Trump administration: El Salvador's Bukele not a dictator
Bukele posted the statement of U.S. support on X Tuesday.
On Wednesday, the U.S. State Department said in a statement to The Associated Press that the constitutional change axing term limits in the Central American country was made by a 'democratically elected' Congress and that 'it is up to them to decide how their country should be governed.'
'We reject the comparison of El Salvador's democratically based and constitutionally sound legislative process with illegitimate dictatorial regimes elsewhere in our region,' the statement said.
The speedy approval of indefinite presidential terms last week generated warnings from watchdogs and El Salvador's beleaguered opposition that it spelled the end of the country's democracy. The Congress also approved extending presidential terms from five to six years.
'It's unfortunate to see the US government is defending efforts to establish an autocracy in El Salvador. This undermines the credibility of the State Department's criticism to other authoritarian governments and dictatorships in the region,' said Juan Pappier, Americas deputy director for Human Rights Watch.
El Salvador's archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas joined those expressing concern on Wednesday and called on lawmakers to reconsider approving the overhaul 'without consulting' the Salvadoran people, which was crucial for the 'legitimacy' of the constitutional reform.
The populist leader and his New Ideas party have spent years consolidating power, weakening checks and balances as they placed loyalists on the highest courts, undercut government watchdogs and pursued political opponents and critics.
Bukele remains wildly popular, largely because his all-out pursuit of the country's once-powerful street gangs has brought security, though critics argue at the cost of due process.
Bukele defended the constitutional changes last week, writing on X that many European nations allow indefinite reelection 'but when a small, poor country like El Salvador tries to do the same, suddenly it's the end of democracy.'
Critics have said that is a false comparison, as those nations have stronger democratic institutions to serve as a check on executive power.
Increasingly though, those critics are leaving the country out of fear of arrest.
Watchdogs say an escalating crackdown on dissent is underway by Bukele, who has been emboldened by his alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump. After initially being critical of Bukele, the Biden administration also remained largely silent over human rights violations and concentration of power in El Salvador as the country helped slow migration north.
But as Trump has reshaped American democracy, Bukele's critics say that lack of U.S. pressure and praise from Trump officials has offered the Salvadoran leader an opening to more rapidly consolidate power.
In just a span of months, Bukele's government has detained some of it's most vocal critics, violently repressed a peaceful protest, and passed a 'foreign agents' law similar to those used by governments in Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Belarus to silence dissent by exerting pressure on organizations that rely on overseas funding.
More than 100 human rights activists, academics, journalists and lawyers have fled El Salvador in recent months, saying they were forced to chose between exile or prison.
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Associated Press
3 hours ago
- Associated Press
Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno pushes Trump's agenda on drugs and trade in Colombia homecoming
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Washington Post
3 hours ago
- Washington Post
Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno pushes Trump's agenda on drugs and trade in Colombia homecoming
MIAMI — When Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno visits Colombia this week as part of a three-nation tour of Latin America, it'll be something of a homecoming. Ohio's first Latino senator was born in the Colombian capital of Bogota, and even as he was chasing the American dream in the Buckeye state, he kept close tabs on the country through older brothers who are heavyweights in politics and business back home. In an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the trip, Moreno expressed deep concern about the country's direction under left-wing President Gustavo Petro and suggested U.S. sanctions, higher tariffs or other retaliatory action might be needed to steer it straight. The recent criminal conviction of former President Alvaro Uribe , a conservative icon, was an attempt to 'silence' the man who saved Colombia from guerrilla violence, Moreno said. Meanwhile, record cocaine production has left the United States less secure — and Colombia vulnerable to being decertified by the White House for failing to cooperate in the war on drugs. 'The purpose of the trip is to understand all the dynamics before any decision is made,' said Moreno, who will meet with both Petro and Uribe, as well as business leaders and local officials, during the visit. 'But there's nothing that's taken off the table at this point and there's nothing that's directly being contemplated.' Moreno, a luxury car dealer from Cleveland, defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown last year with the help of Donald Trump's endorsement and $441 million in political ad spending — the most in U.S. Senate race history. He became Ohio's senior senator on practically his first day in office after his close friend JD Vance resigned the Senate to become vice president. In Congress, he's mimicked Trump's rhetoric to attack top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer as a 'miserable old man out of a Dickens novel,' called on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and threatened to subpoena California officials over their response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. On Latin America, he's been similarly outspoken, slamming Petro on social media as a 'socialist dictator' and accusing Mexico of being on the path to becoming a 'narco state.' Such comments barely register in blue-collar Ohio, but they've garnered attention in Latin America, where Moreno has emerged as an interlocutor for conservatives in the region seeking favor with the Trump administration. That despite the fact he hasn't lived in the region for decades, speaks Spanish with an American accent and doesn't sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 'He's somebody to watch,' said Michael Shifter, the former president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. 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Wall Street Journal
10 hours ago
- Wall Street Journal
A Supreme Court Coup d'Etat in Brazil
Liberty in the Americas faces a degree of peril not seen since the Cold War. The biggest risk isn't, as it was in the 1970s and '80s, the sudden seizure of power by the military. Twenty-first century strongmen are copying Hugo Chávez, who consolidated his rule by seizing control of democratic institutions while he was popular and then put his opponents in jail or drove them into exile. El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele has fashioned his own version of chavismo. He fired and replaced all members of the country's highest constitutional court in 2021. Due process, free speech and freedom of assembly are no more. Mr. Bukele now controls the electoral tribunal. In 2024 it certified congressional elections, although they were marred by irregularities and lacked transparency. Last month Congress, under a long shadow of doubt about its legitimacy, changed the constitution to allow indefinite presidential re-election. RIP Salvadoran democracy.
