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 […]

Nelson Hernández, a North Carolina hip-hop artist who worked in the U.S. installing floors, was arrested in January while visiting El Salvador for his wedding.

The same day that Nayib Bukele staged a military siege of the gang bastion Soyapango, Xiomara Castro deployed police and military in 162 of Honduras’ most marginalized urban communities after decreeing a state of exception. The suspension of constitutional guarantees goes even further than in the Salvadoran model.

On Thursday, El Salvador’s Independence Day, President Nayib Bukele announced that he will seek re-election when his five-year term ends in 2024, defying a constitutional ban on consecutive re-election. Earlier that day, as the government held a military parade, thousands marched in the capital against Bukele and his policies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — For months, the strictest measures confronting the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America seemed to keep infections in check in El Salvador, but a gradual reopening combined with a political stalemate has seen infections increase nearly fourfold.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — President Nayib Bukele is again locked in battle with El Salvador’s Supreme Court after its constitutional chamber ruled his government’s obligatory stay-at-home decree unconstitutional.

After candidate registration for Guatemala’s June elections closed this weekend, electoral authorities, toeing the line for far-right political operatives, have spuriously excluded two presidential tickets, clearing the way for conservative Zury Ríos.

This week’s wrap-up comes to you from the cozy confines of quarantine, as senior editor Hector Luis Alamo has managed to catch COVID for only the second time this year.

A group of 16 municipalities filed a lawsuit on November 22 against multiple Big Oil companies for downplaying the risks of their fossil-fuel products on climate change.

The announcement, made on Friday, is part of the Biden administration’s effort to directly address the disproportionate impacts of pollution that have existed for decades in many low-income communities and communities of color.

Nine months before the presidential election, the country’s right-wing regime is fracturing into rivaling projects as progressive groups discuss the elusive idea of a united candidacy. Meanwhile, electoral authorities are indulging the pre-campaigning by the ruling party and top conservative Zury Ríos.

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.

Hearings have been suspected for two weeks after more than a hundred workers tested positive for coronavirus.

In the age of COVID-19, anything other than ending deportations is a high-risk, potentially disastrous move.