Gang leaders reveal electoral agreement that helped Bukele
May 2, 2025
Barrio 18 Revolucionarios gang leaders revealed to El Faro details of agreements with President Nayib Bukele that were instrumental to his political accent.
The confessions ”only confirm what we already knew,” according to El Faro’s editorial board: “The gangs began working with Bukele during his campaign for mayor of San Salvador. This gang member confirms another important element: the original agreement was made with the FMLN, the party for which Bukele was a candidate. It included financial "incentives" for gang members in exchange for electoral support for Salvador Sánchez Cerén, the presidential candidate (Arena also agreed to financial incentives in exchange for electoral support); and a year later for Bukele, the candidate for mayor of San Salvador.”
Óscar Martínez, editor-in-chief of El Faro and co-author of the article, told El País that “[this interview] describes how gangs turned Bukele into a relevant politician. It allows us to reach the stark conclusions that it is impossible to understand Bukele’s rise to total power without his association with gangs.”
Regional Relations
El Salvador has become a magnet for international, right-wing admirers, writes Will Freeman in El País, comparing the country’s status to that historically held by Cuba on the left: “Bukele’s visitors learn, exactly like Cuba’s, that basic legal rights and liberal democracy are bourgeois luxuries that needed to be cleared away so justice could triumph. Just as ordinary Cubans once supposedly welcomed the revolutionary firing squads, so, too, do ordinary Salvadorans embrace life under the police state.”
Engagement is not complicity, argues Brian Fonseca in Americas Quarterly. “Maintaining isolation will only deepen Venezuela’s reliance on U.S. adversaries. While the U.S. seeks to blunt China’s influence globally, forcing Venezuela to remain in Beijing’s orbit would be a strategic blunder at a time when the Trump administration is using coercive foreign policy tools as part of a proactive foreign policy approach.”
Colombia
Colombian President Gustavo Petro pressed on with his struggling plan to overhaul the country’s labor laws, sending Congress a referendum proposal whose questions for voters include whether workdays should be limited to eight hours and whether workers should receive double pay if they work during holidays, reports the Associated Press. Congress, which twice rejected Petro’s labor reforms, has one month to approve or reject the 12-question referendum.
Mexico
“Despite signs of stronger law enforcement cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico, some officials in Washington appear to be laying the groundwork for military action against drug trafficking organisations in Mexican territory, with – or without – Mexico’s consent,” according to a new Crisis Group report. “If the Trump administration were to act without Mexico’s permission, perhaps by launching drone strikes on illegal fentanyl manufacturing labs or ordering a special forces mission to capture high-profile criminal leaders, Sheinbaum would face enormous domestic pressure to revoke bilateral cooperation or worse.”
The U.S. imposed economic sanctions on three Mexican nationals and two Mexico-based entities involved in a drug trafficking and fuel theft network linked to Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel, yesterday. (Associated Press)
Brazil
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who continues to recover after undergoing bowel surgery, has left intensive care, reports the Associated Press.
Washington Post reporter Terrence McCoy, who interviewed Bolsonaro last month, saw “a man reckoning with his own downfall, scared of prison and death, trying to reconcile how he had quickly gone from perhaps Latin America’s most powerful politician to a criminal defendant facing decades of incarceration. He vacillated between expressing certainty that he’d find a way back to power and moments of doubt.”
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is calling for a permanent monitoring system to track Brazil’s compliance with its recommendation s following the devastating floods that struck the country’s south a year ago, reports the Associated Press.
Haiti
Nearly a year after the arrival of the first 200 Kenyan police officers in Haiti, the Multinational Security Support mission is in danger of falling apart amid a worsening humanitarian and security crisis in the country, a lack of strategy by the United States and paralysis at the U.N. Security Council, reports the Miami Herald.
Migration
A U.S. federal judge barred the Trump administration from deporting any Venezuelans from South Texas under the 18th-century Enemies Alien Act and said Trump’s invocation of it was “unlawful,” reports the Associated Press.
The U.S. Trump administration asked the supreme court to intervene and assist in its attempt to strip temporary protected status (TPS) from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants. (Guardian)
Cuba
Hundreds of thousands of Cubans gathered in Havana's Revolution Square for the traditional May Day march, in the midst of a grueling economic crisis. President MIguel Díaz-Canel had called on residents to turn out in a show of unity in the face of increased U.S. pressure from the Trump administration, reports Reuters.
History
The movements of Nazi officials Mengele, Eichmann, and other high-ranking members of Hitler’s regime in Argentina can now be traced thanks to a trove of nearly 2,000 declassified documents recently published online by Argentina’s National Archive. The collection was declassified in 1992, but could only be consulted in person, reports El País.