Bukele offers Maduro prisoner swap
April 21, 2025
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, proposed a prisoner swap with Venezuela, on social media, yesterday. Bukele proposed repatriating the 252 Venezuelan men deported by the U.S. and incarcerated in the infamous CECOT maximum-security prison in El Salvador, in exchange for Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro government releasing an equal number of political detainees.
Venezuela's chief prosecutor Tarek William Saab criticized Bukele's proposal and accused El Salvador of unlawfully detaining 252 Venezuelans. Venezuela’s government denies having political prisoners, but human rights groups say there are nearly 900 political detainees in Venezuela, including 68 foreign nationals.
Bukele said his Foreign Ministry would formally present the proposal to the Venezuelan government through diplomatic channels. Bukele listed a few of those he would require for the swap, including journalist Roland Carreno, human rights lawyer Rocio San Miguel. Bukele also mentioned the son-in-law of opposition politician Edmundo González, and the mother of opposition leader María Corina Machado, as well as dozens of foreign nationals, including ten U.S. citizens.
(Guardian, Reuters, New York Times, Associated Press)
“If Maduro were to accept the deal, it could ease political pressure on the Trump administration, which has been accused of denying due process to immigration detainees,” reports the Financial Times.
But, while the U.S. has engaged in prisoner exchanges with the Maduro government in the past, this case is different: “Many of those held in CECOT had active asylum processes in the U.S. requesting protection from the Maduro government, including the high-profile case of makeup artist Andry José Hernández Romero,” notes Joshua Collins at Pirate Wire Services.
More Deportations
A delegation of four House Democrats has arrived in El Salvador to push for the release of Kilmar Abrego García, part of a mission to challenge the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with a supreme court order to facilitate the return of the immigrant to the United States, reports the Guardian.
El Salvador’s penal cooperation with the U.S. points to a broader synergy. Donald Trump’s aggressive policies towards foreigners build on Bukele’s infamous iron fist crackdown against criminal gangs: it’s a political toolkit that leverages anti-establishment anger to justify an authoritarian slide. In deploying strongman tactics to address social concerns, both leaders also cultivate a chilling culture of fear, I argue in a piece for the Guardian.
Haitian gangs and individuals financing and arming them could soon find themselves labeled as “terrorists” and imprisoned in El Salvador, reports the Miami Herald. The U.S. State Department is working on issuing a terrorist designation to leaders and members of Haiti’s powerful Viv Ansanm gang coalition, and the Gran Grif armed group operating in the country’s rural Artibonite region.
“The goal of the designation is less about a security strategy for Haiti and more about creating a justification to deport Haitians to El Salvador,” argues James Bosworth in the Latin America Risk Report. “The immediate policy may be more focused on the deportation agenda than security, but it opens the door for a more aggressive security agenda in the future. Additionally, other governments including the Abinader administration in the Dominican Republic may see the FTO designation as a green light to be more aggressive in its policy towards Haiti.”
Ecuador claims Mexican hitmen are after Noboa
Ecuador’s government said Saturday that the country is on “high alert” after it received intelligence about an suspected attempt on President Daniel Noboa’ s life.
The Noboa government claimed that those behind the recent threat were “criminal structures” and “political sectors defeated at the polls.” Noboa alluded to an alleged military intelligence report circulating on social media which said that after elections a week ago “the transfer of hired killers from Mexico and other countries to Ecuador has begun.” (Associated Press)
Mexican officials rejected the allegations that Mexico is involved in an assassination plan against Noboa. (Animal Político)
Relations between the two countries have been fraught for the past year — since Noboa’s government raided the Mexican embassy in Quito, where former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas had requested political asylum. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has not recognized Noboa’s reelection earlier this month, citing the president’s “dubious” choice not to take a leave of absence from office to campaign for reelection, as required by law. (El País)
More Regional Relations
“A planned joint space observatory between China and the Latin American global astronomical hub of Chile was not permitted under Chilean law, the Chilean government has said, in comments that highlighted deepening regional geopolitical tensions over security and technology,” reports Newsweek.
Peru
Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari, an Indigenous campaigner and women’s leader from the Peruvian Amazon, has been awarded the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activists, after leading a successful legal campaign that led to the river where her people, the Kukama, live being granted legal personhood, reports the Guardian.
Migration
The UK has moved to limit immigration from Trinidad and Tobago, in response to a jump in asylum claims from the twin islands affected by a growing security crisis. In the Guardian, Kenneth Mohammed argues that it “isn’t policy, its punishment. It’s the empire rearing its head again – this time in the guise of “immigration control.”
Mexico
Sheinbaum’s security policy is markedly more confrontational than her predecessor’s: “In her first 100 days, Sheinbaum seized over 100 times more arms than López Obrador did in the same period and 2,000 times more drugs, according to one estimate. After six months, she appeared to have detained more alleged organised crime members than he did in his entire presidency,” reports the Financial Times.
The new generation of so-called “narco juniors” at the center of the current Sinaloa Cartel war has brought fighting to a new urban battlegrounds, reports InSight Crime.
Regional
Many Caribbean leaders believe the fight against climate change — specifically to obtain support from rich countries — and the struggle for reparations for slavery are part of the same issue. They link the Industrial Revolution both to slavery and the climate crisis, and that the Caribbean’s underdevelopment – itself a legacy of colonialism and enslavement – hampers the region’s ability to deal with the effects of the climate crisis, reports the Guardian.
Last week descendants of slave owners and enslaved people in the Caribbean met and called for reparations at a meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. Permanent Forum on People of African Descent’s weeklong session, reports the Associated Press.
Francisco
Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, born in Argentina as Jorge Bergoglio, died today at age 88. He made his last public appearance on Easter Sunday — yesterday — to bless thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square, drawing wild cheers and applause, reports the Associated Press.
“Pope Francis, who will go down in history as a radical pontiff and a champion of underdogs,” forged “a more compassionate Catholic Church,” according to the Buenos Aires Times, which compiled some of his most famous quotes.
“Pope Francis navigated a complex relationship with politics in Argentina, a juggling act observers say explains why he never once returned to the country that informed his love for the downtrodden, for tango and for soccer,” reports AFP.