Bukele gov't conspired to recapture gang leader -- El Faro

Jan. 29, 2024

El Salvador’s Bukeke administration was in negotiations to pay one million U.S. dollars to the Mexican Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in exchange for abducting a gang leader illegally released from jail two years ago “and turning him over —preferably alive— at a secret location,” according to an investigation by El Faro based on audio recordings, messages, and testimony.

The negotiation for Élmer Canales Rivera, the MS-13 leader known as “Crook”, was conducted by an administration official through a an exiled Sureño gang leader who sought a tradeoff with the Bukele administration for his jailed sister. The arrangement fell apart when Crook was arrested in Mexico last November and placed in U.S. custody.

“Crook, currently awaiting trial in a Brooklyn jail, is living proof of Bukele’s accords with the gangs, which the government denies. His re-capture would have allowed Salvadoran authorities to try denying that he was freed, and by extension deny the pact,” reports El Faro.

More El Salvador

• President Nayib Bukele is set to be reelected on Sunday, thanks in large part to a security policy credited with ousting the country’s feared street gangs, despite a high human rights cost. The vote will be a referendum on Bukele, reports El País.

• Last year, the government detained five environmental activists who orchestrated El Salvador’s historic mining ban. “For their peers, the arrests mark a classic government attempt to silence a social movement,” reports Atmos.

• Roberta Braga, founder and executive director of Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas discussed how Bukele’s focus on social media videos has proven politically successful with AS/COA.

Venezuela

• Venezuela’s highest court ruled that María Corina Machado cannot run for president. The ruling by the Maduro-loyal judges against the candidate for a opposition coalition is a crippling blow to prospects for credible elections that the government had agreed to hold this year in exchange for the lifting of U.S. economic sanctions, reports the New York Times. (See last Tuesday’s post.)

• “Given her high popularity, most analysts believe that Machado’s candidacy posed the biggest challenge the Maduro regime has faced in recent years and that the ruler would do anything in his power to keep her name off the ballot, despite agreeing with the Biden administration that all opposition leaders would be allowed to run for public office,” reports the Miami Herald.

Brazil

• Brazilian police raided the house of Carlos Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, today. Police also reportedly executed a search warrant at a holiday villa along the Rio coast where Bolsonaro and three of his sons, including Carlos, were staying, according to the Guardian.

Costa Rica

• Costa Rica is the latest country in Latin America to borrow from Bukele’s tough-on-crime playbook as it wrestles with a surge in homicides — a 40% increase in the last year. President Rodrigo Chaves has introduced tough new legislation that would increase jail sentences for minors, allow extraditions, and extend use of preventive detention, reports Reuters.

Haiti

• After a Kenyan court blocked the country’s leadership of an multilateral security force to aid Haiti’s embattled police, leaves international help for Haitians in limbo. “If the court ruling suggested anything, experts say, it was that if there is any hope of preventing Haiti from complete state collapse, its government, police force, Parliament and other institutions must be rebuilt,” reports the New York Times. (See Friday’s post.)

• UN officials say Haitian “gangs are using sexual assaults, including ‘collective rapes,’ to ‘instill fear, punish, subjugate and inflict pain on local populations with the ultimate goal of expanding their areas of influence,’” reports the Washington Post.

• Calls for Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s ouster “are now being heard from an unlikely source: a brigade of armed officers ostensibly responsible for protecting environmentally sensitive areas,” reports the New York Times separately.

Colombia

• Colombian President Gustavo “Petro seems to be embattled on all sides, navigating an ever more difficult labyrinth of his own creation,” argues Ricardo Ávila in Americas Quarterly, describing “a government particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted wounds. This, combined with a challenging economic climate and unfulfilled expectations, has been costly for the first leftist president in Colombia’s 200-year-old democracy.”

Regional Relations

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Petro to help secure the release of the 136 people being held by Hamas — including a Colombian citizen, reports El País.

• Colombia recalled its ambassador to Argentina for consultations on Friday after President Javier Milei called Petro a "murderous communist." Miei made the remarks in an interview with Colombian journalist Patricia Janiot that aired on her YouTube channel on Thursday. (Buenos Aires Times, Buenos Aires Herald)

Argentina

• Argentina’s Milei administration withdrew portions of a massive reform package submitted to Congress, in the face of broad dissent even within “friendly opposition” parties. The scrapped sections of the massive “Omnibus Law” focused on tax and pension reform. In a last minute Friday announcement, Economy Minister Luis Caputo stressed that the government would nonetheless maintain its pledge to eliminate the budget deficit, reports Reuters.

• Congressional negotiations regarding the government reform proposal remain extremely messy, and it is unclear if the vote on the bill will be further postponed, reports Infobae.

• The difficulties Milei faces with his allies in Congress demonstrates the inherent tension between the anti-caste position that defined Milei until the general elections, and his subsequent need for alliances in order to win the presidency and now to govern, I write in an editorial for Cohete a la Luna. The bungled parliamentary negotiations also show how political inexperience is an obstacle for the government, beyond ideology.

• Silvio Waisbord dissects Milei’s unique communicational style, which he defines as “a mix of popularizer-evangelizer and troll,” in Anfibia. “Trollism is an essential element in the political communication of the contemporary conservative reaction. It is not an accessory. Fun and sarcasm are essential tools in the revolution against wokeism that, in their vision, dominates the media, culture, universities, politics, companies, and the world.”

• A group of United Nations special rapporteurs warned that Security Minister Patricia Bullrich’s anti-protest protocol goes against international human and civil rights treaties that Argentina is party to, reports the Buenos Aires Herald.

Migration

• “The de facto digital metering system created by the Department of Homeland Security’s implementation of the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Final Rule knowingly exposes people seeking asylum in the US to systematic abuse in Mexico and the risk of injury or death, in violation of its policies and legal obligations,” says Human Rights Watch. (Via Americas Migration Brief)

• U.S. President Joe Bide’s “surprise declaration Friday that he would “shut down” the southern border when illegal crossings surge to overwhelming levels illustrates how his many other efforts to address immigration have fallen short of their goals,” according to the Washington Post.

Regional

• “For Latin American countries to ignore the geopolitical implications and national security concerns raised by Chinese investment and trade agreements is to sacrifice long-term strategic planning in exchange for short-term gains. This isn’t to make a case for or against Chinese investments, but only to point out that these sorts of considerations should be factored in when considering them,” argues James Bosworth in World Politics Review.

Critter Corner

• A Jack Russel terrier that surfs with a lifejacket on in Peru. Enough said. (Associated Press)