El Salvador Perspectives

In 2023, a newly confirmed US ambassador will arrive in El Salvador in a challenging environment.  On December 13, 2022, the US Senate confirmed William Duncan as the new ambassador to El Salvador. Duncan is a career foreign service officer with a long history in Latin America.  He has not yet arrived in El Salvador to take up the post, but when Duncan gets here, he will encounter a relationship at one of its lowest points in decades. For the first year and a half of his presidency, Nayib Bukele enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Trump administration then in office. Bukele famously stated after meeting with Trump on the sidelines of a UN meeting that Trump was ”nice and cool.” Bukele met several times with Homeland Security officials from the US and his government was seen as one of Trump's closest allies in Latin America. With Trump, the relationship with the US rested on a basic proposition – in return for help on reducing the flow of migrants towards the US southern b...

On their first day in the Legislative Assembly, the new majority in El Salvador's Legislative Assembly from the Nuevas Ideas party of president Nayib Bukele voted to fire all five magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Judicial Court, to immediately elect new magistrates from a pre-determined list without debate or discussion, and to remove the country's Attorney General Raul Melara.  In taking these steps, Nayib Bukele's party has sought to remove all possible checks and balances on the powers of the president. Normally, the first day of a new Legislative Assembly is a day of pomp and circumstance and photo-taking as new members of the Legislative Assembly are sworn in.  Last night, however, the new Assembly took actions which many in El Salvador are describing as an " autogolpe " or "self-coup" and as an attack on the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary. In the new Assembly which commenced on May 1, deputies fro...