The following is the transcript of episode 59 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.
BUKELE: As of today, our war against the gangs has not had a single civilian casualty. I don’t know how to explain it, other than to say it was the hand of God.
GRESSIER, HOST: Nayib Bukele is carefully cultivating friends among powerful Republicans in Donald Trump’s Washington. And in recent weeks, he put that relationship on full display.
That was him speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in San Salvador on January 19, attended by members of the U.S. Congress. He was describing how he received proof of God’s existence.
He didn’t mention that hundreds of people have died in the regime’s prisons alone since he installed the state of exception almost four years ago. Or that police have arrested thousands of innocents by his government’s own admission.
On Wednesday, El Salvador became the 27th member of the Board of Peace, designed by Trump to sidestep the U.N. and oversee plans for the Gaza strip, alienating some traditional U.S. allies.
Bukele is of Palestinian descent. And as president, El Faro reporting has shown his personal ties to the Israeli spyware industry.
On Thursday, the United States and El Salvador announced a new reciprocal trade agreement building on CAFTA, which is of course still in force.
That hasn’t stopped Bukele from marketing it as the “first reciprocal trade agreement in the entire Western Hemisphere.”
The actual text of the agreement is hardly reciprocal. It states that the U.S. will waive tariffs on “certain Salvadoran imports.” The U.S. Trade Representative says that this chiefly includes textiles and apparel products.
El Salvador has a dollarized economy and buys much more than it sells, running a significant deficit with the United States.
The U.S. textile industry, which runs maquilas in El Salvador, claims the deal will “support hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
According to Salvadoran Economy Minister María Luisa Hayem, it means a ten percent U.S. tariff has been removed. But it was a tariff that Trump himself imposed in April of last year, on so-called Liberation Day.
And most of the new trade framework is a long list of what Trump will get in return, to the tune of “El Salvador shall.”
For example, Bukele shall allow the U.S. to explore, mine, refine, and export critical minerals and energy resources.
The treaty also bans Salvadoran state-owned or -controlled enterprises from subsidizing Salvadoran goods producers. It also calls on El Salvador to join the United States in imposing tariffs on third countries.
Article 5.2 states: “If the United States determines that El Salvador is cooperating to address shared national and economic security issues, the United States may take such cooperation into account in administering its laws and regulations.”
For Bukele, the deal is a feather in his cap with Washington. And the same goes for Trump: The U.S. Trade Representative described it as part of his global efforts to “liberate America from unfair trade practices.”
For more on what they really want from each other, read our December essay: Bukele in the Shadow of Trump.
A farewell to “ideologies”
In Honduras, President Tito Asfura took office on Tuesday on promises of eliminating three-dozen institutions, saving hundreds of millions of dollars. Spending will prioritize the public debt, health, education, and infrastructure.
On Thursday, he made waves by asking that Honduras rejoin the World Bank’s international investment dispute forum. The Xiomara Castro administration withdrew in August 2024, while Honduras faced claims totalling $12 billion dollars.
This happens when a company argues that a state has violated its rights and affected its bottom line in that country. The vast majority of the money on the line was demanded by Próspera, a Delaware-based bitcoin-using charter city.
Xiomara Castro had pulled their licenses, along with other Special Zones for Economic Development, known as ZEDEs, installed in Honduras under Juan Orlando Hernández.
Which brings us to Asfura’s cabinet. Foreign minister Mireya Agüero served from 2013 to 2014, under National Party presidents Pepe Lobo and Juan Orlando.
Finance Minister Emilio Hércules held posts tied to finance and transparency in the Hernández and Xiomara Castro years. He says the new E.U. ambassador has offered credit lines totalling $700 million toward infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Asfura has already extended a tax exemption for imports sent to him by Congress. The business association COHEP called for the extension.
Podcast: Honduras Appeals to Trump Weeks Before Transfer of Power
Honduran businessmen are a key point of contact with the United States, meeting with State Department brass just days before Trump endorsed Asfura for the presidency.
With such a loud voice from the White House, and still dogged by a corruption probe dating back to his time as mayor of Tegucigalpa, Asfura is playing up his old-school conservatism and promising an end to division, vengeance, and “ideologies.”
Even though, in its first act in control of Congress, the National Party put the international pro-life banner next to the Honduran flag and proposed Bible readings in schools.
Just a few weeks ago, Libre, the outgoing ruling party, was still using a social media hashtag, #NoVolverán: “They won’t return,” with a rat emoji. Now that the opposition has returned, the head of Libre, Mel Zelaya, left the presidential palace with a message “authorizing” his party legislators to attend inauguration.
“Volveremos” —he wrote— “We’ll be back.”
Passport repression in Nicaragua
Last, we turn to Nicaragua. On Sunday, Spain and Nicaragua expelled each other’s ambassadors. Spain announced that it had “applied reciprocity” — which is diplomat-speak for, they did so because Nicaragua did it first. The Spanish ambassador, Sergio Farré Salvá, had been in the country for only two months.
As digital outlet Confidencial reports, the Spanish ambassador and his deputy were expelled after meeting in Managua with eight aid workers from their own country. They, too, were expelled.
State media has held its tongue on the matter. According to sources consulted by Confidencial, the regime claimed the ambassador “overstepped” his authority but didn’t say how.
Podcast: Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador: The Trifecta of Exile
It’s not lost on Rosario Murillo or Daniel Ortega that Spain offered citizenship to hundreds of former political prisoners expelled from Nicaragua over the last three years.
The dissidents were stripped of their citizenship by Sandinista authorities but received a lackluster reception in the United States, so Spain was a worthy option for some.
In the last two years, Nicaragua has abandoned a number of international forums tied to the U.N. In 2024, they gave the boot to the Food and Agriculture Organization for including Nicaragua in a report on global hunger, calling it “interventionist.”
While stripping the nationality of hundreds of exiled dissidents, the regime regularly bars others from entry and withholds the passports of family members still in the country.
Just two weeks ago, Murillo and Ortega outlawed dual citizenship: Nicaraguans will now be stripped of citizenship upon acquiring another. In Nicaragua, there’s no end in sight for passport repression.
This episode of Central America in Minutes was produced with support from the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives. It was written by Roman Gressier with sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart, and YouTube.