The images of the Guatemalan police beating and repelling the Honduran caravan last month resemble a Renaissance battle painting: on one side the Guatemalan security forces in combat uniform and swinging makeshift wooden clubs. On the other, a multi-colored crowd of people shielding their heads with their arms, their faces alternatively set in determination or terror. In one particular shot, a man in a soccer jersey of the Salvadoran national team, standing head and shoulders above the crowd, looks stricken by the chaos. On January 15, a group that amounted to nearly 9,000 Hondurans left their country en masse, using numbers as a means of strength and protection. The Central American migration crisis hasn’t ended because the conditions that these people flee haven’t changed. Honduras, the birthplace of caravans, is in no better shape now than it was in 2018. If anything, things are worse.
The images should serve as a stark reminder to American lawmakers of the violence they’re willing to outsource. The Honduran case is actually a good lesson for Guatemala and El Salvador, too, the two countries who follow Mexico on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s list of Southwest Land Border security encounters. Ravaged by two hurricanes last November — the country is in one of the areas of the planet most vulnerable to climate change — Hondurans struggle with poverty, the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a government too busy with its own issues, since the 2009 coup, to tackle the fundamental problems of its citizens.
Honduras is also a case study in what happens when a president over-concentrates power. The Honduran Constitution prohibits reelection but President Juan Orlando Hernández exerted his control on the Legislative and Judicial branches of the government to stay in office for a second term in 2017. As a result, even the lukewarm and centrist Organization of American States called for new elections. The country was in flames until Washington recognized the victory of Juan Orlando Hernández. Hernández, now on the verge of ending his second term, is now facing numerous accusations for accepting bribes and drug trafficking.
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Let’s fast forward a year. El Salvador, January 2022. After his landslide victory in the midterm elections, back in February 2021, President Nayib Bukele has a stronghold on all of the country’s ruling institutions.The executive branch is filled with loyalists. The Nuevas Ideas party dominates the Legislative Assembly, holding both simple majority (needed to pass most laws) and qualified (a higher bar needed to elect important positions like the Attorney General and justices of the Supreme Court). So they did exactly that: the Nuevas Ideas bench elected the president of the Supreme Court and a new Attorney General, who starts his period this month. Moreover, Bukele clamped down on the Institute of Public Information (IAIP) back in 2020. Add the police and army, in his pocket since he took power in 2019, and he has absolute control of the political day-to-day in El Salvador.
Predicting the future can always backfire, of course, but I believe this paragraph will mostly hold true around this time next year. The polls certainly say so. January polls revealed that Nuevas Ideas were expected to earn around 60 percent of the vote, which rose to 70 percent in the capital, San Salvador. The Salvadoran electoral process is complex, but even critics give Nuevas Ideas and allies no less than 50 seats, just shy away from the 56 key number to pass anything in the Legislative Assembly, including the approval of funds and international loans.
From May 2021 forward, Bukele will face the last three years of his legal term in a position more comfortable than any of his predecessors since the civil war ended in 1992. No previous president has enjoyed such a broad majority in Congress since the “green steamroller” of the Social Democrats in 1985.
In short, you have the weakest, most disorganized opposition the country has had in years. During 30 years in government, ARENA and FMLN were polar opposites, each unable to take complete power because of their rival’s obstruction. Enter Bukele, who capitalized on the huge discontent with scandalous corruption and violence that had been surging in the country. Now, ARENA could secure 15 of the 84 seats in the Assembly, if lucky. The FMLN may very well descend even further into irrelevance than ARENA. The opposition needs to piece together 30 seats to block major initiatives from the government. There’s no clear path to hold that power. The new right-wing parties (there are no new leftist venues) will be successful if they each score a seat, and another couple of old parties will scramble for the crumbs.
What will happen when Bukele controls everything there is to control? It’s hard to say. Since the beginning of his term, when a crowd of his followers booed the members of the Assembly in his inauguration, he’s been focused on this election. He’s given a significant role to the military, disobeyed Constitutional Court orders, used the Treasury Ministry to pursue the political opposition, attacked journalists and human rights defenders, and, let’s not forget, threatened to dissolve the Legislative Assembly in February 2020. His vice president is also on a crusade to reform the Constitution, and already proposed extending the presidential term from five to six years, while also studying the issue of presidential reelection. None of those reforms could happen during Bukele’s tenure under the current system. But who knows? Honduras didn’t allow presidential reelections either. Come May, everything will be on the table.
Bukele will most likely have a decisive influence on each of the country’s most important seats. That is, all except for one: the United States Embassy.
U.S. opinion — as vilified as it is after the Trump reign — is still important and decisive in the world, especially in Central America. I’m the first to point out U.S. interventionism, but let’s talk realpolitik: I’ve known that U.S. Ambassadors in recent years have directly called Salvadoran legislators to press them to vote on different issues, particularly related to corruption. With a scenario like the one I’ve projected, what the Biden administration does will be the only real opposition to Bukele. And we’ve already started to see signs of pushback.
The Monday after Biden was declared winner, Attorney General Raúl Melara stormed the buildings of the Ministry of Health and several other government offices in a large scale investigation: they suspect that almost 70 percent of the pandemic spending for medical supplies have been illegal. Melara had recently been in Washington, and it’s no secret that Melara’s office has been in cahoots with the U.S. Embassy.
On January 14, the United States announced a crackdown on MS-13 leaders on terrorism charges. They thanked the attorney general’s office, but not the government, floated the possibility of extradition, and enlisted two MS-13 leaders that El Faro has namechecked on its well-documented investigation of the Bukele-MS13 negotiation.
The ousting of Ronald Johnson as Ambassador is another clear sign of the Washington turnaround. Mr. Johnson was chummy with Bukele — the two shared boat getaways, birthday parties, and lobster dinners — but also ready to downplay the accusations made about his friend: he was the last diplomat to condemn Bukele’s attempted coup on 9-F, presented a judicial TPS extension as the administration’s achievement, and suggested that journalists should not inquire about why the murder rate has decreased.
Who the Biden administration decides to send to El Salvador is important if Washington wants to avoid democratic drift in the country. I don’t believe in the good will of a Democratic administration — again, realpolitik — but I do think there’s something in the party’s best interest: migration. For the last two years, Guatemala and Honduras have been on top of the southern border arrests from the northern region of Central America. But make no mistake. We’re a country always a step away from a full-fledged crisis. If the economy doesn’t recover (and it won’t quickly), if the gang accords break and violence surges, if Bukele’s power takeover implodes, all of that could propel a new wave of migration. The route north has long been the country’s escape valve. A democratic downfall is only one of the multiple factors that could spark another Salvadoran caravan, like the one I covered all the way to Mexico in November 2018.
