El Salvador Perspectives

The last few days have seen the battle between Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele and the independent press in his country escalate even further. The current round began with publication of an important story by digital media site GatoEncerrado about the ruling by El Salvador's Constitutional Chamber which opened the possibility for presidents including Nayib Bukele to be immediately reelected for a second term.  That decision, which altered prior precedent and the recognized interpretation of the Salvadoran constitution has been widely criticized.   In its reporting, Gato revealed that, after the decision was signed but before it had been disclosed to the public, the office of the president was informed of the decision.  The legal assistant to the president, Javier Argueta , contacted the magistrates of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and asked for a meeting. The TSE is the body which oversees Salvadoran elections and decides who can run for office. Argueta conversed with fo

Today was an Independence Day in El Salvador quite unlike any in recent memory.  It is the Bicentennial of the independence of El Salvador and the rest of Central America from Spain, and is occurring in the midst of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of   civic parades  with school marching bands and military units, thousands of Salvadorans took to the streets in a series of marches protesting government policies. In 2019, on the last Independence Day celebration before the COVID-19 pandemic, president Bukele hosted a large military parade , including a mock "anti-terrorist" operation against gang members.  The pandemic greatly limited any public gatherings in 2020.  This year, however, with parades and civic events still largely restricted to mitigate pandemic illness, civil society groups, healthcare worker unions, student groups, social movements all called for combined protest marches in the capital city of San Salvador.   The concerns of the marchers spanne

  Daily confirmed cases El Salvador is in the middle of a third wave of COVID-19 cases acknowledges the government .  The country recorded 324 confirmed cases on September 12, the highest confirmed daily total since mid-January of this year at the height of a post-holiday wave of cases.  The 324 cases equates to a high 13% test positivity rate on the approximate 2500 tests run by the government lab.  (The government does not report test results performed by private labs or other entities and has held the daily number of tests steady since May 2020).   The official confirmed death toll is 3,043 out of 99,701 confirmed cases, for a mortality rate of 3%.  You can see a set of all the El Salvador confirmed COVID-19 information at Our World in Data .   The actual death toll is unknown but certainly much higher . As always, the scarcity of quality data being released by the government continues to be a challenge in assessing the extent of the pandemic in El Salvador.   Other than the number

This story was originally published under the title  Survivors and Families of Victims of a 1981 El Salvador Massacre See Justice Slip Away Again  a t ProPublica . The judge investigating the 1981 El Mozote massacre has been fired by El Salvador’s government as the right-wing populist president, Nayib Bukele, consolidates power. For victims, survivors and their families, that means justice could never come. By Raymond Bonner and Nelson Rauda, Sept. 13, 2021 In a makeshift courtroom on the second floor of a nondescript brick building in northeastern El Salvador, Judge Jorge Guzmán has spent the last six years painstakingly gathering evidence from the survivors of one of the worst massacres in the modern history of Latin America: the slaughter of a thousand old men, women and children by the Salvadoran army during the country’s civil war. Forty years after the massacre, former senior military officers, including the minister of defense at the time, have been facing charges rangi

El Salvador has been receiving a great deal of coverage in English language press in recent weeks. Here's a collection touching on Salvadoran democracy, Bitcoin, Bukele and TPS. “El Salvador isn’t a democracy anymore”  (El Faro, Sep. 8, 2021) -- Interview with Santiago Cantón, former executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.   Is El Salvador’s President Trying to Shut Down a Hearing on the Infamous El Mozote Massacre? (The New Yorker, Sep 9, 2021) -- the law terminating careers of judges over 60 years of age and its impact on the historic trial of the worst single massacre in Latin America history. Gift for El Salvador mudslide victims comes at steep price  (AP, Sep. 3, 2021) -- Nayib Bukele delivered small modern houses to the victims of a mudslide, but never asked if that's what they wanted. El Salvador's bitcoin digital wallet beset by technical glitches  (Reuters, Sep. 10, 2021) -- four days after the launch of the Chivo App, many users are

It is pretty obvious that the US does not know what to do about the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.  Bukele has made it clear that he rejects the criticism from the US and will not allow it to influence his actions. When the US expressed its support of Attorney General Melara in April, the Bukele-controlled Legislative Assembly fired him on May 1. When the US  announced  additional funding for the CICIES anti-corruption commission, Bukele terminated the CICIES. When the US protested the dismissal of Constitutional Chamber magistrates on May 1, Bukele tweeted that the changes were "irreversible." When the US published the  Engel List  of corrupt actors which included several in the Bukele administration, none have been removed or investigated. When on August 4, US Secretary of State Blinken  announced  enhanced use of denial of travel visas to persons believed to be involved in corruption or subverting democratic institutions like judicial independence, nothing changed

Today, September 7, 2021, Bitcoin (BTC) became legal tender in El Salvador.  That makes El Salvador the first country to adopt the crypto-currency as one of its recognized currencies, along with the US dollar, for engaging in all sorts of transactions.   This comes only four months after Nayib Bukele announced his plans at a speech to a Bitcoin conference in Miami.    It is still a plan with which the Salvadoran public disagrees . The day started with technical glitches as the Chivo digital wallet app did not appear in the Apple or Android app stores at the start of the day.   President Bukele tweeted that testing was still going on.   By mid-day, the app was available for Apple devices, but later in the day it was still not available for Android devices other than Huawei phones through the Huawei app gallery. On social media, it was a day of competing images.  The twitter account of Chivo spent the day tweeting the advertisements of various local establishments who announced they wer