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Articles on Central America

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Men who were detained under the state of emergency are transported in a cargo truck in Soyapango, El Salvador in October 2022 after President Nayib Bukele began a crackdown on gangs that suspended constitutional rights and threw one in every 100 people in jail. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

‘Bukelism,’ El Salvador’s flawed approach to gang violence, is no silver bullet for Ecuador

Ecuador is soon holding a referendum to decide whether to follow El Salvador’s controversial strategy to end drug trafficking.
Migrants heading north arrive in Panama on Oct. 6, 2023, after walking across the 100-kilometre stretch of treacherous jungle shared by Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)

Darien Gap: As migrants take deadly risks for better lives, Canada and the U.S. must do much more

Migrants who cross the treacherous Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia often experience violence and abuse, extortion or detention by migration authorities.
U.S. banana growers heavily influenced several Central American governments in the early 20th century. George Rinhart/Getty Images

What’s a banana republic? A political scientist explains

The US grows hardly any tropical fruit. So why are politicians and political commentators saying the country is at risk of devolving into a banana republic?
A Mayan spiritual guide arranges crosses, marked with the names of people who died in the nation’s civil war, in a circle in preparation for a ceremony marking the National Day of Dignity for the Victims of Armed Internal Conflict. Guatemalans annually honor the victims of the 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 on Feb. 25. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Guatemala: 25 years later, ‘firm and lasting peace’ is nowhere to be found

Twenty-five years after the signing of a peace accord that ended a 36-year civil war, Guatemala is still struggling with violence and corruption.
An activist holds a portrait of a man who was allegedly disappeared by the Guatemalan Army. She waits to join a march organized in remembrance of the hundreds of thousands who died in the decades long civil war, in June, 2021. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Second-generation Central Americans in Toronto are dealing with historic trauma from civil war and migration

Canadians of Central American descent choose to heal and respond to ongoing trauma with care and community.
Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele promised voters change. Instead, he seems to be reviving El Salvador’s authoritarian past. Camilo Freedman/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

El Salvador’s façade of democracy crumbles as president purges his political opponents

El Salvador ‘is inching back toward its authoritarian past’ after President Nayib Bukele fired five supreme court justices and the attorney general – essentially the only checks on his power.
Activists and supporters of Honduran environmental and Indigenous rights activist Berta Caceres hold signs with her name and likeness during the trial against Roberto David Castillo, an alleged mastermind of her murder, outside of the Supreme Court building in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on April 6, 2021. (AP Photo/ Elmer Martinez)

Environmental activists are being killed in Honduras over their opposition to mining

Honduras is the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists. Those who have opposed mining, hydroelectric, logging and tourism have faced violence and death.
Children play in Las Flores village, Comitancillo, Guatemala, home of a 22-year-old migrant murdered in January 2021 on his journey through Mexico. Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images

Money alone can’t fix Central America – or stop migration to US

Biden’s $4 billion plan to fight crime, corruption and poverty in Central America is massive. But aid can’t build viable democracies if ‘predatory elites’ won’t help their own people.
Members of a Salvadoran feminist group watch a virtual hearing March 10 on El Salvador’s abortion laws by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Marvin Recinos/AFP via Getty Images

El Salvador’s abortion ban jails women for miscarriages and stillbirths – now one woman’s family seeks international justice

Hundreds of Salvadoran women have been prosecuted for homicide for having abortions, miscarriages or stillbirths since 1997. Now an international court must decide: Is that legal?
Even before COVID-19, El Salvador’s prisons were contagious disease hotspots. Here, MS-13 gang members with tuberculosis at Chalatenango prison, March 29, 2019. Marvin Recinos/AFP via Getty Images

Mass arrests and overcrowded prisons in El Salvador spark fear of coronavirus crisis

El Salvador is arresting thousands of people for violating its COVID-19 quarantine, further packing a ‘hellish’ penal system once described as a ‘petri dish’ for infectious disease.
Street gangs that operate with impunity make El Salvador one of the world’s most violent countries. Few murders are ever solved. MARVIN RECINOS/AFP via Getty Images

Deported to death: US sent 138 Salvadorans home to be killed

A new Human Rights Watch report finds many Salvadoran deportees are killed once home, often by the gangs they fled. Rampant impunity means El Salvador can’t protect vulnerable people from violence.
A Congolese family approaches the unofficial border crossing with Canada while walking down Roxham Road in Champlain, N.Y., in August 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Charles Krupa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Charles Krupa

Refugee stories reveal anxieties about the Canada-U.S. border

Canadian leaders have desperately tried to preserve the country’s image of liberal humanitarianism at our border, but the reality is Canada’s immigration history is built upon exclusion.

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