Over 97 percent of Salvadorans in the U.S. voted for Nayib Bukele, who claimed a commanding electoral victory Sunday with over 80 percent of total votes. Opposition parties have been reduced to a minimum, capping an unconstitutional process totally controlled by the ruling party.

Comparisons to U.S. gerrymandering, electoral use of public funds, lack of regulation of the diaspora vote, and the constitutional ban on reelection overshadow the Sunday election, when Nayib Bukele is expected to garner wide support. International monitors will assess on Sunday whether the vote is not only free but also fair.

Audio recordings, screenshots, and a gang leader’s testimony reveal that the Bukele administration was willing to pay over one million dollars to a Mexican drug cartel and the 18th Street gang if they helped rearrest MS-13 leader “Crook” in time for the 2024 elections. One of the highest Salvadoran police officials negotiated for ten months with a fugitive gang leader who was at the same time in contact with U.S. authorities.

Élmer Canales Rivera waived a speedy trial in a Long Island court on Thursday, so he could have more time to prepare his defense. Following his capture last November in Mexico, the Justice Department is prosecuting him on terrorism charges.

A group of campesinos from El Salvador’s Jiquilisco Bay have filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office against a Salvadoran Navy sergeant, accusing him of providing false testimony that was decisive in the sentencing of a minor to ten years in prison. The boy’s case is the first conviction of a resident of their island under the state of exception.

Less than five months before the Salvadoran elections, the diplomatic corps has gone silent regarding presidential reelection. The US, which two years ago condemned consecutive periods, now takes cover behind voters’ “right to determine their own future.” Amid doubts about a fair playing field, it is unclear what real impact OAS and EU monitors can have.

The National Civil Police of El Salvador profiled ruling-party legislator Bladimir Barahona in June 2021 as part of a human trafficking ring. That November, Interpol El Salvador alerted its Washington office that a company owned by Barahona, who sits on the Financial Committee of the Legislative Assembly, funnels “money from unknown sources,” which could constitute money laundering.

The Rancho Bejuco massacre took place on July 29, 1982, in Baja Verapaz, Guatemala, during the de facto government of General Efraín Ríos Montt. It exemplifies the genocidal scorched-earth policies implemented during his 17 months in power.

The Biden administration has banned from U.S. territory the prosecutor and judge who attempted to interfere in Guatemala’s run-off election and who incarcerated journalist José Rubén Zamora. The sanctions also include a dozen Nicaraguan officials involved in the banishment of political prisoners but steer clear of the inner circles of the presidents of El Salvador and Honduras in a sign of a shifting U.S. strategy in Central America.

On May 30, Salvadoran police arrested two Bureau of Prisons officials including Wilfredo Hernández Molina, right-hand man of Vice Minister of Security Osiris Luna, for allegedly charging bribes from drug traffickers for prison benefits. Two years ago the top aide had been named as an accomplice to Luna in the now-shuttered corruption probe called “Operation Cathedral”.