Central America in Minutes

The 222 political prisoners banished by the regime of Daniel Ortega last Thursday are celebrating their freedom after years or months of lockdown and torture, but many doubt their future and stifle their opinions out of fear for their family in Nicaragua. Half of them have no family in the U.S. and are wondering how to rebuild a life far from their country and loved ones.

A Salvadoran Supreme Court justice informed the high court that Apple notified her in December of her possible targeting with Pegasus, a spyware sold to governments to hack the cellphones of journalists, activists, and opposition members.

Nicaragua is the destination where the Central American hopes to never arrive: more than 160 journalists in exile and 54 news organizations shuttered by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega. In El Salvador, there are multiple alerts that the country is headed in that direction: mass deployment of Pegasus spyware, defamation and the mounting of criminal accusations against journalists, and the closure...

After ten months of state of exception, El Salvador seems to have destroyed the territorial reach and centralized leadership of the notorious MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. El Faro verified their withdrawal from communities across the country and with a veteran leader of one of the groups. To achieve it, the Bukele administration, who secretly negotiated with the gangs for three years, unleashed mas...

In October 2020, the Bukele administration obtained three spyware tools from an intermediary firm of an Israeli ex-special operations official close to the Salvadoran president. The first registered deployment of Pegasus in the country occurred four months prior.

When a spike in homicides in November 2021 put Nayib Bukele’s negotiations with El Salvador’s gangs in crisis, officials mediated with the criminal organizations to curb the violence. While police documents ascribed the death of 45 people to differences between MS-13 and 18th Street, a source from the Mara Salvatrucha asserted that they were caused by a rift inside the gang over how the negotiatio...

When Nayib Bukele’s signature Chivo Wallet crashed two days after launch, an American developer was brought in to put out the flames. The story he told to a Texas court is one of amateur coding, millions of dollars of taxpayer money, improvised decision-making, and removal of money laundering firewalls when the bitcoin trading software came to a grinding halt after just 150 downloads.

The same day Nayib Bukele staged a military siege of the gang bastion Soyapango, Xiomara Castro deployed police and military in 162 of Honduras’ most marginalized urban communities after decreeing a state of exception. The suspension of constitutional guarantees goes even further than in the Salvadoran model.

On behalf of 15 members of El Faro, lawyers from the Knight First Amendment Institute sued the Israeli surveillance company NSO for allegedly selling a program that hacked the phones of 22 members of El Faro between June 2020 and November 2021. The lawsuit asks the court to order NSO Group to disclose the name of its client in El Salvador. This is the first time that journalists targeted by NSO sp...

On November 7, the Police and Army violently evicted the Garifuna community in Punta Gorda, Roatán, defying ancestral land rights promised by Honduran law since 1995. It’s the first removal of a Garifuna community under President Xiomara Castro.

Official documents obtained by El Faro through Guacamaya Leaks show not only that Élmer Canales Rivera, “Crook,” was freed from prison in November 2021, but that his exit was registered in emails, police profiles, and other reports from the National Civil Police of El Salvador. These documents also reveal that, hours before the senior MS-13 leader's release, a police team arrived at Zacatecoluca P...

On Monday the Biden administration expanded Trump-era sanctions to the Nicaraguan economy, cutting off the country’s lucrative gold industry from U.S. markets as Managua deepens energy cooperation with Moscow and Tehran. The administration, aware that other Central American leaders are watching, says it will study similar moves against other industries bankrolling Ortega.

In the first 24 hours of the three-day massacre that put an end to the Bukele administration’s gang negotiations and ushered in the state of exception, the Salvadoran Prison Bureau took four top leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha out of maximum-security prison to a private hospital, internal documents report.

The only thing separating Nayib Bukele today from becoming a dictator is the unconstitutional reelection that he has announced. Right now he is a constitutionally elected president, even if his exercise of power is no longer constitutional.

The Honduran government says the legality of Nayib Bukele’s possible candidacy in 2024 is none of its business. No other Central American government has commented. A year after clearly stating that immediate reelection is unconstitutional, the Biden administration now asserts that there are arguments on “either side.”

Last night, in a televised broadcast on the country's 201st anniversary of independence, Nayib Bukele announced his candidature for the 2024 presidential election despite multiple explicit prohibitions on consecutive reelection in the Salvadoran constitution.

The U.S. Senate is back from August recess and will likely vote soon on new ambassadors to El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Belize. In an apparent bid for more Republican buy-in, Biden is putting veteran diplomats in charge of the tenuous U.S. relationship with Bukele, potential major trade sanctions on the Ortega regime, and Panama-centered efforts to thwart regional migration and Chinese infl...

The Salvadoran coroner’s office reported that half of those who have died in custody under the state of exception succumbed to pulmonary edema and showed signs of torture. One of them was a dairy producer, 64, who for two decades worked in the U.S. for a recycling company.

Prosecutors found evidence of nepotism and overcharging in contracts benefitting the biggest food contractor for the Bukele administration’s signature pandemic aid program. The investigation was thwarted by Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado after he was illegally instated in May 2021.

The president and director of Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico, José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, and assistant attorney Samari Carolina Gómez Díaz will spend at least three months in pre-trial detention on the basis of a single testimony and supposed evidence that Rafael Curruchiche, the head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (FECI), told El Faro were collected in just 72 hours betwe...

Amid multiple corruption and misconduct probes muddling his first three months in office, President Rodrigo Chaves has lashed out at the press. In July authorities shuttered a business financing the operations of leading newspaper La Nación, a move marking a sharp escalation in attacks against press freedom in a country that has for years provided safe haven for journalists fleeing neighboring Nic...

The grounds for hundreds of arrests provided in sealed court documents analyzed by El Faro include suspicious appearance, looking like a gang member, fitting a “police profile," assault on a police officer, attempted escape, nervous appearance, social media reports, prior criminal records, and having tattoos.

Those governing Guatemala have created a prominent political prisoner before the eyes of the world — and those of a Central American journalistic community tired of the attempts of the corrupt to silence us.

In the middle of a Caribbean paradise along the Honduran coast, the Garifuna people are defending their right to survival on ancestral territory from business conglomerates, the Army, and a European reality show seeking to profit from the natural beauty of the Cayos Cochinos archipelago.

A main question mark about Xiomara Castro’s presidency has been dispelled as her husband, former head of state “Mel” Zelaya, an alleged narco-collaborator deposed in 2009, cements himself as the administration’s strongman. To fill in the family photo, one of their sons is defense minister and another is a presidential advisor, while their daughter, named after the president, is honing her politica...