The only thing separating Nayib Bukele today from becoming a dictator is the unconstitutional reelection that he has announced. Right now he is a constitutionally elected president, even if his exercise of power is no longer constitutional.

The Honduran government says the legality of Nayib Bukele’s possible candidacy in 2024 is none of its business. No other Central American government has commented. A year after clearly stating that immediate reelection is unconstitutional, the Biden administration now asserts that there are arguments on “either side.”

Last night, in a televised broadcast on the country's 201st anniversary of independence, Nayib Bukele announced his candidature for the 2024 presidential election despite multiple explicit prohibitions on consecutive reelection in the Salvadoran constitution.

The U.S. Senate is back from August recess and will likely vote soon on new ambassadors to El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Belize. In an apparent bid for more Republican buy-in, Biden is putting veteran diplomats in charge of the tenuous U.S. relationship with Bukele, potential major trade sanctions on the Ortega regime, and Panama-centered efforts to thwart regional migration and Chinese influence.

The Salvadoran coroner’s office reported that half of those who have died in custody under the state of exception succumbed to pulmonary edema and showed signs of torture. One of them was a dairy producer, 64, who for two decades worked in the U.S. for a recycling company.

Prosecutors found evidence of nepotism and overcharging in contracts benefitting the biggest food contractor for the Bukele administration’s signature pandemic aid program. The investigation was thwarted by Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado after he was illegally instated in May 2021.

The president and director of Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico, José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, and assistant attorney Samari Carolina Gómez Díaz will spend at least three months in pre-trial detention on the basis of a single testimony and supposed evidence that Rafael Curruchiche, the head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (FECI), told El Faro were collected in just 72 hours between July 26 and 29.

Amid multiple corruption and misconduct probes muddling his first three months in office, President Rodrigo Chaves has lashed out at the press. In July authorities shuttered a business financing the operations of leading newspaper La Nación, a move marking a sharp escalation in attacks against press freedom in a country that has for years provided safe haven for journalists fleeing neighboring Nicaragua.

The grounds for hundreds of arrests provided in sealed court documents analyzed by El Faro include suspicious appearance, looking like a gang member, fitting a “police profile," assault on a police officer, attempted escape, nervous appearance, social media reports, prior criminal records, and having tattoos.

Those governing Guatemala have created a prominent political prisoner before the eyes of the world — and those of a Central American journalistic community tired of the attempts of the corrupt to silence us.