IRTF News

For the second time in three years, El Salvador is back under martial law. The state of exception was approved so swiftly that lawmakers failed to remove references to public health and economic reopening in the text, clearly copied and pasted from the decrees that governed the country’s notoriously militarized 2020 pandemic lockdown. This latest suspension of constitutional guarantees, however, was enacted as part of right-wing populist president Nayib Bukele’s newly declared “war on gangs.” Still reeling from the pandemic, working-class Salvadorans now find themselves caught between predatory street gangs and an unaccountable authoritarian state.

A premium coffee, "Fruits of Hope" is grown, harvested and roasted by more than 1,000 guerrilla fighters who laid down their arms following the signing of a peace agreement between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and the government in 2016. The combatants-turned-coffee growers are among almost 13,000 former Farc guerrillas who have joined the Colombian government's process of reincorporation into civilian society. Rather than hiding their past, many make a virtue of their unusual entry into the labour market by alluding to it in the names they give their products.

On March 10, President Joe Biden announced that the United States would designate Colombia as a Major Non-NATO Ally. This designation extends special military and economic privileges to Colombia, including participation in joint defense research and training, and the ability to purchase weapons, ammunition, vehicles, and other surplus war material from the United States. This came on the heels of a U.S. delegation traveling to Venezuela for the first time since the United States broke off diplomatic relations and closed its embassy there in 2019. Motivating the U.S. overture is the potential to resume purchasing Venezuelan oil to compensate for the oil no longer being imported from Russia and to drive a wedge between Russia and its most important Latin American ally. These events illustrate an administration scrambling to repair relations with a region that the United States has long neglected and whose support it has taken for granted.

The weeks since the Russian invasion of Ukraine have witnessed an astonishing unity of purpose among the world’s democracies, as leaders from Wellington to Washington to Warsaw have set aside their differences to stand against Russian aggression. Or so the story goes. What this narrative leaves out, however, is that this unity is a unity of the Global North. Some of the world’s largest democracies, such as Brazil, Mexico, India, and Indonesia, have remained far more tepid, even ambivalent, in their support for Ukraine. This has occasioned little comment in U.S. and European media (who are only fuzzily aware to begin with that the world extends beyond North America and Europe), other than an occasional scolding of these countries’ leaders for shirking their democratic duty. But the Global South’s failure to uncritically accept Northern narratives about the war in Ukraine is vastly significant, as it may herald a geopolitical reconfiguration that has echoes of the Cold War’s non-aligned movement.

El Salvador has seen a tragic return to some of the country’s most violent years. At least 80 people were killed on the weekend of March 26-27, and in response, President Nayib Bukele quickly summoned the Legislative Assembly, which in the early hours following the killing spree declared a state of emergency for 30 days. The move effectively suspended some human rights, such as the right to a defense, knowing the charges against you, the right not to incriminate yourself and having access to a lawyer. The decree also suspended the right to freedom of assembly and association and allows the government to intercept private communications without a court order. Discrediting the opinions of human rights activists who have been working to promote and protect human rights in El Salvador for decades is little more than a cheap tactic designed to distract from the policies that, by action or omission, are impeding the country from tackling the wave of violence that is destroying so many lives. Strengthening the judiciary, particularly the special prosecutors in charge of investigating complex crimes by allocating sufficient resources and personnel so they can carry out their work effectively and independently, for example, is one of the policies the country should put in place to break up the gangs.

This book explores the pernicious nature of US engagement with Nicaragua from the mid-19th century to the present in pursuit of control and domination rather than in defense of democracy as Washington has incessantly claimed. In turn, Nicaraguans have valiantly defended their homeland, preventing the US from ever maintaining its control for long. Led by Daniel Ortega, the Sandinistas established democracy in Nicaragua with the country’s first free and fair elections in 1984. Once again, the US attempted to subvert democracy by organizing Somoza’s former National Guardsmen into a terrorist group known as “the Contras.”  Directed and funded by the CIA, the Contras would terrorize Nicaragua for nearly 10 years. Paradoxically, the US government and media now castigate Ortega as somehow “a new Somoza,” a claim that is swallowed by some in the US left. This book debunks this claim by putting Nicaragua’s past into historical perspective and documenting the reality of today’s Nicaragua.

Francia Márquez Mina is an environmental grassroots leader and lawyer whose rapid rise is expanding a new political Black feminist perspective in Colombia and Latin America. Come on Colombia! From resistance to power until dignity becomes customary!” were her closing words in her first public speech after hearing the results of the March 13 presidential primary elections. Although she is not the first Black woman to run for the Colombian presidency, that day, Márquez made history. With a campaign executed in record time, she obtained the third highest turnout—783,160 votes—outnumbering former governors, mayors, and senators with longer political trajectories in Colombia. And while there is no guarantee that Márquez will become Colombia’s first Black woman vice president in May, her work so far has already blazed a path for future Black feminist politicians and created new space for people who have been historically excluded from Colombia’s highest political institutions.

Men, women and children have been rounded up across the Central American country since the government declared a state of emergency on 27 March, suspending constitutional rights including the presumption of innocence. President Nayib Bukele has said that the detainees are all gang members and that they will not be released. While the police claim to have captured the MS-13 leaders who ordered the killings, there is mounting evidence that ordinary people who live or work in gang-dominated neighbourhoods have been arrested arbitrarily.

This Monday, Honduras ratified its request to join the United Nations group for the protection of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex (LGBTI) people. "Honduras as a nation reiterates its strong interest in joining the United Nations Group for the Protection of the Rights of Persons belonging to the LGBTI community," the statement said. The Honduran government recalled that although the UN has called for the decriminalization of homosexuality, same-sex relationships between consenting adults are still classified as crimes in 70 countries, the statement said. See the full report here.