Central America

‌In this episode of Latino USA, we go on a hike with Evelynn Escobar-Thomas and some of the women of Hike Clerb, to talk about the benefits of being in nature and how these women of color are reclaiming and enjoying the outdoors.

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.

Leaked court documents reveal that wrongful arrests in El Salvador are on the rise as the country courses its fifth month in a state of exception that suspended multiple constitutional rights.

El Faro has released a three-part multimedia special on the Garifuna struggle against land theft, criminalization, and enforced disappearances in the fishing village of Nueva Armenia and the sister island Cayo Chachahuate, 10 miles off the Honduran coast.

“¡No nos callarán!” —They will not shut us up!— chanted dozens of concerned citizens and journalists outside the Palace of Justice in Guatemala City on Monday morning as they waited for the hearing of prominent journalist José Rubén Zamora.

Guatemalan authorities arrested more than a dozen alleged members of a migrant smuggling network near the shared border with Mexico early Tuesday, including four sought by the United States in connection with the death of a migrant in Texas in 2021.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has accused the United States of violating the sovereignty of El Salvador—this time, following the U.S. State Department’s sanctioning of officials engaged in corruption or undermining democracy across four Central American countries.

The “Engel List” adds five dozen names to the U.S. State Department’s corruption map, and the presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras won’t be happy, as now banned from U.S. soil are many officials and business people linked to the Central American leaders.

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. All scenarios involve massive credits from regional development banks and somehow squeezing more tax revenue.

A trail of images and videos published on social media expose what journalistic publications have shown for months: that the senior leader of MS-13 was illegally freed last year by the government of El Salvador despite 40 years remaining on his prison sentence and a U.S. extradition request.

The Huehuetenango-based crime ring Los Huistas is trafficking cocaine produced by Colombian FARC dissidents for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel through the turf of its rival, the Sinaloa Cartel. The arrests of colluding Guatemalan military officers and the Huistas’ family ties to legislators beg the question of just how far the drug trade has penetrated the government and politics.

Latino Rebels Radio: July 7, 2022

Central American leaders are averting their gaze from Nicaragua’s 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.

Global financial duress is pummeling cryptocurrencies including Tether, an important piece of Nayib Bukele’s bitcoin project.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. imposed sanctions Friday on Nicaragua’s state-owned gold mining company and the president of its board of directors in part over the Central American nation’s ties to Russia.

Central America, in Brief: After the no-show of the Northern Triangle presidents at the Summit of the Americas, their foreign ministers gave strident speeches defying Joe Biden and named their countries’ terms for U.S. and regional engagement.

Guatemala, in Brief: The persecution of independent judges and prosecutors pressed onward with the order to put former top state attorney Virginia Laparra on trial. 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.

Four days before the Summit of the Americas begins on June 6 in Los Angeles, the U.S. is short on friends in the Northern Triangle. Even Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, once President Joe Biden’s ally of last resort, said he will not attend.

A Supreme Court magistrate appointed by the ruling party was years ago the attorney of “Diablo de Hollywood,” the head of the Mara Salvatrucha. The detail, undisclosed when he was appointed last year, was revealed when the judge recused himself from ruling on the gang leader’s pending extradition to the United States.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador’s congress granted a request Wednesday by President Nayib Bukele for a second extension of the country’s anti-gang emergency decree.

El Faro obtained audio files of conversations between a senior Bukele official and the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), revealing that the covert negotiations with the gangs fell apart after MS-13 considered the surprise arrest of a group of its leaders a violation of the agreement they brokered in 2019 for a reduction in homicides.