At the start of his second term in June, Nayib Bukele made history in El Salvador by violating the Constitution that he swore to defend. Journalistic investigations this year revealed that he has concentrated power in lockstep with his family’s accumulation of wealth. The year ended with favorable news for Bukele’s project and those of other authoritarians in the region: Donald Trump will return to power in January 2025.
This year, as Nayib Bukele consolidated single-party, single-man rule in El Salvador, the new administration of Bernardo Arévalo in Guatemala struggled to find its stride while the attorney general continued to dismantle her office’s anti-impunity casework and deepened her pursuit of the press. The trial of Juan Orlando Hernández exposed the narco-ties of the entire Honduran political class as Ortega and Murillo, in Nicaragua, rewrote the Constitution to their liking. Meanwhile, Central America repressed or forgot its most forgotten.
In October, El Faro English launched a weekly podcast that distills the most important and undercovered news from our region in ten minutes or less: Police and army commit crimes with impunity under the Honduran state of exception; an epidemic of tuberculosis festers in Salvadoran prisons; a Maya Ixil woman recalls the Guatemalan genocide in Quiché; and clergymen are expelled or imprisoned in Nicaragua. Stream and subscribe to Central America in Minutes on major podcast platforms to get new episodes every Friday.
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