The following is a transcript of episode 35 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.
CASTRO: Give them asylum and have them leave already. It’s not like they contribute anything here. If you want to go, leave!
GRESSIER, HOST: In April 2022, Salvadoran Legislative Assembly President Ernesto Castro made his point loud and clear: Journalists, leave already! At the time, most didn’t. And whenever questioned about attacks on the press, President Nayib Bukele has shrugged that not one journalist has been arrested.
Now, over three years later, conditions for freedom of the press and expression have radically devolved. For the first time in decades since the end of the civil war —like neighboring Guatemala and Nicaragua— a growing number of political exiles are fleeing El Salvador.
This is a special July episode of our podcast, Central America in Minutes, dedicated to exile from three countries in our region.
Tip of the spear in Guatemala
Here in Guatemala, in the last four years, dozens of anti-corruption prosecutors and judges, at least 20 journalists, and an array of high-profile human rights advocates have fled the country under threat of imprisonment on spurious charges pressed by Attorney General Consuelo Porras’ office.
To understand why, let’s zoom in on the breaking point: On July 23, 2021, Porras dismissed the country’s top corruption investigator, Special Prosecutor Against Impunity Juan Francisco Sandoval, who was investigating evidence of bribery in the circle of then-President Alejandro Giammattei.
In the evening, before fleeing across the Salvadoran border in an SUV escorted by the Swedish ambassador, Sandoval convened a packed press conference in a tiny room downtown, everyone wearing Covid-19 masks. This is Human Rights Ombudsman Jordán Rodas, who has since fled Guatemala, too:
RODAS: What Attorney General Consuelo Porras did today by removing the best prosecutor, who was an example to all prosecutors, is a stabbing of justice and paves the way for impunity.
GRESSIER: In the following days, protestors filled the streets and blocked off roads across the country. Since then, the high-stakes corruption cases that Sandoval and his office, the FECI, had investigated, have been shut down or put on ice.
His number-two prosecutor, Virginia Laparra, was jailed for two years, declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, and fled the country. Virtually all of their FECI colleagues —around 100 of them— are also in exile.
Once the attorney general had purged and taken control of the FECI, she converted it into the tip of her spear of lawfare. Under phony accusations of obstruction of justice, most of the employees of defunct newspaper elPeriódico fled the country two years ago. Their former publisher, Jose Rubén Zamora, remains in prison, as we covered in episode 27.
In January, Human Rights Watch counted 91 justice system operators and human rights defenders who had fled Guatemala between 2022 and 2024. Last year, according to Expediente Público, at least 20 communications professionals fled the country, seeking refuge in the United States, Mexico, and Spain.
The big question is how soon there will be political conditions for Guatemalan exiles to return. Given the gridlock between President Bernardo Arévalo and the Public Prosecutor’s Office preventing reforms, this will likely hinge on who is appointed attorney general next year.
In Guatemala, those who pursue corruption are pursued by the corrupt. In an interview with El Faro upon fleeing the country in April 2023, High-Stakes Tribunal Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez declared that Guatemala is “designed for impunity.”
A ballooning Salvadoran exile
Under Nayib Bukele’s unconstitutional second term as president, the Salvadoran Journalists’ Association reports that at least 40 journalists have left the country since May, on top of a ballooning number of human rights defenders, business people, politicians, prosecutors, judges, and former officials.
That’s because, two months ago, the Bukele regime began carrying out a series of political arrests and enacted a Foreign Agents Law similar to Nicaragua, clamping down on those whom the government decides represent a perverse external agenda in El Salvador. El Faro also denounced that the Attorney General was preparing arrest warrants for members of the team covering his not-so-secret former negotiations with gangs.
But there were signs of a nascent Salvadoran exile as early as 2021. That year, as many as 50 people fled the country citing fear of political persecution, according to Agencia Ocote. In May of that year, Bukele illegally took over the Attorney General’s Office and Supreme Court of Justice and enacted a purge of a third of the judiciary.
Among those exiled stemming from that turbulent 2021 is Judge Jorge Guzmán, who had brought to trial a cluster of former top military leaders for the 1981 massacre of hundreds of civilians at El Mozote, during the civil war. Then there are the former members of the Special Anti-Mafia Group, which had investigated pandemic corruption and Bukele’s gang negotiations. Bertha Deleón, Bukele’s former attorney, fled four years ago, too.
Whereas Guatemalan exiles see a potential way back home in 2026, political repression in El Salvador appears to barely be revving its engine.
“High risk” for Nicaraguan exiles
Last, to Nicaragua, the mother of Central American exiles. Since 2023, the Ortega-Murillo regime has stripped at least 452 Nicaraguans of citizenship and political rights, confiscating properties as well as the passports of loved ones remaining in the country, in a scorched-earth attack on exiled opposition leaders, journalists, priests, and other perceived dissidents.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights denounced one week ago a “high risk of life and physical safety” for dissidents beyond Nicaraguan borders. This followed the assassination in Costa Rica of exiled retired military leader Roberto Samcam.
This transnational repression has gone hand-in-hand with a “devastating dismantling of civic space” inside the country, they added, including the cancellation of now over 5,500 NGOs, or 80 percent of those registered in the country dating back to 2017.
In the first four months of this year, digital outlet Divergentes reported that some 340 Nicaraguans were denied entry to their country, including journalists, business people, and individuals close to the regime. The same happened to Miss Universe 2023, Sheynnis Palacios: She was denied entry to Nicaragua and media outlets stopped posting articles about her after a threat from Rosario Murillo, who claimed the coverage was part of a “provocation” of “golpismo”, or coup-mongering.
Over 200 religious figures have been expelled from the country and some denied re-entry, according to the U.N. They place the number of exiled journalists at 178, whereas the Foundation for Freedom of Expression and Democracy, or FLED, bumps their own estimate up to 283. “A country without journalists,” writes Divergentes, lamenting that 46 were forced into exile in 2024 to protect their lives and their families.
The Nicaraguan Platform of Networks of NGOs reports that the government has closed 58 media outlets since the 2018 repression. The country has been left without print newspapers, with the independent press reporting from exile and the government attempting to restrict newsrooms, universities, and other organizations non-grata from using national .ni internet domains.
There are a select few political exiles from Central America who never live to see their own return — and only wish to return under certain conditions. Three weeks ago, when former Nicaraguan president and stateswoman Violeta Barrios de Chamorro passed away in Costa Rica, her remains were temporarily buried there “until Nicaragua becomes a Republic again.”
Roman Gressier and Leyrian Colón Santiago wrote today’s episode, with production and original soundtrack by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and iHeart podcast platforms.