El Salvador Perspectives

Over the last month, Nayib Bukele has been attributing public security in El Salvador to either mass incarceration or a miracle from God for those who pray. Presidential Visit to Costa Rica Bukele traveled to Alajuela, Costa Rica, on January 14 to join President Rodrigo Chaves for the groundbreaking for a new prison.  The month before, in December 2025, Chaves had visited the CECOT prison in El Salvador to see Bukele's most famous incarceration site. Bukele laid the first stone in the groundbreaking ceremony for Costa Rica's new "Centro de Alta Contención del Crimen Organizado" (CACCO), a maximum-security prison. Bukele has said that El Salvador sent the CECOT  architectural plans to Chaves so the new prison could use them as a model. In remarks at the groundbreaking for CACCO, Bukele told those assembled that the only way to resolve a nation's crime problem was through the use of force.   The trip came three weeks before presidential elections in Costa Rica....

Last week El Salvador and the US signed a new trade agreement .   El Salvador agreed to a number of measures designed to make it easier for US producers to get their goods into the Central American country in return for removing the 10% tariff Trump imposed in the spring of last year. One provision involved opening up access to minerals in El Salvador to the US according to  Reuters : The United States and El Salvador signed an agreement on Thursday aimed at encouraging investment in the exploration and export of critical minerals, which U.S. President Donald Trump has described as essential to economic and national security. The deal signed in Washington would allow U.S. companies to operate across the critical-minerals supply chain in El Salvador.... Bukele has highlighted the presence in El Salvador of minerals such as rhenium and silicon, recently added to an expanded U.S. list of critical minerals that guides Washington's priorities for clean energy, defense and manu...