El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) opened in 2023. It has capacity for up to forty thousand prisoners, although is said to be only half full. CECOT was built to incarcerate alleged members of violent gangs, who by 2015 had made El Salvador the Western Hemisphere’s most dangerous country. Dispensing with warrants and…
MASAYA, NICARAGUA – Reynaldo Urbina rides his motorbike around the streets of Masaya, Nicaragua, with agility, despite having only one arm. Nearly seven years ago, at the height of a US- supported coup attempt against Nicaragua’s left-wing Sandinista government, Urbina was one of those guarding the city’s municipal warehouse when it was attacked by around…
A briefing by the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition, February 2025 Draft legislation from the last session of the United States Congress, likely to be reintroduced in the 119th session, appears to conflict with an important US trade treaty. If approved, the ill-named “Restoring Sovereignty and Human Rights in Nicaragua Act” (formerly numbered S.1881 in the Senate…
After intense pressure by the U.S. on Panama to return possession of its canal to Washington because the Trump administration thinks China is threatening it, the Central American nation on Sunday sought a compromise by announcing it would study whether or not to renew contracts with a Chinese company managing two ports on the waterway…
With Donald Trump as the new US president, pundits are speculating about how US policy towards Latin America might change. In this article, we look at some of the speculation, then address three specific instances of how the US’s policy priorities may be viewed from a progressive, Latin American perspective. This leads us to a…