IRTF News

President Bukele’s “state of exception” has led to the mass incarceration of 2% of the nation’s population. Poised to run for a second term in February 2023, Bukele is upping his draconian iron fist policies—with the support of the Congress and popular opinion.

The latest:

On July 26, Congress passed by 67 votes in favor (just 6 against) a new law to allow prosecutors to simultaneously try up to 900 people alleged to be part of the same criminal group at the same time! And the maximum penalty for being found guilty of being a gang leader was increased to 60 years in prison.

Ingrid Escobar, spokesperson for Humanitarian Legal Aid, a group providing assistance to Salvadoran detainees, said prisoners are at risk of being tried for crimes they did not commit. She warned they could be prosecuted simply “for living in a place stigmatized by gangs, despite not necessarily being gang members themselves.”

While the get-tough-on-crime policies are popular in El Salvador, human rights groups in the country are taking their criticisms to the international arena.  On July 14, at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (based in Washington, DC), human rights organizations denounced the deaths of 174 people in state custody and over 6,400 documented human rights abuses during the “state of exception,” which was initiated by President Bukele in March 2022. It has been renewed by legislators every month or two since.

Concern is growing about the increasingly authoritarian measures Guatemala's ruling class has been taking to crack down on political opposition, free speech, and anti-corruption measures. On July 24, the top U.S. diplomat for the Western Hemisphere called Guatemala's foreign minister to stress that the runoff should be allowed to take place "without interference or harassment of the candidates or political parties. Guatemalans have the right to elect their government," Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols said on social media on Monday.

IRTF has contacted members of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, urging them to echo the statements of Brian Nichols and take specific actions to sanction the elites in Guatemala who are benefiting from the chronic corruption in the country. See IRTF's RRN letter of 26 JUL 2023. 

In July, Rep. Mario Díaz-Belart (R-FL), chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State & Foreign Operantions, announced that he was deferring all aid to Colombia, including humanitarian and economic development assistance. This announcement has caused quite an outcry from peace, human rights, and faith-based organizations, including the Presyberian Church, in the US.  

On July 26, several U.S. civil society organizations expressed their strong support for U.S. assistance to support peace in Colombia and encourage the Biden Administration to strengthen its support and diplomacy for peace, including for the peace negotiations with the ELN (National Liberation Army), the second largest rebel group. Peace Accords were signed with the largest rebel group, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), in November 2016.

Lisa Haugaard, senior associate at the Latin America Working Group (LAWG):  “The Biden Administration also has an ally in Colombia to check off many of the goals it has set for itself in its foreign policy: addressing climate change, protecting the environment, fighting racial discrimination, supporting labor rights, aiding Venezuelan migrants and refugees, building a sustainable and humane counternarcotics policy, and supporting LGBTQ and women’s rights.  It’s frankly self-defeating and senseless for members of the House to block assistance and collaboration with Colombia.”

Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli, director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA): “[Colombia] is applying lessons learned from past failed peace and demobilization of illegal armed groups processes to attempt to dismantle illegal armed groups, minimize humanitarian crises, prevent displacement and protect civilians. Colombia continues to be the country with the most progressive and rights-based approach to addressing the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis despite having its own internal displacement.”

Catherine Gordon, representative for international issues in the Office of Public Witness, Presbyterian Church USA: “[The Presbyterian Church of Colombia] has called on us for support in supporting human rights and with the displaced and most impoverished communities. Its assembly has made declarations about the damages from war and militarization and the grave consequences of not supporting the pathways to peace and human rights.  At this critical moment, the United States must not abandon the crucial initiatives of justice and reconciliation begun by the Petro administration.  We must continue to contribute to a future of peace with justice and equality for Colombia.” 

Bukele, a 42-year-old former marketing executive who prefers TikTok to traditional media, has described himself both as an “instrument of God” and the “world’s coolest dictator.” Over a year ago, Bukele declared a state of emergency (ostensibly to crack down on violent crime) that suspended civil liberties as authorities jailed more than 70,000 people — about 2% of the country’s adult population — in a matter of months. As homicides plunged, Bukele’s approval ratings skyrocketed. Today 93% of Salvadorans endorse his presidency. 

Steven Levitsky, who is co-author of the 2018 bestselling book “How Democracies Die,” said it’s no accident that Bukele’s ascent has coincided with a rise in crime across many parts of Latin America. “Security pushes people to the right, almost invariably, and pushes voters in a more authoritarian direction in the sense that they’re willing to accept violations of human rights, civil liberties and rule of law,” Levitsky said. “People across the world are willing to sacrifice a lot of liberal democratic niceties for security.”

Brian Winter, editor in chief of Americas Quarterly magazine, recently wrote that violent crime may be replacing government corruption as the most important issue for voters in Latin America.

And the popularity of Bukele's populism is spreading throughout Central and South America. In Argentina and other Andean nations, Bukele’s face now appears in the campaign advertisements of candidates hoping to exploit his political capital. Some politicians, including Colombia’s presidential runner-up, Rodolfo Hernández, have made pilgrimages to El Salvador to observe for themselves the cult of “Bukelismo.”

The Republicans in Congress like him too. “It’s absurd to criticize [Bukele] for giving Salvadoran people their freedom back,” said Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida and member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who met with Bukele in El Salvador this spring. “The left is so allergic to law enforcement that it would rather see [criminal gangs] Barrio 18 and MS-13 roaming the streets than criminals locked up.”

Will the Guatemalan people be allowed to vote for a government that is actually democratic for the first time since 1954?

 Or will the US and Canada stand back and watch as long-time “democratic ally” – the repressive, aptly-named ‘Covenant of the Corrupt’ government – carries out sustained attacks on the electoral process and the Semilla Party?

On June 25, to the shock of most Guatemalans, international observers and indeed the “Covenant of the Corrupt” (an alliance of corrupt judges, prosecutors, politicians, and economic and military elites who run the country), the opposition-party named Movimiento Semilla (“seed movement”) finished 2nd place in first-round elections, forcing a run-off against the establishment UNE Party (candidate Sandra Torres, a former first lady).

The “Covenant of the Corrupt”has been carrying out brazen, January 6/Trump-like attacks on the democratic aspirations of the Guatemalan people, targeting the electoral process itself and the Semilla Party that is favored to win the August 20 run-off vote.

Over the past ten years, the North American media has reported on the plight of millions of forced migrants desperately trying to cross Mexico and get into the US. A disproportionately high number of these refugees and forced migrants are fleeing Guatemala. Many have fled from land, environment and human rights defense struggles that our organization (Rights Action) supports, having suffered evictions and violence at the hands of successive Covenant of the Corrupt governments in partnership with transnational companies in the sectors of mining, hydro-electric dams and the for-export production of African palm oil, sugar cane, bananas and coffee.

Yet, in the face of this, the US and Canadian governments (and companies) have consistently prioritized their political and economic and political interests over basic issues of democracy, human rights, the rule of law and the guaranteeing of a basic minimum standard of decent living conditions for a majority of Guatemalans.

Guatemalan protesters took to the streets again on Monday demanding that the attorney general and a handful of prosecutors step down over their alleged efforts to impede the upcoming presidential runoff election. Marchers called for the ouster of Attorney General Maria Consuelo Porras, whose office is seeking to disqualify the Semilla (Seed) Party of Bernardo Arevalo, a social democrat who surged into one of two August 20 runoff spots, shocking many in the nation. Judge Fredy Orellana and prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche have also drawn the ire of protesters since the June 25 first-round vote. On Curruchiche's orders, Orellana directed the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) to disqualify the Semilla Party, alleging anomalies in how it was created in 2017. The Tribunal did not comply with the order. In response, judicial agents have twice raided the TSE, and sought to arrest a functionary there. On July 21 they searched the headquarters of Semilla in Guatemala City.

The Guatemalan presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo has denounced a police raid on his center-left Semilla party headquarters as a “corrupt” show of “political persecution” just a month before the high-stakes runoff election. In a post on Twitter, Arévalo derided the raid as a “flagrant demonstration of the political persecution we have denounced”. The presidential hopeful has blamed the police action on a “corrupt minority” but did not go into further detail. The raid follows an investigation into alleged irregularities in the registration of more than 5,000 Semilla members, which the party has denied and which has been widely criticized by rights groups as improper interference in Central America’s biggest democracy. Arevalo is scheduled to go up against former first lady Sandra Torres on August 20. 

For decades the United States has armed and supported military and paramilitary forces around Central America in its fight to oppress challenges to global capitalism. In this glorious struggle no means and violent actions were too extreme for "the nation of freedom and liberty," no matter who the victims were. Especially under the Reagan administration, violence by US-trained and armed forces ramped up, with one of the most devastating acts being the El Mozote massacre of December 1981 when the Salvadoran Army's Atlácatl Battallion killed more than 800 civilians, including children, in the small village in northern El Salvador. 

In this period of war crimes one of Reagan's most important supporters was Elliott Abrams, who served under President Reagan in the US State Department as both Assistant Secretary of Human Rights and Assistant Secretary of Inter-American Affairs. From the beginning on Abrams' was a strong supporter of the US's insurgency policies and a strong defender of dictators like Ríos Montt in Guatemala under who's regime mass murder, rape and torture were committed against the Ixil Mayan people, events later classified as a genocide by the United Nations. When asked about the US's record on El Salvador in 1994, Elliott Abrams called it a "fabulous achievement." 

Thirty years after the end of his initial service in the State Department under Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump brought Abrams back to the forefront of international politics as the United States Special Representative for Venezuela, were he represented the US's policy of starving the nation and support of the attempted coup in Venezuela. In 2020 Abrams additionally took over as Special Representation for Iran, pushing sanctions that harmed the Iranian civilian population. 

Now the Biden Administration is sending to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee the nomination of Elliott Abrams to join the State Department Bipartisan Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. It is clear that Elliot Abrams does not belong in another US administration. Please urge all Committee members to oppose his deployment. 

You can help in our (and other human rights groups') efforts.

TAKE ACTION

1) Click here to see if your US senator is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Urge them to oppose the nomination of Elliott Abrams.

2) Send a message to your US senator even if they are not a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Tell them that if this comes up for a vote in the full US Senate, you urge them to oppose the nomination of Elliott Abrams. You can find contact info for your US senators at https://www.senate.gov/

3) Send a message to your US congressperson.  Tell them that if this comes up for a vote in the full US House, you urge them to oppose the nomination of Elliott Abrams. Take action at https://afgj.salsalabs.org/oppose-elliott-abrams-nomination/index.html

In May 2023 members of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) traveled to the Ixil territory in the highlands of Guatemala. The territory is home to a number of indigenous communities of the Ixil Mayan ethnicity. The Ixil territory, five hours from the capital Guatemala City, once was lush and filled with life. But all this changed in 2009 when an Italian company sensed  profits and invaded the Indigenous land. That year the energy company Enel Group constructed a hydraulic dam changing the course of the Putal River, which sustained the surrounding communities for centuries, provided clean water and fertile land. Since the construction of the dam and the river's diversion, the once mighty river shriveled to a small creek, drying out farmland, killing fish and ending the supply of clean drinking water. As a compensation, Enel promised the villages in the affected  municipality (land district) electricity but did not connect the communities to a power grid. Instead of providing a reliable grid, the corporation donated solar panels which the communities can't sustain due to broken batteries and a lack of support. 

In their 14-year struggle to reclaim their rights and land, the communities of the Ixil territories experienced many setbacks. For four years the Indigenous Council and mayors of impacted  villages tried to conduct negotiations with Enel and the Guatemalan government as an effort to stop the project, but all negotiations were rejected and any engagement between Enel and the communities were only sporadic. In this ongoing fight for survival of the Indigenous communities, the Guatemalan government generally took the side of Enel. In 2011 community activists set up roadblocks and barriers as an effort to enforce negotiations. This peaceful protest erupted the most violent reaction by the state to date when the government sent 1,200 troops into the territory to occupy the protesting communities and enforce nine arrest warrants against community organizers. For many victims of the 36-year civil war. this attack brought back decades old traumas. 

In 2011 the communities filed for a protective status which later was ordered by the Supreme Court but not acknowledged by the Guatemalan central government. The court also decided that Enel had to talk directly to community leaders, an order that was ignored as well. After years of pressure by activists Enel finally agreed to talks, with little success. In their proposal, the Indigenous communities asked for a 20% cut of all profits made on their land as well as reparations for the damage caused by the dam's construction. Enel denied this proposal, only committing to provide materials to rebuild and a yearly payment of 2 million quetzales, around $255,000, to the municipal government--money that does not benefit the suffering communities. Enel has yet to act on its promise for building materials. 

Most recently, Enel and the Guatemalan government have stopped responding to the community leaders' contact requests. The communities filed for a protective status again, but for now the legal proceedings' impact and damages will go unchecked. Until today the dam has caused massive environmental damage, illness and violence by Enel workers. The communities will not stop pushing for reparations and their rights while constantly fearing another army deployment. 

We as IRTF stand in solidarity with the suffering communities and urge the court and Guatemalan government to set an end to this crime.