Podcast: Arévalo Downplays Report of Imminent Joint U.S. Military Strikes

This is the transcript of episode 75 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.

ARÉVALO: First, there is no agreement, there is a request, and that request is framed within the existing conventions between both countries.

GRESSIER, HOST: That’s Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo, last Friday, talking to reporters in the Presidential Palace. He was on the defensive: The day before, the New York Times reported that Arévalo had agreed to joint military strikes with the United States.

Imminent joint strikes in Guatemala

While the New York Times pointed to a done deal, Arévalo was quick to deny any formal agreement for joint strikes. Arévalo claimed that he only requested “cooperation,” not foreign intervention, and said the Guatemalan Congress had not authorized foreign soldiers on their soil.

The Times cited a May 19 call with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Citing anonymous sources, they reported that aerial actions within Guatemala could begin in June. And that Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, and Joseph Humire, a top Pentagon official for the Americas, are pushing to normalize U.S. boots on the ground to gain leverage over Mexico, which Trump called the “epicenter” of drug cartels.

On May 28, Spanish outlet El País published new information that seemed to support Arévalo’s counterclaim. A government source said Washington had been “exerting significant pressure for the past two months.”

The source said: “What they offered us was to select one or two locations to carry out airstrikes and televise the entire operation. But we have made it clear that this will not happen.”

Trump is aggressively expanding anti-cartel efforts through the Shield of the Americas alliance. According to the Times, Honduras is the next country that Washington will try to get on board for boat strikes against alleged cartel members.Maria Abi-Habib of the New York Times acknowledged that Arévalo had “pushed back,” but she stood by the report.

“To make a verbal agreement between Hegseth and Arévalo legal, Guatemala has to invite in U.S. troops for their assistance,” she wrote. “This then gives the U.S. cover under the U.N. mandate respecting nations’ sovereignty. This is exactly what Iraq had to do for U.S. troops.”

Family of Brooklyn Rivera detained

In Nicaragua, six relatives of imprisoned Indigenous leader and political prisoner Brooklyn Rivera were detained by the Sandinista police when they went to claim his body. He died in custody of the Ortega-Murillo regime.

Nicaraguan journalist Wilfredo Miranda, who has been covering the story for El País and the exiled outlet Divergentes, told El Faro English that six of Brooklyn’s relatives remain detained by the regime. One son who was captured managed to escape and is still in hiding.

After spending more than two years in prison without facing any criminal charges, Rivera died on May 30. He was 73. Ortega and Murillo confirmed his death the following day and kept his body in police custody until he was buried in Managua.

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For weeks before his death, international organizations had requested proof of life. Brooklyn's whereabouts were unknown since his imprisonment in 2023. Three days before his death was announced, the regime released a photo showing him in critical condition. He had undergone a tracheotomy and suffered from multiple organ failure.

His relatives, who traveled to Nicaragua to transport his body and bury him on the Caribbean coast, were also banned from attending the funeral organized by the regime in the capital.

Tininishka Rivera, his daughter who lives in exile in Spain, said that the family was never informed of his whereabouts and denied that any relatives were present at the time of his death.

She asked Nicaraguan authorities to allow her to enter the country to bury her father in keeping with their traditions.

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U.N. experts in Nicaragua, Amnesty International, and a group of former foreign ministers from Latin America condemned his death and called for an impartial investigation.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, also called for an investigation and urged the authorities to release all those arbitrarily detained.U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau blamed the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship for his death.

The Nicaragua Never Again Collective reports that at least eight political prisoners have died in state custody since 2019. And the families of at least five people with chronic illnesses have not received any information about their location or medical care since their arrest.

Opposition to deforestation in El Salvador

Now to El Salvador. A protest campaign to save one of the “lungs” of the capital San Salvador has gathered over half a million signatures to prevent the government of Nayib Bukele from razing a forest. According to local ecologists, El Salvador is Latin America’s most heavily deforested country as of 2024.

The forest in question sits on the Finca El Espino estate, where the government hopes to build a new International Fair and Convention Center called CIFCO. This is one of the megaprojects funded by China.

It’s not the first time El Espino has been deforested. Shops, schools, and residential areas were built there during other governments, but according to a report by the Salvadoran magazine Gato Encerrado, “the area where the CIFCO will be built was classified as a water recharge zone, but with the development, it will lose its ability to capture rainwater.”

The “Todos somos El Espino” —or We Are All El Espino— movement has requested to engage in dialogue with the government to stop the deforestation that had already begun. They reported that on May 27, all the trees in the area slated for construction were cut down.

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The Ministry of Public Works stated in a post on X that CIFCO’s construction will not take place in El Espino — or at least not in the estate’s Eco Park or the protected area. They said they will begin planting trees.

But Decree 361, signed in July 2025, specifies that a portion of land identified as “the remainder of the El Espino Estate” must be transferred to CIFCO’s ownership.The Environment Ministry says no studies have been conducted on the construction, environmental impact, or the permits.

One of the concerns of the “Todos Somos El Espino” movement is that even if the government plants new trees, they will not replace the mature trees they cut down because the new trees do not filter water or provide habitat for wildlife.

In a post on X, the president’s brother and advisor, Ibrajim Bukele, retorted that the problem of deforestation is the planting of corn and beans by poor campesino farmers.

When one user commented that the crops are planted out of necessity, he replied: “It’s better to modernize. Only through our children can we escape this generational trap. Move to the city, find another job, and buy food.”

In the country of Bukele, the project appears to be moving forward, and the president has held his tongue.

This episode was written by Yuliana Ramazzini, Leyrian Colón Santiago, and Gabriel Labrador, with editing by Roman Gressier and sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart, and YouTube.