announces that it is closing operations in El Salvador under threat of political arrest and administrative harassment under a “Russia-style” Foreign Agents Law that dealt a frontal blow to civil society. In Nicaragua, three days before the anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, the regime rena...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 36: In correspondence with U.N. enforced disappearance investigators, the Salvadoran government claimed the jurisdiction and ultimate fate of the 238 Venezuelans imprisoned in CECOT falls on the U.S. government — even as the Trump administration has claimed the opposite. As the U.S. government cancels TPS deportation protections for Nicaraguans and Hondurans, Daniel...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 35: For the first time in decades, a growing number of political exiles are fleeing El Salvador. In Guatemala, the justice system is the spearhead of attacks against those pursuing corruption. Following the murder of a Nicaraguan exile, the U.N. denounces a “high risk of life and physical safety” for dissidents beyond Nicaraguan borders. This special July episode of...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 34: In a regional tour, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced agreements for Guatemala and Honduras to receive third-country asylum claims, and in Panama, to pay for flights to continue deporting migrants, including from Venezuela and Colombia. In Costa Rica, investigators examine whether a Nicaraguan government-backed hit squad is targeting exiles on the heels of the...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 33: The Panamanian government arrested Secretary General of the Banana Industry Workers Union Fransisco Smith four days after an agreement was announced between union leaders, the National Assembly and President Raúl Mulino to amend social security reforms driving the country into nation-wide protest. This episode of Central America in Minutes was written by Edward...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 32: In El Salvador, three top military officers are convicted for the emblematic 1982 murder of four Dutch journalists, marking the first conviction of high-ranking military officials in the country for crimes committed during the civil war. In Honduras, digital outlet Contracorriente reports that the Xiomara Castro administration has launched a media campaign durin...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 31: Rosario Murillo holds the reins in Nicaragua. By their own decree, she and Daniel Ortega are now “co-presidents” ruling without the separation of powers, not even on paper. Three moments help explain Murillo’s rise — but just how durable is her newfound power? This special June episode of Central America in Minutes was written and narrated by Roman Gressier with...