Tag Archives: El Salvador

El Salvador President shocked to see armored vehicles used to stop peaceful protests calling it authoritarian behavior

Proverbs 22:8 “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of his fury will fail.”

Important Takeaways:

  • El Salvador President on Ukraine: ‘The Real War Is in Canada’
  • Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, said on Sunday the crisis in Ukraine is just a distraction, while the “real war” of interest to free people around the world is being fought over authoritarian coronavirus mandates in Europe, Canada, and the United States.
  • Bukele is quick to call out authoritarian behavior in North America and Europe, perhaps because he has been accused of authoritarianism himself, so he views his critics as hypocrites. For example, in February 2020 Bukele sent troops into the El Salvadoran parliament to pressure lawmakers into voting for a bill that would fund his programs against gang violence.
  • Bukele was especially horrified by footage of French riot police rolling in armored vehicles against a protest styled after Canada’s Freedom Convoy demonstrations

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El Salvador women march against abortion laws amid planned Latin America-wide protests

By Ana Isabel Martinez and Gerardo Arbaiza

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – Scores of people in El Salvador waved green flags and marched through the capital San Salvador en route to Congress to demand loosening of the country’s “strict” abortion laws, with similar protests planned across Latin American cities.

Holding up banners saying “it’s our right to decide” and “legal abortion, safe and free,” the mostly-women protesters met as part of the “International Safe Abortion Day” being marked around the globe.

The Salvadoran protesters sought to pressure the country’s legislators to ease one of the world’s strictest abortion laws, which prohibit termination of pregnancy in cases of rape and even if the mother’s life is at risk.

The proposals taken to the Salvadoran Congress have been named “Beatriz Reform,” in honor of a young woman who in 2013 openly called for an abortion to save her life as she suffered from a chronic disease, which took her life four years later.

“We are asking for minimum measures to add to the Penal Code to guarantee the life and integrity of women,” Morena Herrera, a prominent Salvadoran feminist, told journalists.

“It does not require constitutional reform. It can be done now and if it is true that there is independence of powers, the Legislative Assembly must respond,” she added.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele earlier this month ruled out any amendments to the abortion laws as part of controversial constitutional changes his government is planning.

Protests are also planned later in the day in Colombia and several cities in Mexico and Chile.

Sweeping changes across the predominantly Roman Catholic region have seen abortion law amended in some nations, including Argentina and parts of Mexico.

But several out of more than 20 Latin American nations still ban abortion outright, including El Salvador, which has sentenced some women to up to 40 years in prison.

Mexican authorities have put up protective fences on key buildings and emblematic monuments across several cities where women are expected to hold rallies. In the past, protesters have painted over historic monuments.

Protesters were also gathering in the Chilean capital Santiago, where legislators have been discussing plans for a bill that would expand the legal access for women to get abortions.

(Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez in Mexico City and Gerardo Arbaiza in San Salvador; Editing by Drazen Jorgic and Sandra Maler)

Harris meets Mexico president in effort to lower migration from Central America

By Nandita Bose

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris met Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday as part of her first trip abroad since taking office as she tries to lower migration from Central America which has spiked in recent months.

Harris and Lopez Obrador witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding on development agencies working in Central America.

The accord is aimed at reducing the number of migrants from Central America’s Northern Triangle countries – Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – to the United States through Mexico.

Since President Joe Biden took office in January, the number of migrants taken into custody per month at the U.S.-Mexico border has risen to the highest levels in 20 years. Many are from Central America.

Harris has been tasked by Biden to address the migrant flow.

On a visit to Guatemala on Monday, she told potential migrants “Do not come,” to the United States.

She visits Mexico after midterm elections on Sunday eroded Lopez Obrador’s power base in Congress,

Lopez Obrador’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) party held the lower house of Congress but was weakened. The party dominated state votes.

A Mexican government official said the timing of Harris’ visit was not ideal. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the United States had pushed for the visit.

When asked if the election results would change the U.S. strategy in Mexico, Ricardo Zuniga, the Biden administration’s special envoy to the Northern Triangle countries, said the relationship does not depend on who is in power or domestic politics. “It really doesn’t impact our plans.”

Harris spokeswoman and senior adviser Symone Sanders said late on Monday the vice president’s meeting with Lopez Obrador will follow up on a virtual meeting they had in May.

Sanders said Harris on Tuesday will look to build on topics discussed during the May meeting such as the two countries jointly agreeing to secure their borders and bolster human rights protections and spurring economic development in the Northern Triangle countries and in southern Mexico.

They will also discuss migration specifically to the U.S.-Mexico border by stepping up enforcement, Sanders said.

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, however, said ahead of the meeting on Tuesday that migration enforcement would not be part of the discussion.

Temporary work visas would be on the agenda, Ebrard said, as well as expanding options in Central America.

“We are not going to talk about operations or other things,” Ebrard said.

“What is going to be the focus of attention today is how we can promote development in the short term in these three countries,” he added, referring to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The Biden administration has been overwhelmed by the number of migrant children and families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, mostly from Central America and has looked to Mexico for help in slowing transit across its territory.

On Monday, Harris met with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei and said the two leaders had “robust” talks on fighting corruption to deter migration from Central America.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Mexico City, additional reporting by Dave Graham, writing by Cassandra GarrisonEditing by Nick Zieminski and Alistair Bell)

U.S. to set aside 6,000 guest worker visas for Central Americans – sources

By Ted Hesson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration plans to set aside 6,000 seasonal guest worker visas for people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to two sources familiar with the matter, a small step toward establishing more legal pathways to the United States from the region.

The 6,000-visa allotment would be part of an additional 22,000 H-2B visas made available to employers in the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, a U.S. official and a second person familiar with the matter said.

The increase has been sought by business groups but opposed by labor unions amid high unemployment related to the coronavirus pandemic.

President Joe Biden has grappled in recent months with a rising number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, including families and unaccompanied children. In March, about 85,000 of the 172,000 migrants caught at the border came from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Biden officials have urged migrants not to travel to the border while systems are established that allow them to seek asylum from their home countries or come to the United States through other legal pathways.

The extra H-2B visas would be in addition to the annual allotment of 66,000 visas for the fiscal year, a tally that was exhausted in February. The visas are used for landscaping, food processing and hotel work, among other seasonal jobs.

If the 6,000 visas are not used by companies seeking to hire people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, they would go back to the general visa pool sometime before Sept. 30, the two people familiar with the matter said.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

Bumpy first weeks of Harris’ immigration role show challenges of the job

By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When President Joe Biden entrusted Vice President Kamala Harris in March with leading U.S. diplomatic efforts to cut immigration from Mexico and Central America’s “Northern Triangle,” experts described the job as both “perilous” and a “political grenade.”

The subsequent weeks have shown just how challenging the role will be as the administration seeks to defuse a crisis at the border.

Harris has pushed Central American countries to increase troops at their borders and said she plans to visit Guatemala and Mexico, which could happen in as soon as a month.

At a meeting with advisers last week, which focused heavily on anti-corruption efforts, Harris spoke about tackling the root causes of migration that have plagued the region for decades – gang violence, drug-trafficking cartels, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes – with diplomacy.

But thorny issues have already surfaced with the leaders of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and unaccompanied children continue to show up at the U.S. border with Mexico.

Representatives for Harris did not comment but cited administration statements on the issue.

To succeed in her task, Harris needs to balance opposing priorities, experts and advisers said.

They include maintaining political distance from Central American leaders while conveying that the United States wants to cooperate, and long-term strategies to fix the underlying reasons people are fleeing those countries as well as small wins that can result in immediate success at home.

Harris is still calibrating the right tone, said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, who recently participated in a meeting Harris convened about problems in the region.

“The tone issue looks at how do you both recognize the need to work with the people in the region and at the same time call attention to some of the real deficits of governance in these countries,” Selee said.

The vice president is working with members of Biden’s Cabinet and the U.S. special envoy to the Northern Triangle, Ricardo Zuniga, and having weekly lunches with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a senior White House official said.

She gets updates on the region during the President’s Daily Brief and holds regular meetings on Central America with her team, the official said.

The White House’s immigration team has shown signs of strain. Roberta Jacobson, the high-profile “border czar,” is leaving at the end of the month, the White House said unexpectedly on April 9.

Tensions are also rising between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the White House over overloaded shelters at the border.

Harris has started working as well with the private sector to expand investment opportunities in the Northern Triangle and with international organizations about strengthening those economies, while overseeing the use and flow of aid and trying to increase ways for asylum seekers to apply from home, the official said.

TOUGH SPOT FOR DIPLOMACY

In what some U.S. experts called a challenge to the Biden administration, Guatemalan lawmakers refused on Monday to swear in a corruption-fighting judge, Constitutional Court President Gloria Porras, who U.S. officials had seen as key to the fight against graft there.

Harris spoke with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei on March 30, when he asked her about the possibility of purchasing COVID-19 vaccines, officials told Reuters, a question that was not included in the U.S. readout of the call.

On April 5, Guatemala said it was purchasing 16 million Russian Sputnik V vaccines instead, to inoculate about half the country’s population.

Getting vaccines to those countries is an immediate way to show that the United States cares, said Selee, adding it was high on their list “because it is key to restarting economic life.”

An administration official said it was not politically tenable to assure vaccine supplies to other countries before inoculating every American. A spokeswoman for Harris declined comment on the issue.

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who won a landslide victory in 2019 on a pledge to root out corruption but has faced criticism from rights groups for what they see as autocratic leanings, criticized the U.S. strategy after Harris’ new role was announced.

“A recycled plan that did not work in 2014 will not work now,” he wrote on Twitter.

In March, a U.S. court sentenced the brother of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez to life in prison for drug trafficking. There is also a U.S. Senate bill proposing sanctions on the Honduran president for corruption.

Harris “must keep a distance from the Honduran government right now,” said Lisa Haugaard, co-director of the Latin America Working Group, who attended last week’s meeting with Harris.

Harris has not yet spoken with Bukele or Hernandez.

EARLY ‘WIN’ CRITICIZED BY SUPPORTERS

Her deal with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to increase troops at their borders to stop people from fleeing – which the White House announced on April 12, is already being criticized by aid groups.

“Restricting people from fleeing for their lives is not a win, it is illegal,” said Noah Gottschalk, the global policy lead for Oxfam America. “We are concerned this will lead to human rights violations by security forces.”

A representative from Oxfam participated in last week’s meeting.

Harris’ focus on diplomacy, not the way that asylum seekers are treated at the border, is a hard political sell at home, for Republicans and Democrats, experts said.

“Democratic voters do not care as much about diplomatic maneuverings as they do about the handling of migrants at the border and that is how they will ultimately judge Harris,” said Jennifer Piscopo, associate professor of politics and Latin American studies at Los Angeles-based Occidental College.

“It will be hard to separate her from what is happening at the border.”

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Heather Timmons and Peter Cooney)

COVID-19 tests: Central America’s latest tool to stop migrant caravans

By Sofia Menchu and Lizbeth Diaz

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – As the first groups from Central America headed toward the Guatemalan border on Thursday as part of a caravan aiming to reach the United States, regional governments are using coronavirus measures as the latest tool to curtail migration.

Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico issued a joint declaration this week imposing coordinated health measures to deter migration, including requirements to produce negative coronavirus tests at border checkpoints.

The tightening by Mexican and Central American authorities, coupled with pandemic-linked U.S. border restrictions in place since March, represent a sweeping effort to use public health regulations to deter movement along one of the world’s busiest migration routes at a time when a fierce second wave of coronavirus is sweeping the region.

In Mexico, the pandemic has killed nearly 137,000 people and the capital’s hospitals are spiking with COVID-19 cases.

This week’s caravan, slated to depart Honduras on Friday, would be the first of the year.

Yet, Central American and Mexican authorities are stepping up efforts to stop migrants well before the U.S. border, which will likely be a relief for Biden, whose aides have privately expressed concerns about the prospect of a growing numbers of migrants seeking to enter the United States in the early days of his administration.

On Thursday, Guatemala cited the pandemic in order to declare emergency powers in seven Guatemalan border provinces migrants frequently transit through en route to the Mexican border. The measures limit public demonstrations and allow authorities to disperse any public meeting, group or demonstration by force.

Honduras and Guatemala have also announced they will deploy thousands of soldiers to preemptively stop caravan members not complying with health regulations.

“We barely have food to eat, how do they think we are going to pay for these (coronavirus) tests?” said 29-year-old Ulises Santos from El Salvador, who is hoping to join the caravan.

Central America is reeling from economic crises, high rates of violence, and the devastating fallout of two major hurricanes that battered the region in November.

Migration experts say the public health measures are part of a broader effort by Central American and Mexican authorities, under pressure from Washington, to stop migrants before they reach U.S. territory.

“The U.S. border is moving further and further south,” said renowned Honduran human rights activist Ismael Moreno.

“The goal (of local police) is to stop migrants, whether through repression, threats, extortion, or requirements to present a COVID-19 test.”

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City and Sofia Menchu in Guatemala, additional reporting by Gustavo Palencia in Honduras, Jose Torres in Tapachula, Laura Gottesdiener in Monterrey; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Diane Craft)

Death toll from Iota slowly rises in Central America amid ongoing rescue efforts

By Gustavo Palencia and Ismael Lopez

TEGUCIGALPA/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The death toll from storm Iota is slowly rising in Central America as authorities on Thursday said they’d recovered more bodies buried in landslides triggered by catastrophic flooding that swept through the already waterlogged region earlier this week.

Nearly 40 people were killed across Central America and Colombia, and the toll is expected to rise as rescue workers reach isolated communities. Most of the deaths have occurred in Nicaragua and Honduras.

The strongest storm on record to hit Nicaragua, Iota struck the coast late on Monday as a Category 4 hurricane. It inundated low-lying areas still reeling from the impact two weeks ago of Eta, another major hurricane that killed dozens of people in the region.

On Thursday morning, Honduran authorities raised the death toll to 14 after confirming that eight members of two families, including four children, were killed when a landslide buried their homes in a village in a mountainous region populated by indigenous Lencas near the border with El Salvador.

In Nicaragua, where a total of 18 people have been confirmed dead, rescue efforts continue after a landslide in the north of the country killed eight people, with more missing.

While Iota largely dissipated over El Salvador on Wednesday, authorities struggled to cope with the fallout from days of heavy rain.

Numerous villages from northern Colombia to southern Mexico saw record rainfall swell rivers and trigger mudslides. Cities like the Honduran industrial hub of San Pedro Sula were also hit hard, with the city’s airport completely flooded and jetways looking more like docks, video posted on social media showed.

Some 160,000 Nicaraguans and 70,000 Hondurans have been forced to flee to shelters.

Experts say the destruction caused by the unprecedented 2020 hurricane season in Central America could spur more migration out of the region, which is coping with insecurity and an economic crisis triggered by coronavirus pandemic-related lockdowns imposed earlier this year.

(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa and Ismael Lopez in Mexico City; Additional reporting by Wilmer Lopez in Puerto Cabezas, Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City and Nelson Renteria in San Salvador; Writing by Laura Gottesdiener and David Alire Garcia; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Storm Iota breaks up over El Salvador but leaves major flood risk

PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua (Reuters) – Storm Iota unleashed flash floods in areas already waterlogged with rain, forcing tens of thousands of people across Central America to flee their homes with a death toll feared to be over 20 by Wednesday morning.

The strongest storm on record ever to hit Nicaragua, Iota struck the coast late on Monday, bringing winds of nearly 155 miles per hour (249 kph) and inundating villages still reeling from the impact two weeks ago of Eta, another major hurricane.

Iota had largely dissipated over El Salvador by Wednesday morning, but authorities across Nicaragua and Honduras were still battling to cope with the devastating flooding the weather front had left behind in the deeply impoverished region.

Six people in Nicaragua and three others across Central America and the Caribbean had been confirmed dead by Tuesday evening.

Nicaraguan media said a landslide had killed at least 15 other people in the north of the country. Many more were still missing and feared lost, according to the reports.

In Honduras, more than 71,000 people are in shelters, and dozens of rivers and streams burst their banks, flooding nearby streets and highways, authorities said.

Despite the dissolution of Iota, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm’s remnants could trigger life-threatening flash flooding, river flooding and mudslides across parts of Central America through Thursday.

Authorities in El Salvador have reported one death related to the storm so far, with hundreds more people in shelters.

The remnants of Iota were drifting west toward the Pacific by mid-morning on Wednesday, the Miami-based NHC said.

(Reporting by Wilmer Lopez in Puerto Cabezas, Ismael Lopez in Mexico City, Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa, Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City, Nelson Renteria in San Salvador; Writing by Laura Gottesdiener; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Spain sentences Salvadoran ex-officer to 133 years in jail over priests’ massacre

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s High Court sentenced a former army colonel from El Salvador on Friday to 133 years in prison for the murder of five Spanish Jesuit priests in 1989 during the Central American country’s civil war.

Inocente Orlando Montano Morales, 77, was also found responsible by the judges for the murders of the priests’ housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter, as well as a local Jesuit priest. The court could not convict him of these crimes because his extradition to Spain did not cover these cases.

The massacre was one of the most notorious acts of a decade-long civil war during which 75,000 people were killed and 8,000 went missing.

The judges said they found Montano Morales guilty of five counts of “murder of terrorist nature,” adding that the killings were committed by the state apparatus, making them what “is commonly known as terrorism implemented by the state”.

They added that the total maximum prison term is 30 years.

Montano Morales has been in custody since 2011 when he was arrested in the United States on immigration fraud charges. He was deported to Spain in 2017.

The Spanish government has indicted 20 former Salvadoran army officers for the killings of the priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. One of the priests, Father Ignacio Ellacuria, was a prominent critic of the U.S.-backed right-wing government.

The massacre occurred on Nov. 16, 1989, when a group of soldiers from the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion entered the campus of the Central American University where Ellacuria was rector.

Ellacuria had advocated a negotiated settlement to the military-led junta government’s war against the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). International revulsion at the murders of the priests helped to push through such a solution, with the war ending in 1992.

(Reporting by Nathan Allen and Andrei Khalip; Editing by Ingrid Melander and Frances Kerry)

Migrant deaths rise among Venezuelans, Central Americans: U.N.

FILE PHOTO: The U.S.-Mexico border is seen near Lukeville, Pima County, Arizona, U.S., September 11, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – At least 380 Latin American migrants have died on their journeys this year, many of them Venezuelans drowning in the Caribbean or Central Americans perishing while trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, the U.N. migration agency said on Tuesday.

The toll, 50 percent more than the 241 recorded as of mid-June 2018, also coincides with tightened security along the U.S. southern border, which often leads migrants to turn to underground criminal smugglers and take riskier routes, it said.

President Donald Trump has made reducing illegal migration one of his signature policy pledges. His administration on Monday cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, after Trump blasted the three Central American countries because thousands of their citizens had sought asylum at the U.S. border with Mexico.

“This month has been marked by several tragedies on the U.S.-Mexico border, where at least 23 people have died since May 30 May, that is more than one per day,” spokesman Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration told a briefing.

IOM figures show that so far, 144 migrants are known to have died in Mexico, 143 in the Caribbean, 66 along Mexico’s southern border with Central America and 27 in South America.

A further 42 reported deaths were under investigation in Mexico, and of several dozen more refugees and migrants crossing the Darien jungle in Panama, he added.

“So we are seeing a level of fatality that we haven’t seen before. We caution that with the summer months just beginning, with the intense heat that brings, we can expect it to get worse,” Millman said.

Four million Venezuelans have fled their homeland, most of them since an economic and humanitarian crisis began in 2015, the U.N. refugee agency says. Most went overland to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Brazil.

But in images reminiscent of desperate Cubans fleeing their homeland in decades past, Venezuelans increasingly are taking to the sea in rickety boats.

The overall toll includes more than 80 Venezuelans who have died or disappeared in three shipwrecks in the Caribbean in the past two months, Millman said.

UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch called for better search and rescue operations to save Venezuelans fleeing via the Caribbean.

“As Venezuelans continue to use dangerous sea routes to leave their country, the U.N. refugee agency is calling for more coordinated search and rescue efforts to prevent further loss of life,” Baloch said.”It is also absolutely vital that people are able to access safe territory in ways that do not require them to risk their lives,” he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich)