Central America in Minutes

Left-of-center opposition legislator Bernardo Arévalo shattered all forecasts in seizing second place in the presidential elections on Sunday and advancing to an August runoff. Arévalo will face political boss Sandra Torres in a test of whether Guatemalan voters can achieve political change via the ballot despite the profound suspicions of presidential efforts to contaminate the election.

Reports of bribery from President Giammattei to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, disputes over the electronic vote-counting system, and suspicions of illicit campaign financing are piling onto a widely condemned elimination of presidential front-runners. These ingredients make this Sunday’s elections the most precarious and uncertain in decades.

Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora was convicted to six years of prison for money laundering this Wednesday in Guatemala. It’s the outcome of a tilted process where Zamora never appeared to have a chance. Investigative journalism reference media elPeriodico, the newspaper he founded 27 years ago, was forced to close one month ago.

Eight months before the elections, President Nayib Bukele announced last night that the 262 Salvadoran municipalities will be cut to 44 and the 84-seat legislature to 60. In his prime-time speech marking four years in power, he also announced the seizure of ex-president Alfredo Cristiani’s assets on unknown charges.

Eight months before the elections, President Nayib Bukele announced last night that the 262 Salvadoran municipalities will be cut to 44 and the 84-seat legislature to 60. In his prime-time speech marking four years in power, he also announced the seizure of ex-president Alfredo Cristiani’s assets on unknown charges.

Civil society movements are nearing an agreement with El Salvador’s four most influential opposition parties on a joint ticket for the 2024 presidential elections. In a bid for a broad front against Nayib Bukele’s unconstitutional reelection, the initiative harks back to historic anti-dictatorship alliances of the 1970s despite strategic, ideological, and partisan tensions.

In the world of YouTube, Nayib Bukele is cast as an invincible hero admired by Elon Musk and Kim Kardashian. First-of-its-kind research analyzed a sample of 70 channels that amplify the Salvadoran president’s message, amassing billions of views. The influencers say they are “just normal people,” unlike “media elites” and “biased journalists,” although some have demonstrated government ties. Politi...

As democracies deteriorate across Central America, conditions for the free exercise of journalism have become increasingly dire. Sadly, our 25th anniversary comes on the very day the final edition of elPeriódico of Guatemala goes to press, as the paper shuts down operations in the face of government persecution and a political and judicial system that is corrupt, intolerant of criticism, and radic...

The trial of journalist José Rubén Zamora has dealt a lethal blow to the daily newspaper elPeriódico, which he has directed since 1996. The outlet, a leader of investigative journalism in Guatemala, published its last edition on Monday, May 15. Zamora has lost eight defense attorneys; four were accused of crimes and one left the country.

Central America, in Brief: Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador’s nods to Russia and China are often read as a jealousy game in the U.S. bilateral relationship. Regional leaders claim sovereignty and multipolarity as their mantra. Experts say that non-ideological short-term calculus and a search for impunity are instead guiding their actions.

In a precedent-setting trial at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Salvadoran government denied responsibility for the health of a mother for whom in 2013 the state denied a therapeutic abortion of a fetus missing its brain. They tried to decouple the total abortion ban from the mother Beatriz’s health problems, but the state’s lead witness acknowledged that he barely treated her and on...

Our main newsroom will stay in El Salvador. But, 25 years after its founding, El Faro is converting its administrative and legal operations into a non-profit registered in Costa Rica.

Retired Army Colonel Roberto Garay Saravia will face an immigration trial to determine his deportation to El Salvador, because of his involvement in extrajudicial killings in El Mozote, and three other army-led massacres in the early 80s, during El Salvador’s civil war. His arrest came after a two-year joint investigation by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security,  and c...

Inscription for the June national vote closed this weekend. Electoral authorities, toeing the line of far-right political operatives, have spuriously excluded two presidential duos and are aiming for a third, clearing the way for conservative Zury Rios.

Historic FMLN leader Eugenio Chicas warns that if the leftist party participates in El Salvador’s 2024 presidential elections it will divide the opposition. He fears the Frente’s current leaders are looking to “kill the Frente and turn over the corpse and banner to Bukele.”

Congressional Republicans and Democrats wrote to the presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica asking for them to guarantee that the Central American Bank of Economic Integration will no longer be a “lifeline” for the Ortega-Murillo regime. In a forum in Washington on Thursday, CABEI president Dante Mossi justified his relationship with a government that he considers legitimat...

As we remember Beatriz, we must also think of the other “Beatrices,” women whose stories were not publicized when they passed away under El Salvador's terminal prohibition of abortion.

Crypto maximalists in El Salvador have learned to love financial and political centralization as long as it serves their interests.

President Nayib Bukele’s plans to cut El Salvador’s 262 municipalities down to 50 are “fairly far along,” according to the Legislative Assembly president. Experts point out that the move would centralize even more power in the executive branch and snuff out for Bukele an increasing source of conflict with local governments.

For the past four months, Guatemala City has been a turbulent thoroughfare for thousands of Venezuelans on a threadbare quest not only north, but south, too. Discouraged by the violence of Mexican authorities and criminal groups and resigned to not making it to the United States after months of traveling, many remain in Central America while waiting for a way home.

Nayib Bukele boasts of controlling each and every decision of his government and thus was unquestionably aware of his officials’ pact with gang leaders from the beginning.

The U.S. Justice Department says it can demonstrate that the Bukele administration offered MS-13 leaders protection from extradition to the U.S. in exchange for a reduction in homicides and electoral backing. A U.S. official told El Faro that, ever since the illegal instatement of the attorney general in May 2021, “there has been a large decrease in the level of cooperation” with the U.S. authorit...

Fears of government spying have turned El Salvador’s diplomatic corps —officials who are supposed to be representing the country’s interests abroad— into paranoid servants of the president’s capricious designs.

A private company owned by Ernesto Castro —president of the Legislative Assembly and one of the closest advisors to President Nayib Bukele— and his wife Michelle Sol —El Salvador’s minister of Housing— received a total of $504,000 from the black budget of the then President Mauricio Funes, between 2010 and 2011. The company never reported officially the contract in its accounting and it is unclear...

An internal police review in May 2022 found that officers falsified the arrest report of a bricklayer who was illegally detained weeks before. Nine months later, the man remains in prison.