The following is a transcript of episode 38 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.
HERNÁNDEZ: It was a nightmare that I thought would never end. But today I can say that the torture and nightmare are over, and I can be happy again.
GRESSIER, HOST: That’s makeup artist Andry Hernández as he reunited with his parents in Capacho, Venezuela. We first covered his case in episode 24: He was detained in the United States with an active asylum case and disappeared into the megaprison CECOT alongside dozens of men in March, under U.S. President Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.
Now, the Venezuelans have been deported to their country of origin in an opaque deal involving the United States, Venezuela, and El Salvador. They emerged from Nayib Bukele’s prisons with stories of torture for which human rights monitors have said since 2023 that the government may be guilty of crimes against humanity.
One regime against another
On Tuesday, El Salvador released the 252 Venezuelan migrants wrongfully deported since March from the United States and as part of a three-country prisoner swap. Three days earlier, ten detained U.S. citizens and permanent residents were released from Venezuela and, after a brief stop in El Salvador, were flown into Texas by the State Department.
As we noted in episode 36, vagueness in whether U.S. or Salvadoran courts had jurisdiction over the Venezuelan deportees allowed for the men to be held without due process for nearly four months in the notorious CECOT prison.The Trump administration painted the prisoner swap as a victory. Secretary of State Marco Rubio unironically asserted the U.S. men had been held in Venezuela “without proper due process” and called for the “restoration of democracy in Venezuela.”
In June, a U.S. federal court found the Trump administration had deported the Venezuelans without the right to habeas corpus and under the unlawful invocation of a centuries-old wartime act.
As for Bukele, the de-facto Salvadoran president seized the men’s release as a chance to bolster his image as Trump’s regional broker. In a post on X, Bukele touted the swap as a result of both the United States and El Salvador’s “months of negotiations with a tyrannical regime.”
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The Bukele administration was paid $6 million to hold the deportees. A report by ProPublica found that most of the migrants had never been charged for crimes in the United States, while CBS News found that 75 percent did not have criminal records.
Back in Venezuela, the 252 men who had fled to seek asylum in the United States were welcomed home by their families. Attorneys have announced new claims on behalf of some of the deportees to sue the U.S. government and bring them back.
Maduro’s officials have positioned him as a savior, saying he had rescued the migrants from CECOT. Venezuelan prosecutors have already announced a criminal investigation into the Bukele administration for torture of the men — one regime using their cases to take aim at another.
Deadly business in Honduras
Now we turn to Honduras. A new investigation by InSight Crime reports that at least 23 environmental leaders were killed in the country between 2023 and 2024, keeping the country locked in as the deadliest in Central America and the fourth most dangerous globally for land defenders.
In May 2011, then-President of Honduras Porfirio Lobo welcomed around 1,300 local and foreign investors to an economic conference aimed at marking the beginning of a new era of prosperity through nearly 150 development projects, under the banner “Honduras Is Open for Business”.
The government estimated it could attract over $4 billion dollars in investments and generate jobs for 350,000 Hondurans over the following three years. InSight Crime reports that opening up the country’s natural resources in that way fueled the expansion of drug traffickers, the plundering of natural resources, and violence against environmentalists.
Since the declaration that Honduras was open for business, deforestation increased at an alarming rate. According to the investigation, in 2023 alone, more than 3,100 forest fires caused by criminal interests affected hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest. In 2024, the country lost over 40,000 hectares of primary humid forest, one of the highest figures in a decade.
Additionally, since the 2009 coup d’état, at least 142 land defenders have been killed in the country. This is lead investigator Parker Asmann.
ASMANN: Due to their significant economic, political, and social influence, local mayors play an outsized role in facilitating extractive projects that destroy the environment and threaten land defenders. These local officials are able to use this power to manipulate the way in which such projects are presented to affected communities to garner support and then ensure extractive companies are not held accountable when they fail to uphold the commitments they made.
GRESSIER: You’ll find the full investigation on the homepage of InSight Crime. As we covered in early June, much of this corporate rollout is now tied up in agrarian reform talks aimed at reducing violence and settling disputes over land rights. But unresolved land disputes, private and partisan interests, militarization, and organized crime hobble advances — and elections are right around the corner.
“Oxygen” for Arévalo
Last, we turn to Guatemala. For more than 50 days, until this Tuesday, the Teachers’ Union known as STEG camped out in dozens of tents and tarps across the Central Plaza, in front of the National Palace, until they were evicted by police.
Among other issues in a collective bargaining agreement, they were protesting their discontent with a five-percent increase in their salaries. They wanted 15.
But a Labor Court ruled that the protest violated an order for the union not to take any actions that could affect the country’s education, like the suspension of classes, and imposed a fine of 3 million quetzales, or around 384,000 dollars.
What seemed like a standard-fare schoolyard fight between government and union had strong political overtones: President Bernardo Arévalo has faced intense criticism from his own base for not taking more decisive action in political disputes, like to remove the internationally sanctioned attorney general.
The union leader, Joviel Acevedo, is known for negotiating with governments in power by wielding his influence with teachers. He was sanctioned for corruption by the U.S. State Department in 2023, for allegedly accepting kickbacks in the construction of union facilities.
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Strikingly, Acevedo publicly admits has not taught for at least 17 years but continues to earn his teacher’s salary and seniority bonus. In 2021, now-exiled prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval accused Attorney General Consuelo Porras of protecting the union leader from criminal liability for corruption.
In contrast to his support for the blockades and the national strike in 2023 that defended the electoral process, Arévalo warned at a press conference in May that “teachers who are not fulfilling their duties will be reported.”
Joviel Acevedo said that they would take all legal measures to avoid paying the fine. “For now, the government can be satisfied,” said political analyst Gustavo Berganza, “because their firm position in this conflict has given them a breath of political oxygen.”
Edward Grattan, Leyrian Colón Santiago, and Yuliana Ramazzini wrote today’s episode, with editing and hosting by Roman Gressier and production and original soundtrack by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and iHeart podcast platforms.