Central America

The falling price of bitcoin underscores El Salvador’s precarious debt crisis, financial experts say. President Nayib Bukele, nevertheless, perseveres: On Monday, May 9, he announced a new $15 million state bitcoin purchase and boasted about his mockup of the megaproject Bitcoin City.

Colombia’s constitutional court legalized medically-assisted suicide in a ruling Wednesday, making it the first country in Latin America to do so. Euthanasia has been legal in Colombia since 1997.

A Salvadoran man who claims he was jailed, beaten, and tortured after being wrongfully deported from the United States filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the federal government, seeking damages for his treatment. José Daniel Guerra-Castañeda, 25, has since been returned to the United States and lives in Massachusetts.

Despite unprecedented peacetime policing operations that led to 27,000 arrests in two months, gangs continue to extort businesses as an expression of their territorial control. Human rights groups and the press have also documented at least five in-custody deaths during President Nayib Bukele’s state of exception.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador toured Central America and Cuba, from May 5th to the 8th, as part of his government’s strategy to strengthen relations with the Latin American countries.

A name contains so much. But what if one person has two sets of names — two first names and two surnames? How do that shape one identity?

The government on Monday repealed a law that authorized self-governing economic zones known as “ZEDEs.” This decision forced foreign investors in Honduras to pause plans to develop in these zones. President Xiomara Castro said that Monday’s repeal was “historic” and the country was “recovering its sovereignty.”

El Salvador, in Brief: 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 […]

MEXICO: Authorities this week discovered the body of Debanhi Susana Escobar, who went missing on April 9 in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, submerged in a cistern at a motel close to where she was last seen alive. Her body had been decomposing for two weeks, nearly unrecognizable, said Assistant Public Safety Secretary Ricardo […]

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was expected to make a virtual appearance in federal court in New York on Friday to face drug trafficking and weapons charges after he was arrested in Honduras and extradited overnight to the United States.

On the fourth anniversary of protests in 2018 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.

Some National Civilian Police commanders in El Salvador have been pressuring their officers to meet daily arrest quotas as part of the government’s crackdown on street gangs that have yielded more than 10,000 arrests, a police union said Tuesday.

A major blackout last week left more than 1.5 million clients —including households, businesses, and schools— without electricity, and over 160,000 without water. Authorities reported on Sunday morning that electricity had been restored to almost all clients.

Latino Rebels Radio: April 7, 2022

On Tuesday, President Nayib 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.

El Salvador’s Congress, pushing further in the government’s dramatic crackdown on gangs, has authorized prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for news media that reproduce or disseminate messages from the gangs, alarming press freedom groups.

Speaking at a graduation ceremony for new police officers and soldiers, President Nayib Bukele said that if the gangs “unleash a wave of crimes, we are going to cut off food in the prisons.”

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.

Economist Rodrigo Chaves won Sunday’s presidential election ahead of ex-President José María Figueres (1994-1998). The anti-establishment candidate and former World Bank official is popular among voters who reject traditional politics and grew concerned over the country’s national debt.

Amid an ongoing state of exception in El Salvador, 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.

Security forces intensified operations against El Salvador’s street gangs Tuesday with mass arrests, the cordoning off of neighborhoods and house-by-house searches under a state of emergency that has raised concerns among some organizations it could open the door to human rights abuses.