This is the transcript of episode 69 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.
BUKELE: This new phase, with our app Doctor SV, will cover a huge universe of patients. I’m really so excited because I think we’re creating the best health system in the world.
GOOGLE REPRESENTATIVE: That’s right.
GRESSIER, HOST: On Tuesday, Nayib Bukele announced a new incursion with Google’s A.I. system, Gemini, into El Salvador’s embattled public health system. In the bit you heard, he was talking with Guy Nae, the director of Google Cloud for the Public Sector in Latin America.
Amid years of budget cuts to public health, and after thousands of reported layoffs last year, Bukele says Gemini will help manage chronic illness in El Salvador.
Testbed for AI
The government of El Salvador says some three million people live with chronic illnesses, including high blood pressure, kidney disease, and diabetes, many of them undiagnosed. That’s a towering figure in a country of around 6.4 million.
The public health system is under increasing strain. Unions denounced over 7,700 “arbitrary and illegal” firings in 2025.
As Jimmy Alvarado reported for El Faro English in March, El Salvador is making big social spending cuts with support from a range of international financiers including the IMF.
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As for the health sector, the government is replacing primary care personnel with a telemedicine program implementing A.I. Back in April 2024, the government planned to draw from money from the Development Bank of Latin America to fund Doctor SV, this week’s A.I. medical app.
The secretary of the Union of Social Security Medical Workers, Rafael Aguirre, claims that Doctor SV cannot treat all cardiovascular or chronic degenerative diseases.
The government, meanwhile, claimed without providing more details that the app will eventually assist surgeries and treating cancer.
Bukele’s made other A.I. announcements. Back in December, he announced Elon Musk’s tool, Grok, would be introduced in Salvadoran classrooms.
In February 2025, the Bukele-controlled legislature approved a new law to cater to A.I., similar to the Bitcoin Law in 2021 to entice bitcoiners. In late 2024, the government quietly rolled back bitcoin as legal tender.
With the new venture, familiar faces are popping up. Two weeks ago, Stacy Herbert, director of El Salvador’s Bitcoin Office, announced ticket sales for a “SovAI Summit,” to be held from April 20 to 21 at the National Palace in El Salvador.
“El Salvador is open for business as the world’s premier testbed for real-world A.I. deployment,” she wrote. “But don’t trust us, come verify it for yourselves.”
A “new embassy” is in town
Next, to Guatemala. On Monday, John Barrett, the interim ambassador at the U.S. Embassy, was promoted and will now take up the same post in Venezuela.
Next up as interim ambassador is Jorgan Andrews, a career INL anti-narcotics official at the State Department. He’s holding down the fort until Trump’s pick for permanent ambassador, Juan Rodríguez, a Florida international arbitrage attorney, is confirmed by the Senate.
As for Barrett, he arrived in Guatemala in January of this year, amid bitterness from right-wing opposition groups about the Biden administration’s sanctions policy and defense of the 2023 election results.
Barrett quickly turned over a new leaf with Guatemalan elites. This year, it has seemed like every camera in Guatemala has been trained on the contentious selection processes for the Constitutional Court, Supreme Electoral Tribunal, and next attorney general.
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The Constitutional Court elections —the highest court in the country— were held in early March. U.S. ambassadors picking favorites in Central America is nothing new, and Barrett was no exception.
Six deputies aligned with President Bernardo Arévalo told digital outlet Plaza Pública that the day of the election, discussions were taking place in the presidential chamber of Congress regarding calls Barrett made to legislators.
They say he asked them to vote for incumbent candidate Roberto Molina Barreto, a conservative darling.
Molina Barreto was seeking reelection to the court for five years, and is known for votes such as vacating former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt’s 2013 sentence for genocide.
Plaza Pública also confirmed with a U.S. Embassy employee and a member of the Executive that Barrett did make such calls to tip the vote in Molina Barreto’s favor.
Samuel Pérez, a congressman from the ruling party’s faction Raíces, told the outlet that “the phrase Barrett used was something like: ‘This is a new embassy, and it’s a train. You decide whether to get on board or stand in the way.’”
Two days before the election, Arévalo claimed that it was the press that wanted to make it seem as though the Embassy was involved in the voting. He said he would demand explanations from the State Department.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy claimed it wasn’t carrying water for anyone, but said “we will not tolerate interference from drug traffickers and organized crime.”
And guess what? After 15 hours of debate during the congressional vote, Molina Barreto won.
Pressure from the United States to keep certain figures in power didn’t come solely from Barrett. As we reported in El Faro English a month ago, DOJ filings show two lobbying groups working for the Guatemalan opposition in Trump’s Washington.
One includes Trump advisor Roger Stone, who pushed to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and who wrote, without evidence: “Narco-Controlled Election Fraudster Bernardo Arévalo Emerges as the Maduro of Guatemala.”
One day before the new Constitutional Court was sworn-in, Barrett was off to his next mission, as the interim ambassador in Caracas.
Nicaraguan intelligence ties
Last, to Costa Rica, where a new investigative report by the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) confirms the identity of a Nicaraguan citizen as one of the main perpetrators in the murder of former Nicaraguan military commander Roberto Samcam, who had been living in exile with his family since 2018.
Samcam, who like many disgruntled former Sandinistas became a strong opponent of the Ortega-Murillo regime, was shot dead outside his home in San José last June.
The exiled digital outlet Confidencial reported that the Nicaraguan man Kenny Navarette, who has been incarcerated since 2016, allegedly coordinated the killing of Samcam from prison, along with other Costa Ricans.
Navarrete is not a totally unknown name in the investigation.
The report also states that, in interviews conducted in 2024 with Samcam by Costa Rica’s National Intelligence and Security Department, he identified the man as a middle man between Nicaraguan intelligence and contract killers in Costa Rica, as part of an alleged network set up to assassinate political dissidents.
For Samcam’s widow, Claudia Vargas, she hopes this new development will further reinforce that the murder was political.
The government's silence has drawn criticism from Nicaraguan exiles, political leaders, and the Legislative Assembly, which voiced concern for the more than 9,000 refugees in Costa Rica.
Vargas is also a private party to the prosecution. Her lawyers have called the murder “a crime of state terrorism directly involving the Nicaraguan dictatorship.”
This episode was written by Yuliana Ramazzini, Leyrian Colón Santiago, and Roman Gressier, with sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart, and YouTube.