Central America in Minutes

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 26: It may have come as a surprise in the U.S. when Trump and Bukele shrugged off a court order to bring back wrongfully deported immigrant Kilmar Ábrego. In El Salvador, presidential non-compliance has been business as usual since 2020.

El Faro is on vacation for Holy Week. Today, in a shorter episode, we share the perspectives of two Salvadoran columnists from our flagship El Faro English newsletter...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 25: The U.N. Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua names Daniel Ortega, Rosario Murillo, and dozens of regime officials in a report on crimes against humanity. It’s their second major release in two months, compounding U.N. evidence-gathering on the Ortega-Murillo regime as the 2018 state repression turns seven years old.

Days before Nayib Bukele is set to meet with Donald Trump at the White Hous...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 24: The key to El Salvador’s prisons, and the Nayib Bukele administration that runs them, are facilities that most observers abroad have never heard of: black boxes where reports of systematic torture have emerged in survivor testimony, disease proliferates and medical care is denied, and at least 375 people have reportedly died in custody.

These prisons are a focal point of political corruption inves...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 23: Former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Ronald Johnson, a friend and promoter of Nayib Bukele, tells the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “I don’t doubt” that Pegasus could have been used against civil society and U.S. officials during his tenure in El Salvador.

The Panama government allows fugitive ex-president Ricardo Martinelli —once famous for using Pegasus against political opponent...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 22: Nayib Bukele and Elon Musk propose that U.S. judges ruling against Donald Trump’s agenda be impeached, citing the illegal 2021 removal of the Salvadoran constitutional chamber magistrates as a model to follow. Bukele claims that a judge’s order against recent deportations to Salvadoran prison is a “judicial coup” against Trump.

In the Honduran primaries, ruling party candidate Rixi Moncada says sh...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 21: The Sunday primaries in Honduras await results as civil society monitors criticize delayed ballot delivery and the press reports violations of the chain of custody of ballots by the Army. Ruling party Libre receives the most votes, according to projections.

Tension grows between the two main electoral institutions. Minister of Defense Rixi Moncada, who is also the Libre presidential candidate, def...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 20: Honduras claims it is closing in on a free-trade deal with China, but negotiations have lagged since late last year. Xiomara Castro is toning down some public references to Chinese cooperation for infrastructure as they play push and pull with Donald Trump.

Nicaraguan environmentalist group Fundación del Río filed a complaint with the Supreme Court of Justice against a network of lawyers and notar...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 19: Fidel Zavala is a Salvadoran businessman turned human rights activist who sued the director of prisons after attesting to state crimes in prison under the state of exception. He has been re-arrested in El Salvador less than a year into his lawsuit against the director of prisons.

Salvadoran unions report 30,000 illegal firings since 2019 to the International Labor Organization. Union representativ...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 18: The internationally sanctioned Guatemalan Special Prosecutor Against Impunity threatens to investigate USAID funding to independent media, echoing attacks on the press in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

José Ubico, the former president of Guatemala’s congressional National Defense Committee, is sentenced to 18 years in prison in the Eastern District of Texas after pleading guilty to conspiring to traff...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 17: Honduran campesinos repeat calls for President Xiomara Castro to respect a 2022 agreement to end assassinations tied to palm oil monocrop in the Bajo Aguán. Castro has not installed a promised Truth Commission nor propelled a constitutionally mandated agrarian reform.

Nicaraguan police and military leaders swear in para-security forces implicated in crimes against humanity, despite the fact that D...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 16: Rosario Murillo orders the removal of presidential security advisor Horacio Rocha and interim Supreme Court president Marvin Aguilar as Murillo, the newly minted “co-president” of Nicaragua, prepares to nominate a reduced nine-seat Supreme Court in her image.

Nayib Bukele slates changes to the Salvadoran penal code to make soldiers “agents of authority” when “accompanying or carrying out function...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 15: With Trump and regional migration carrying the headlines and Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveling in Central America, Nayib Bukele rewrites the constitution in El Salvador and the Guatemalan Supreme Court resumes an internationally condemned probe of Bernardo Arévalo.

Honduras and Colombia try to rally Latin American and Caribbean nations against Trump’s deportation agenda, but fail to hold a...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 14: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights finds the Nicaraguan state guilty of “abusive use of the state apparatus” in allowing Daniel Ortega’s unconstitutional 2011 reelection, setting precedent for the elections in Honduras in 2017 and El Salvador in 2024.

China hawk Marco Rubio, Trump’s top diplomat, plans to make his first official trip to Central America. Contrary to the Panamanian government...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 13: The Biden administration extends Temporary Protected Status for 232,000 Salvadorans through September 2026, but has not renewed these protections from deportation for recipients from Honduras or Nicaragua.

Per a tally by exiled Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa, 38 former political prisoners have had their asylum claims denied by the United States after promises that the Biden administration would s...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 12: Expecting increased U.S. deportations, Honduran President Xiomara Castro threatens to expel a key Southcom military base. Her Guatemalan counterpart Bernardo Arévalo, meanwhile, says the country is “open” to taking in deportations of other Central American nationals.

After weeks of claiming that the Chinese military controls the Panama Canal and mistreats U.S. businesses, Trump says he will not r...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 11: In a major universal jurisdiction trial, an Argentinian judge has requested the arrest of Daniel Ortega, Rosario Murillo, and a battery of top Nicaraguan officials implicated in hundreds of killings and other 2018 state crimes against humanity.

Two-thirds of the big business-friendly Guatemalan Congress approved an anti-monopoly law that was a priority of President Bernardo Arévalo, amid debates ...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 10: In 2024, Bernardo Arévalo failed to remove the Guatemalan attorney general from office, the Salvadoran press published evidence that Nayib Bukele’s family is acquiring significant assets, and Central American leaders eyed Donald Trump’s return for political gain.

In 2025, U.S. immigrants’ organizations plan to again turn to religious organizations to fight Trump deportations and expect DACA to ev...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 9: The Salvadoran Court of Accounts planned to let Agriculture Minister Pablo Anliker off the hook for $60 million in Covid-19 fraud while ordering six of his subordinates to repay the money from contracts he signed.

After three years of negotiations, El Salvador secures a $1.4 billion debt refinancing lifeline from the IMF and stands to obtain more from other financiers — in exchange for rolling bac...

CENTRAL AMERICA IN MINUTES, Ep. 8: The Nicaraguan regime tightens border controls, pulls passports, and puts a legal veneer on the cancellation of citizenship to keep a leash on insiders and critics alike.

U.S. congressmen from both parties criticize arbitrary arrests in El Salvador. But Republican Chris Smith cites Joe Biden’s signing-off on Nayib Bukele’s unconstitutional reelection to assert that Bukele obtained a “democratic ma...