Central America

A number of civil liberties will be suspended for 30 days in El Salvador as a government response to the alarming spike in gang-attributed homicides. The violence casts further doubt on the efficiency of President Bukele’s security policy, already under scrutiny because of revelations of secret gang negotiations.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador’s congress granted President Nayib Bukele’s request to declare a state of emergency early Sunday amid a wave of gang-related killings over the weekend.

Nicaraguan Ambassador Arturo McFields denounced the Ortega-Murillo government as a “dictatorship” in an unexpected statement to the Organization of American States on Wednesday, announcing his departure from the administration. McFields urged other public servants to overcome their fear and do the same.

The judge in possession of incendiary testimony accusing President Alejandro Giammattei of illicit campaign finance announced she has left the country for exile in the United States, saying she feared an assassination attempt from the Guatemalan government.

The U.S. suspects that a top MS-13 leader known as “Crook” was freed from prison despite an extradition request on transnational narco-terrorism charges. Salvadoran courts have for months refused to extradite senior MS-13 leaders to the U.S.

How the migration regime in North America became the entangled Gordian Knot it is today, and how the immigrant rights movement can replace that regime with one based in justice and solidarity.

It’s been two decades since Faustino and Evelyn left their lives behind in Central America. Both have been fighting to protect their families since they arrived.

U.S. prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have accused former President Juan Orlando Hernández in recent years of funding his political rise with profits from drug traffickers in exchange for protecting their shipments.

Guatemala marked International Women’s Day by voting to increase sentences for abortion and outlaw sex ed. El Salvador announced plans to repeal the violence against women law. There was no 8M march in Nicaragua and key feminist leaders remain in prison. Only Honduras’ first female president stepped up this week by proposing a law against gender violence and weighing lifting a ban on emergency contraception.

A leak of more than eight million company documents revealed how a mining company operating illegally in a Maya Q’eqchi’ town near the Caribbean coastline bought local police and Indigenous leaders, spied on journalists, classified residents as allies or enemies, and sought to expel communities from ancestral land.

An anti-corruption team from Honduras’ Attorney General’s Office visited presidential offices a week after President Juan Orlando Hernández stepped down and found paper shredders and none of the financial documents they were looking for, the chief of the investigators said Thursday.

El Salvador joined Nicaragua in abstaining from the U.N. General Assembly’s condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine. As El Salvador prepares to issue a billion dollars’ worth of Bitcoin Bonds, Bukele implies the Russia clampdown underscores a key use-case for the cryptocurrency: sanctions evasion.

The government on Saturday issued a statement that blamed the U.S. for the current war in Ukraine. It referred to “U.S. efforts to continue the progressive expansion of NATO” towards Russia’s borders as the main provocation for its attacks on Ukraine.

Honduras’ Supreme Court of Justice on Thursday denied the appeal of former President Juan Orlando Hernández to be held under house arrest during his extradition process.

As Russia invades Ukraine, Ortega is closing arms deals with Putin. Maybe that explains why he is the only Central American leader vocally supporting the Kremlin’s offensive.

If the United States wants Russia to keep its hands off Ukraine, or wants any nation to respect its neighbors, it must first practice what it commands.

The four women all had sought medical help for obstetric emergencies and each ended up in prison, sentenced to 30 years on aggravated homicide convictions for allegedly terminating their pregnancies. El Salvador is one of the four countries in the Western Hemisphere with total bans on abortions.

The government of the Dominican Republic on Sunday began construction of a wall along its border with Haiti. President Luis Abinader said that the wall will “drastically reduce irregular migration,” as well as the illegal trade of arms and narcotics.

Police arrested former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández at his home Tuesday, a step toward fulfilling a request by the United States government for his extradition on drug trafficking and weapons charges.

An El Faro investigation revealed that a former confidant of President Alejandro Giammattei testified under oath that the Guatemalan leader negotiated a bribe of $2.6 million USD from construction firms to fund his 2019 campaign.

Panama participates in a global business of agrochemicals that are harmful to health, the environment and water supplies. The companies—that import, export, manufacture and use them—operate with lack of transparency, without accountability by the authorities.