In recent days, in a growing wave of police repression and arrests, the Bukele regime revived a bill to tax donations to civil society groups, deployed the Military Police to disperse demonstrators from his personal residence, and ordered detentions including Ruth López, legal director for human rights organization Cristosal, a leading evidence-gatherer of state crimes under the state of exception.

The Catholic Church in San Salvador has gone from blessing Nayib Bukele’s unconstitutional reelection and the state of exception to gathering tens of thousands of signatures against his unilateral decision to reactivate metals mining. Bukele has responded testily, drawing from a smear playbook in Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua, where priests are imprisoned or exiled and mass is held under state surveillance and veto.

Two Maya K’iche’ pro-democracy leaders who were key in fending off an electoral coup in 2023 and 2024 have now been arrested and accused of terrorism, including a member of President Bernardo Arévalo’s cabinet. In response, Arévalo and Indigenous authorities presented an injunction against the attorney general and called for renewed demonstrations. Amid an ever-steepening assault on anti-coup actors, human rights experts warn about the danger of terrorism charges to curb the right to protest.

With Donald Trump back in the White House, Nayib Bukele offers sweeping deportation cooperation while asking the U.S. to send back MS-13 leaders awaiting trial. Trump says Panama is not going far enough in shunning China’s Belt and Road initiative, while Guatemala has agreed to accept regional deportees in exchange for support for infrastructure projects. Each Central American country is forging its own path.

On Wednesday the Bukele-controlled legislature changed the Salvadoran Constitution to allow for express constitutional changes in a nearly single-party state. A week earlier, the Inter-American Court found Nicaragua guilty of permitting the 2011 unconstitutional reelection of Daniel Ortega, who is currently radically rewriting the Nicaraguan constitution and since 2007 has changed it a dozen times.

In December, two-thirds of Congress approved an anti-monopoly law proposed by legislators aligned with President Bernardo Arévalo, marking a significant improvement of their negotiating power in the legislature while sparking debate over whether the new rules will in fact curb market concentration — or create insider loopholes.

In the genocide trial against retired military commander Benedicto Lucas García, initially expected to end three weeks ago, the defense has attempted to recuse the court to delay sentencing. Last-minute tension is affecting proceedings: A judge is now on medical leave, and Attorney General Consuelo Porras removed five prosecutors from the case. Victims asked for international support to achieve the justice they have sought for more than 40 years.

Eleven years after the genocide trial of ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, that of General Benedicto Lucas García, a former chief of the General Staff, began this April. In over 85 hearings, witnesses, victims, and experts have testified about the scorched-earth campaign Lucas oversaw in the Ixil region in the early 1980s. A ruling could be issued as early as the first weeks of November.

Conservative administrations and legislators are seeking to roll back what limited progressive health and education policies have been implemented in the region in favor of LGBTQ+ people. Sex education is facing possible curtailing in Guatemala and El Salvador and access to HIV treatment is being challenged by doctors' “conscientious objection” in Costa Rica. Meanwhile, the Honduran state was found responsible in July for the death of trans woman Leonela Zelaya, the second such ruling in four years.

An Air Force helicopter crash on Sunday killed eight members of Nayib Bukele’s security cabinet who were transporting an accused embezzler with financial ties to the ruling party, detained in Honduras under unclear circumstances. Bukele will receive U.S. help to investigate at a delicate political moment: The Salvadoran president was the first to insinuate possible foul play, despite possible flight protocol violations.