Central America in Minutes

Bukele’s government told Wall Street investors in March that it hasn't totally ruled out a deal with the IMF to avoid default, offering backup plans B and C. All scenarios involve massive credits from regional development banks and, somehow, squeezing more tax revenue despite an aching global economy nearing recession. Only one of them included the expected but controversial pension nationalizatio...

Images and videos that she uploaded to Instagram and Facebook substantiate Crook’s release late last year, a fact that the Salvadoran government has not publicly admitted. The images show parts of his face and tattoos that coincide with old photographs of him in prison. El Faro also confirmed his identity with four current and former gang members and a friend of Chávez, her cellmate when she was i...

An old alliance between the Mexican Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and Guatemalan traffickers explains the criminal groups’ complicity in an area otherwise known as rival Sinaloa Cartel grounds. Evidence suggests that CJNG is now receiving its Colombian cocaine in Guatemala from the Second Marquetalia, a group of FARC dissidents.

The public defender and his colleagues are on the receiving end of this machine of detentions and convictions. Whereas before he took on 45 to 50 new cases in a month, under the emergency measures he grew accustomed to seeing 60, then 70, and as many as 95 new case files in a single day. With the exponential growth in cases has also risen the number of desperate families that he receives in his of...

Central American leaders are averting their gaze from the Ortega-Murillo regime, aware that picking a fight with the most consolidated autocracy in Central America would give more oxygen to criticism of corruption and human rights violations in their own countries. But the complicity is also about money: When in dire straits, there’s enough cash to go around at Central America’s development bank.

The documentary "The Silence of the Mole", Taracena’s first feature-length film, has received ten awards in film festivals in the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Mexico, Kosovo, Switzerland, and South Korea since its release last year. It has now come home to Guatemala. El Faro spoke with Taracena in the center of Guatemala City, near the small commercial theater in Zone 1 where she has play...

Global financial duress is pummeling cryptocurrencies including Tether, an important piece of Nayib Bukele’s bitcoin project. One year into the Bitcoin Law, most Salvadorans say its benefits have been minimal, the government keeps related spending a closely guarded secret, and its bitcoin portfolio has lost $57M in taxpayer money. The president calls for patience.

After the no-show of the Northern Triangle presidents at the Americas Summit, their foreign ministers gave strident speeches defying Joe Biden and named their countries’ terms for U.S. and regional engagement. El Salvador and Guatemala used claims to sovereignty to spurn international criticism. Honduras reaffirmed its desire for a U.N.-backed anti-corruption commission, but invoked the 2009 coup...

The persecution of independent judges and prosecutors presses onward with the order to trial of former top state attorney Virginia Laparra. The shady Foundation against Terrorism, lead architect of the legal attacks that have already pushed two-dozen anti-corruption operators into exile, has named among its next targets the human rights ombudsman and three of the country’s most influential judges.

"The next few weeks will be intense for the governments of the Northern Triangle, but especially for El Salvador. U.S. sources close to the extradition process have told me that the updating of the Engel List is in its final stage and includes the possibility of sanctioning Central American citizens with U.S. permanent residence. By late June or early July the State Department is expected to revea...

Days before the summit in Los Angeles, the U.S. is short on friends in the Northern Triangle. Giammattei, once Biden's ally of last resort, said he will not attend amid an open feud over the reelection of the corrupt attorney general. Honduran Xiomara Castro said she wouldn’t attend without Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Only the provocateur Bukele remains silent.

Judge Miguel Ángel Flores Durel, a magistrate on the Salvadoran Supreme Court (CSJ), formerly worked as defense attorney for the most influential leader of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Borromeo Enrique Henríquez, alias “Diablito de Hollywood,” according to CSJ documents published on Wednesday.

El Faro obtained audio recordings of conversations between a senior Bukele administration official and the Mara Salvatrucha, detailing the unraveling of covert negotiations for a reduction in homicides. In one of the recordings Carlos Marroquín, the official leading the talks, blamed Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro for the collapse that led to an unprecedented wave of violence in March. He als...

The government not only extended the politically popular state of exception for another month on Sunday; it also seized the moment to temporarily exempt security spending from legal oversight. Despite widespread flak from human rights groups as evidence accumulates of police abuses and arbitrary detentions, Bukele’s party passed legislation to allow for government land expropriation to build more...

On the fourth anniversary of April’s protests and the ensuing brutal repression, the opposition seems unable to find a response to the imprisonment of its key leaders and the kidnapping of the electoral process. But the Ortega-Murillo government’s weaknesses are also evident, as shown by recent internal divisions in the Sandinista party. Given the failure of international pressure, a future democr...

Days after the passage of a law to criminalize media using gang sources, officials and even the president are smearing and threatening journalists with criminal investigations. El Faro journalists and a renowned expert on gangs, who left the country for his safety, have been at the center of these attacks. The IACHR asked El Salvador Wednesday to revise the text of the law and the U.S. State Depar...

On Tuesday Bukele ordered changes to the Penal Code that press advocates warn censor journalism about gangs and would impede news outlets from questioning the official narrative on issues such as security policy and the government’s secret negotiations with the gangs. The reforms could criminalize El Faro’s newest revelation that an anti-mafia judge documented a top MS-13 leader’s unlawful release...

After a tense run-off election marked by personal invective and mass voter abstention, the controversial conservative economist Rodrigo Chaves will take office as the next president of Costa Rica in May despite past sexual harassment and an open investigation for illicit campaign finance. The former World Bank official and treasury minister has promised a hard break with the country’s political es...

Amid an ongoing state of exception, the Bukele-controlled legislature held its second emergency session in five days to approve sweeping increases in criminal sentences for gang leaders and underage members alike. Bukele also sponsored legislation to increase prison time for any kind of negotiation with gangs, despite the fact that his administration has been doing just that since its first days i...

Communications privacy and the right to legal counsel in case of detention, among other civil liberties, will be suspended for 30 days in El Salvador as a government response to the alarming spike of 62 gang-attributed homicides on Saturday. The surge in violence casts further doubt on the efficiency of President Bukele’s security policy, known as “Plan Territorial Control,” already under scrutiny...