Central America

The series of photographs in “The End of Silence,” which ran at the Eastern Projects Gallery in Los Angeles from October 9 to November 27, documents a 40-year span that follows Indigenous resistance and communal cultures of Latin America.

The U.S. State Department announced on Tuesday that it will remove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) from its list of designated terrorist organizations. The updated list will include two dissident groups that were formed as offshoots of the FARC.

Record participation and a 20-point lead for Xiomara Castro defeated fears of a stolen election based on violence during the campaign and past fraud. If confirmed, the results will swing Honduras to the left after 12 years of National Party rule marred by narco-politics and intersecting humanitarian and economic crises.

The Nicaraguan government has dropped visa requirements for Cuban citizens, a move that may spark an increase in Cubans traveling there in a bid to reach the United States.

It’s been a terrible century or so for Central America, but last year was especially rough.

The interim U.S. ambassador to El Salvador will leave her post this week, citing the Bukele administration’s lack of interest in crossing “a bridge” of dialogue, as well as El Salvador’s refusal to extradite senior MS-13 leaders wanted on terrorism charges and concerns about the proposed “foreign agents law.”

On September 8, El Salvador’s men’s national team suited up for its World Cup qualifying match against Canada with five of the eleven starters born in the United States.

Chile’s lower house on Tuesday impeached President Sebastián Piñera over alleged financial misconduct revealed in the Pandora Papers. Seventy-eight of the 155 members voted to move forward with the charges.

You have to read this letter sent from a young Salvadoran immigrant looking to join the team at Latino Rebels.

Neither the United States nor the European Union recognized the results from yesterday’s presidential elections in Nicaragua, which Daniel Ortega claims to have won with 75 percent of votes even though independent election observers reported a participation rate of 19 percent.

Daniel Ortega sought his fourth presidential term in Sunday’s Nicaraguan elections. With more well-known challengers sitting in jail, Ortega stood a greater chance of winning.

Just weeks before Honduras holds presidential elections, an independent candidate who was one of the first to publicly accuse President Juan Orlando Hernández’s brother of ties to drug trafficking was arrested Thursday on money laundering charges.

After having arrested all viable opposition candidates in the last six months, Daniel Ortega will win his fourth consecutive term on Sunday. After the international community failed to implement any measures to ensure a fair election, the opposition launched a campaign urging Nicaraguans not to vote.

Meta Platforms, the company that runs Facebook, said Monday it has canceled 937 accounts linked to the government of Nicaragua and the Sandinista party of President Daniel Ortega. Meta said it also removed 140 deceptive pages, 24 groups, and 363 Instagram accounts for violating the company’s policy against “coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity.”

Thousands of demonstrators marched in Ecuador on Tuesday and Wednesday to protest the increase in fuel prices and President Guillermo Lasso’s economic policies. At least 37 demonstrators were arrested and eight police officers injured in demonstrations that blocked roads and highways in five of Ecuador’s 24 provinces.

José Luis Araneda Cintrón, a Guatemalan lawyer, began the process before Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal to found a political party called “Nuevas Ideas,” the same name as that of President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. The new party’s cyan logo is identical to that of the Salvadoran party.

After protests against a mining project erupted into violence over the weekend, Guatemala’s government imposed martial law and a curfew in El Estor and filled the town of 20,000 residents with security forces.

Central America, in Brief: Presidents and lawmakers in Guatemala and El Salvador have pivoted toward religious rhetoric and policymaking in response to increased public scrutiny. The Salvadoran legislature cited the Bible while striking down a partial decriminalization of abortion this week, following the footsteps of Ortega’s alliance with conservative Nicaraguan churches since returning to power in 2007. The phenomenon may also spread to Costa Rica, set to hold presidential elections in February.

Honduras, in Brief: A last-minute alliance has shifted the pre-election scene to open the possibility of the first-ever victory of a left-wing party. In the middle of an increasingly violent campaign season, President Juan Orlando Hernández’s latest move was to reignite a decades-long territorial dispute with El Salvador. 

Central America, in Brief: The Pandora Papers, a global investigation led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) involving more than 600 journalists in 117 countries, shed new light on how offshore banking shields the cash of Central America’s wealthy and well-connected, including presidential candidates and former heads of state. While the practice doesn’t prove illegal activity, it raises serious questions about transparency and economic inequality.

Latino USA dives into the origins of privately-run immigration detention centers and how the detention industry ballooned into a sprawling network ripe with allegations of abuse.