Central American Authoritarians Greet Trump With Open Arms

Biden officials have often lamented what they call unfavorable political conditions and a lack of willing partners for their agenda in our region. But it would appear, with days remaining until Trump returns, that Central America’s authoritarians are the ones who have out-waited Biden.

Friday, December 20, 2024
El Faro Editorial Board

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On November 5, Nayib Bukele greeted Donald Trump’s victory over Joe Biden in the U.S. presidential elections with enthusiasm. Only weeks earlier, Trump had repeatedly asserted, without presenting any evidence, Bukele had reduced the homicide rate in El Salvador by arresting criminals and swiftly “dump[ing] them in our country.” The Salvadoran president, usually a social media pugilist, had turned the other cheek: “Taking the high road,” he responded on X. But by election day, he had cast bygones aside for more pressing matters: Bukele wrote that he had called Trump to offer his congratulations and discuss “the sometimes noxious effects of U.S. aid funds” and “NGOs backed by Soros.”

Trump has been, to say the least, caustic toward the region: He has demonized Central American migration in his speeches, called El Salvador and other major places of origin “shithole countries”, and promised to build more border walling and be more unforgiving with deportations. Even so, a sector of Central American politicians sees his triumph as a relief and eagerly looks ahead to what 2025 may hold for the region.

Prominent ruling-party legislator Christian Guevara was no less subtle. On U.S. election night, he posted a picture on X of an apparent gang member covered with tattoos from head to toe, kneeling penitently next to a heavily armed guard: “The ‘journalists’ financed by Soros are praying right now,” he wrote. The state of exception, which has denied due process to tens of thousands of Salvadorans and left evidence possibly constituting state crimes against humanity, is in its thirty-third month. Guevara has threatened to sue two U.S. diplomats for the State Department’s pulling of his visa after the passage of an April 2022 law, shortly after the emergency measures were decreed, that allowed for possible censorship of journalistic articles about gangs; he has gushed praise for Trump’s cabinet picks, calling them El Salvador’s “true friends.” The next morning, one X user wrote, “I hope they give you your visa very soon.” Guevara replied with a wink.

U.S. President Donald Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador hold a meeting in New York, on Sep. 25, 2019, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. Photo Saul Loeb/AFP
 
U.S. President Donald Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador hold a meeting in New York, on Sep. 25, 2019, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. Photo Saul Loeb/AFP

Bukele’s relationship with Biden has been a rollercoaster: In May 2021, as part of Biden’s early stance against corruption, USAID announced they would pull funding from institutions involved in Bukele’s illegal removal of the Constitutional Chamber, while the State and Treasury Departments sanctioned top officials including Bukele’s chief of cabinet and the Justice Department has accused Bukele of protecting gang leaders from extradition. Since the arrival of Ambassador William Duncan in early 2023, relations have warmed: U.S. diplomats no longer criticize the unconstitutionality of Bukele’s second term, describing Bukele as an important partner and seeking to help Bukele refinance the sovereign debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Bukele administration has thanked Duncan in particular, but none of this has prevented him from flashing his preference for Trump

So have Guatemalan military hardliners. In Guatemala City that same morning of November 6, retired General Benedicto Lucas García, a commander known for his brutality during the internal armed conflict, appeared at his trial on charges of genocide against the Maya Ixil people, over video conference, sporting a navy blue “TRUMP” hat. The court was expected to issue a ruling in days, waiting only on the defense to present its conclusions. Instead, Lucas’ legal team recused the court in a last-second delay, claiming the judges were not impartial. An appeals court sided with Lucas and ordered a change of court, leading to a likely retrial and the possible do-over of dozens of testimonies, including aging victims and their relatives. Lucas, for one, is 91 years old.

Within days, Guatemala’s archconservative Attorney General Consuelo Porras —who has been internationally sanctioned for obstructing major corruption cases— removed the entire prosecution team from the Benedicto Lucas genocide trial in early December. She also dismantled the special war-crimes unit inside the Prosecutor’s Office for Human Rights, which has handled a slate of investigations into senior military officers accused of crimes against humanity, and set about transferring or firing dozens of other career prosecutors. The European Union and Biden administration have both voiced support for the Ixil genocide trial. Victims, in light of the procedural setbacks, have called for Porras’ resignation.

Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras attends a press conference at the Public Prosecutor
 
Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras attends a press conference at the Public Prosecutor's Office building in Guatemala City on May 7, 2024. President Bernardo Arevalo headed to Congress on May 6 to present legal reforms that would allow the removal of Porras, whom he accuses of plotting to oust him. Porras, who is under U.S. and E.U. sanctions for corruption, was appointed by Arévalo's predecessor and led efforts to have the newcomer's election victory overturned. Her mandate runs until May 2026, and Arevalo cannot legally fire her without showing just cause under the current law. Photo Edwin Bercian/AFP

Special Prosecutor Against Impunity Rafael Curruchiche —a Porras operative whose office has served as spearhead in the legal attacks against prominent critics of corruption, like publisher Jose Rubén Zamora— appeared to celebrate the U.S. election result. A picture posted online showed him in a swimming pool, shirtless with his thumb up, with two classic red Trump 2024 hats and a limited-edition bottle of amber-brown 1942 Don Julio Última Reserva tequila: “Celebrating the victory of my friend Trump. Cheers,” reads the post. Another claimed the Trump team sent him the campaign gear. (The X account, which he has said was his, was suspended in mid-December for violating terms of service.)

A red Trump hat also made a cameo last month in the Guatemalan Congress, which since early this year has refused to consider a reform proposed by President Bernardo Arévalo’s party, Semilla, to facilitate Porras’ removal from office. The legislator who wore the ball cap, Héctor Aldana from former President Alejandro Giammattei’s party Vamos, was part of a coalition last year undermining the electoral process: He personally intimidated an electoral board in Escuintla with demands that they open sealed ballot boxes —which is plainly illegal— as Porras’ office even confiscated ballots. Asked if he had a U.S. visa, Aldana said no. “I’m not going to speak English right now, but yes, I know how,” he told a reporter. “I’ll send you a hello when I’m over there.”

As the Honduran political opposition would have it, too, the U.S. election result can right past wrongs. When Trump took a bullet to the ear in July, the National Party —which insists on the innocence of former narco-president Juan Orlando Hernández— posted: “Bullets will never silence ideas nor destroy democratic values!” Hernández had just been sentenced to 45 years in prison on drug trafficking charges: the judge called him a “two-faced politician hungry for power” and excoriated him for “publicly posing as an ally of the United States” while “protect[ing] the very traffickers he vowed to pursue.” But on November 6, Hernández’s verified Facebook page posted a video of him meeting Trump in 2019 seeking to rehabilitate their caudillo’s image along partisan lines. “I want to say you’ve done a fantastic job,” Trump told Hernández —whose wife, Ana García de Hernández, is a National Party presidential pre-candidate— in the clip. “My people work with you so well.”

Supporters of the Honduran Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship and the Libre party prepare to set fire two dummies depicting U.S. President Donald Trump and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, during protests in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa on May 12, 2018. Protestors, convened by Manuel Zelaya, demanded to negotiate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Hondurans with the presence of U.S. troops in Palmerola base, 50 kilometers north of Tegucigalpa. Photo Orlando Sierra/AFP
 
Supporters of the Honduran Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship and the Libre party prepare to set fire two dummies depicting U.S. President Donald Trump and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, during protests in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa on May 12, 2018. Protestors, convened by Manuel Zelaya, demanded to negotiate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Hondurans with the presence of U.S. troops in Palmerola base, 50 kilometers north of Tegucigalpa. Photo Orlando Sierra/AFP

Hernández is not alone in playing the Trump card. Salvador Nasralla, a sunbaked former sports presenter and opposition leader who, until May, was President Xiomara Castro’s improbable vice president, mimed Trump’s fist-pumping on TikTok to the tune of the Village People anthem “YMCA”. Nasralla competed in 2021 with a party he named after himself, Salvador de Honduras (“Savior of Honduras”), joining Castro to form a winning ticket. Early next year he will again seek the presidential ticket in the Liberal Party primary, facing off with Jorge Cálix, a recent deserter of Castro’s ruling party, Libre.

Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves, amid a spiraling crisis of drug trafficking-related violence, will undoubtedly be an eager suitor: He modeled his 2022 campaign on the MAGA movement, promising to “Make Costa Rica Prosperous Again.” He has voiced open disdain for the separation of powers that, as he tells it, prevents him from taking more aggressive measures to rein in homicides and has led to numerous corruption investigations into him and his administration. After receiving Bukele weeks ago in San José to announce the founding of a group of countries called the “League of Nations” —no, not the precursor to the United Nations— Chaves allowed Salvadoran soldiers onto Costa Rican soil, where there has been no Army since its abolition in 1948, to attend to the tropical storm season. He had not first received permission from the legislature, but once everything was already underway, legislators quickly granted it.

Chaves has administratively harassed the press and called journalists “rats” and “bad people looking to harm this country.” Days ago, top editors of newspaper La Nación resigned under pressure from owners to tone down criticism of the administration. It is easy to imagine, should Chaves place drug trafficking and migration at the forefront, an uncomplicated relationship with the incoming U.S. administration.

The regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua was the only Central American government to not immediately recognize Trump’s victory, even though they did express condolences for the attempted assassination of Trump in July, condemning “all forms of terror.” The Nicaraguan regime’s security forces and paramilitaries murdered over 300 people and imprisoned and exiled hundreds more in 2018, in the second year of the Trump administration, paving the way to dismantle the two main opposition movements and incarcerate seven presidential contenders in the 2021 elections. Nicaragua has been the only point of high-level congressional agreement on Central America policy under Biden, even if the United States retains little direct influence inside the country; despite U.S. rhetoric, both Republican and Democrat, toward a dictator like Ortega, the United States has not stopped the authoritarian creep of the Sandinista leader, who continues to make new headway.

The presidential couple has decreed sweeping changes to the constitution including the creation of the title “co-president” — a position that Vice President Rosario Murillo will assume, ushering in the return of family dynasty rule under broad speculation about Ortega’s health and a crackdown against internal dissent. The Executive Branch will also “coordinate” the Judicial and Legislative Branches; the stripping of citizenship, in open violation of Nicaragua’s international obligations, will be written into law; and, amid a lawfare assault on Catholic priests and other religious leaders, faith-based organizations will now be obliged to remain free of any “foreign control.” The Nicaraguan regime dresses itself in revolutionary-socialist and anti-imperialist discourse while striking deals with an array of national and international businesses, cooperating with the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, and staying cordial even with the IMF.

This handout picture released by the Nicaraguan Presidency shows President Daniel Ortega (right) and his wife and Vice-President Rosario Murillo attending an act to commemorate the 44th anniversary of the Nicaraguan Revolution in Managua, on July 19, 2023. Photo Jairo Cajina/Nicaraguan Presidency/AFP
 
This handout picture released by the Nicaraguan Presidency shows President Daniel Ortega (right) and his wife and Vice-President Rosario Murillo attending an act to commemorate the 44th anniversary of the Nicaraguan Revolution in Managua, on July 19, 2023. Photo Jairo Cajina/Nicaraguan Presidency/AFP

Trumpland, in turn, has shown signs of reciprocity with certain Central American leaders. Bukele’s swearing-in to an unconstitutional second term in June was a who’s-who of conservative U.S. influencers: Donald Trump Jr., CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. While a senior Biden administration delegation also attended, Trump Jr. was the only non-state invitee to receive a personal red carpet on government social media accounts. The day before, his father had been convicted of paying hush money to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. In El Salvador, police had just arrested nine leaders of the opposition party FMLN, a historic left-wing party reduced to irrelevance by Bukele, accusing them of planning a bombing on inauguration day. They have yet to provide evidence, but even if there was any, the sealing of judicial information would keep it a secret. In a video with Trump Jr., Bukele lied: “We don’t jail the opposition here.”

Early staffing decisions by Trump, who top Central American and U.S. diplomats expect will take a transactional and personalistic approach to his deportation-dominated agenda in the region, have made multiple nods to El Salvador. Another inauguration attendee, former Ambassador to El Salvador Ronald Johnson (2019-2021), a former Green Beret and CIA liaison who helped Bukele make inroads with the Republican Party under Biden, has now been named Ambassador to Mexico, a position key to Trump on immigration and trade. Johnson’s warm relationship with Bukele was a far cry from the recriminations of his successor, Jean Manes, who, upon her resignation as interim chief of mission months after the removal of the Constitutional Chamber, compared Bukele to Hugo Chávez. From January 2021 —when Bukele came up with the Grand Order of Francisco Morazán, in order to award the new recognition to Johnson— to Manes’ resignation in November of that year, El Salvador’s relations with the United States swung from one extreme to another: From Bukele calling Johnson a “friend” to Manes’ precipitous departure. In the early days of Biden’s term, things unraveled quickly for the Salvadoran president.

Former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, co-founder of the El Salvador Caucus who made his political name in opposition to traditional Republican leadership and full-throated support for Trump, was fleetingly named attorney general. Gaetz, another prominent visitor to El Salvador in June, had gushed that Bukele was “an example to the Western world” for shunning “the siren call of globalism.” Bukele responded in kind, holding a press conference to celebrate Gaetz’s ill-fated nomination to the Senate and posting a video to X of the two men walking together down a lakeside staircase: “I knew you were destined to do great things, my friend.” Gaetz soon withdrew as he maneuvered to avoid the airing of the findings of a congressional investigation into his alleged sexual intercourse with a minor.

Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, gives a speech at CPAC in National Harbor, Maryland, on Feb. 22, 2024. Photo Brendan Smialowsky/AFP
 
Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, gives a speech at CPAC in National Harbor, Maryland, on Feb. 22, 2024. Photo Brendan Smialowsky/AFP

Not all of Trump’s nominees have a decidedly anti-establishment bent. In an indication that his administration could take an increased interest in the region, Marco Rubio, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee with a longstanding focus on Latin America and the Caribbean —who Trump ridiculed in 2016, during the Republican primary, as “Little Marco”— has been named Secretary of State. Rubio has taken a harsh stance toward Nicaragua, suggesting support for commercial sanctions — and that CAFTA could be on the table. In perhaps the clearest articulation of a Central America policy outside of curbing immigration and carrying out mass deportations, the Trump transition team has expressed interest in efforts to unite political exiles from Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba.

As for Guatemala, the Trump administration may not play into the attorney general’s hand as much as she would like to project: While Rubio has suggested that the Biden administration has had an overly heavy hand with its anti-corruption activism against Porras and allies, he also called for Arévalo to duly take office — a repudiation of the attorney general’s incursion into the recent electoral process. Marco Rubio has personally met with one sitting leader from Central America: Bukele, in person, in San Salvador in March 2023. “El Salvador is a bright spot in our region,” he said in February of this year, after Bukele was elected to an unconstitutional second term.

Trump loyalist and former Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, after being shortlisted for Secretary of State, has ultimately been named presidential envoy for “special missions”. On a trip to Guatemala in January, as the U.S. State Department by its own admission twisted arms to cajole pro-coup actors into line, Grenell reportedly promised Porras’ allies in Congress that “heads will roll” at the Embassy under Trump. (The incoming president wrote on Truth Social that Grenell’s assignments will include “some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea.”)

U.S. President Joe Biden meets with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House on Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. President Biden continued the tradition inviting the newly-elected president to meet at the White House after Trump won the presidential election on November 5. Photo Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP
 
U.S. President Joe Biden meets with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House on Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. President Biden continued the tradition inviting the newly-elected president to meet at the White House after Trump won the presidential election on November 5. Photo Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP

The sound of readymade alliances clicking into place contrasts with the Biden administration’s ping-pong search for friends here. When their lukewarm relationship with Nayib Bukele soured following his co-optation of the judiciary in 2021, they drifted toward Alejandro Giammattei in Guatemala; as it became clear that the latter would confirm Porras to a second term, the extradition of Juan Orlando Hernández seemed to allow them to turn over a new leaf with Xiomara Castro in Honduras; but she, too, quickly bristled at corruption sanctions touching her administration and Libre, and relations have since remained constantly brittle; so the United States tried to regain ground in El Salvador, muting criticism of Bukele’s reelection while claiming realpolitik as their defense. Its only natural ally has been the mild-mannered social-democrat Bernardo Arévalo, who replaced Giammattei in January and has eagerly courted international support as a counterweight to his domestic political adversaries.

It is no secret that Donald Trump, Biden’s predecessor and successor, is an aspirational figure for autocrats around the world, including here. As former Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla recently said, his first term did not go well for Central America: The U.S. government closely cooperated with governments to thwart migration, resulting in the further militarization of Mexican and Guatemalan borders and the pursuit of safe-third-country agreements to prevent asylum seekers from presenting claims in the United States. In exchange, the Trump State Department turned a blind eye to some political corruption. Perhaps no case better evidenced this transaction than the pulling of U.S. support for the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which since 2019 has ushered in a period of brutal lawfare that today continues to threaten the democratically elected administration of Bernardo Arévalo.

Biden, like his recent predecessors, has clung to a Central America policy prioritizing anti-immigration measures above other regional objectives — albeit with a multilateral veneer, holding a regional summit on migration in Guatemala City in May. Trump’s plan to enact a mass deportation unseen since the 1950s could further strain the little to no infrastructure to assist returnees in Central American receiving countries. Just as our economies depend on remittances, so does that of the United States rely on undocumented labor. Even if Biden renews the Temporary Protected Status of tens of thousands of people from El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua before January 20, Trump could cancel the program. Like during his first term, the incoming administration has expressed hostility to refugees and to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump arrives at a House Republicans Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. As is tradition with incoming presidents, Trump traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House as well as meet with Republican congressmen on Capitol Hill. Photo Andrew Harnik/Getty Images/AFP
 
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump arrives at a House Republicans Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. As is tradition with incoming presidents, Trump traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House as well as meet with Republican congressmen on Capitol Hill. Photo Andrew Harnik/Getty Images/AFP

Also in the air is Biden’s sanctions policy against commercial spyware vendors such as the Israel-based company NSO Group, whom El Faro has sued in California. It is yet unclear how Donald Trump, who has threatened to wield the U.S. justice system against political opponents, the press, and other perceived adversaries, will weigh the use of these foreign tools of a booming espionage industry against the U.S. interest in holding a monopoly on hacking; nor what it means for U.S. and Central American governments’ acquisition of high-caliber spyware and its possible deployment against civil society.

As Cynthia Arnson wrote in a recent essay, “The United States and Central America: The Limits of Influence,” Biden officials have lamented what they call unfavorable political conditions and a lack of willing partners for their agenda in our region. But it would appear, with days remaining until Trump returns, that Central America’s authoritarians are the ones who have out-waited Biden.