U.S. Influence in Central America: Daniel Alvarenga
August 15th, 2024
”Stop funding anything related to the military in Central America.”
Daniel Alvarenga is a journalist who covers issues pertaining to immigration, racial equity, and Latinx cultures – with a special emphasis on Central America and its diasporas. He’s also the English language podcast host of Humo: Murder and Silence in El Salvador. We discuss the intersection of foreign policy, immigration policy, and democracy.
US foreign interference in Central America has had a huge impact on destabilizing the region. During the civil war in El Salvador between 1980 and 1992, the US contributed $1 billion in military aid. This destabilization is one reason Central Americans migrate to the United States, which in turn create problems in the US. For example, MS-13 was started by Salvadoran children who moved to Los Angeles. In response, the US government has deported many of them back to El Salvador where the cycle of violence continues. El Salvador has the largest number of murders and disappearances in the world.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Daniel Alvarenga
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
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Daniel Alvarenga Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:04] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos.
It's 2024 and the future of America is in your hands. Democracy is not a spectator sport, so we're here to bring you an independent perspective about the election this year and empower you to change the status quo.
Most immigration stories feature the ins and outs of American politics, ranging from the governor of Texas trying to make and enforce his own immigration laws to Congress, repeatedly failing to enact comprehensive immigration reform, and presidential candidates using immigration as a wedge issue. But the stories of the migrants and the underlying forces that drive them to the United States are often ignored.
To unpack the intersection of foreign policy, immigration policy, and democracy, we're joined by Daniel Alvarenga. Daniel is a journalist who covers issues pertaining to immigration, racial equity and Latinx cultures, with a special emphasis on Central America and its diasporas. In 2020, he was awarded a Poynter Fellowship by Yale University for his reporting on immigration, and was previously a part of the Al Jazeera media network. He's also the podcast host of Humo, Murder and Silence in El Salvador.
Welcome, Daniel. Thank you for joining us.
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:01:43] Awesome. Thank you for having me.Mila Atmos: [00:01:46] So let's start with setting the stage. What are the origins of the current political climate in Central America? And I'm thinking here of how U.S. foreign policy has been a driving factor for instability in the region, specifically in El Salvador.
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:02:02] Yes. So I think when we think of modern day Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, we can think about U.S. intervention. The biggest moment was in the 1980s. El Salvador had a civil war from 1980 to 1992. Around 75,000 civilians died. The number is probably closer to 100,000,
with combatants and everything. And the United States provided over $1 billion in military assistance to El Salvador. And that's according to the US government's own Accountability Office. What happened with the war is that it created a giant exodus. So now Salvadorans are the third largest Latino group in the country with over 2.4 million people. El Salvador is a tiny country. It's the size of Massachusetts and it's around 6 million people. So at least a third of the country is now just in this country outside its borders, and it hasn't really let up. People from Central America, people from El Salvador, are still coming to the United States in large numbers, and there's many factors for why. But I say that like the 1980s, war was a big, big reason. And it wasn't just us. Guatemala also had a civil war. Nicaragua also had a series of wars. So 1980s was a very just bloody decade for Central America.
Mila Atmos: [00:03:26] Mhm. Yeah. The numbers are staggering. You know $1 billion in the 80s. That's a huge amount of money. I mean it's still a lot of money today. But for sure in current dollars it's much more. And to have a third of a country's population be displaced outside of a country, that's also staggering. Now, as you mentioned, there was a war in Guatemala. There was a lot of violence in Nicaragua, to say the least. That's understating it. So what is the state of Central American politics today and maybe focus specifically on El Salvador.
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:03:58] So with El Salvador particularly, there is a new president. Well, he's not new. He's already at the end of his term, but he's going to unconstitutionally lengthen his term. President Nayib Bukele. He's interestingly president of Palestinian descent. He is authoritarian, right wing, and he has kept the country under a state of exception, which is an exception of civil rights, really. And he has been growing the prison population and indiscriminately putting thousands of Salvadorans behind bars without trial, without any due process. It started as a way to combat the gangs in El Salvador, and it's been two years of combating the gangs. You know, human rights groups on the ground have been sounding the alarm that these imprisonments aren't fair.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:48] Mhm. In the popular imagination in the United States, we think that the main gangs, MS-13 and 18th Street, started in El Salvador, and that they then imported that violence here to the United States. But actually these gangs were born on
the streets of Los Angeles, and they have created a vicious cycle of violence, both here and in El Salvador. Tell us more about how these gangs came to be in both regions.
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:05:18] Yeah, so you got it correct. La is the home of gangs like MS-13 and Calle 13, 13th Street. They started because they were Salvadoran refugee children who came into Los Angeles in the 1980s. And remember, these refugee children experienced war. Some of them might have been child soldiers. And so they enter an environment in Los Angeles that already had gang culture, that already had this antagonism between, you know, youth of color and the police, and to defend themselves from everything going on and from the lack of social services, because this is the Reagan era. Many formed gangs to defend themselves, and they got caught up in the system. So these were children who didn't have a support network. But what really set it off was in 1996, President Clinton passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, IRIRA for short, and it broadened the criteria for deportation, included more criminal convictions that count for deportation. So this led to a mass deportation of these people caught up in the system to El Salvador, a country that was still reeling from war in 1996 and wasn't really prepared to take care or do anything for these people. So they kind of festered in El Salvador. And they're not just in El Salvador. They're in the neighboring countries, in Honduras, in Guatemala. And they've become quite a regional and kind of a Western Hemisphere phenomenon. But yeah, that started from the US involvement in the war to the mass deportation policies. It's like a failure of both foreign and domestic policy.
Mila Atmos: [00:06:57] Well, these gangs are notoriously brutal, and it seems to me that their brutality is a major factor for why everyday people leave the region. And of course, we can read about it in the newspapers, but it's actually very different than living through it in the everyday experience. How would you describe what it's like to live there with so much violence.
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:07:21] Under the gangs, a lot of people were targeted. Gangs would charge people if they were in their territory. They would call it paying rent. And so there was a lot of extortion of the population going around. There was a lot of murders. And this has been going on since the 2000, since MS-13 has really been like a really big force in El Salvador. So we've had a series of presidents that try to do the hard on crime, "We're going to throw you in jail, Lock away the key." You know, interestingly
enough, gang violence was already on the decline and homicide rates were on the decline in 2015 before the current president took over. But he sort of created a lot of propaganda that he's cleaning up the streets. And El Faro, an independent Salvadoran newspaper, has found that the Nayib Bukele administration has let gang leaders go, or is not really pursuing gang members. They're just pursuing everyday people who can fill the jails.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:22] You said that gang violence started to reduce in 2015. Do you know why that is? Because it sounds like if you read the popular media that when Bukele became president, he really reduced gang violence by, of course, randomly mass arresting people. Why do you think violence actually reduced before he even took office?
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:08:45] Before Nayib Bukele took office, we had ten years of the FMLN, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. They started off as a guerrilla faction against the government. And then after the peace accords, they became a legitimate political party. And so we had ten years of the FMLN, and it wasn't perfect. There was still violence. There were still issues, but there was a lot more safety net programs. There was a lot more community programs being funded just by virtue of that type of government. So there was already a lot of people working on this issue, and the previous governments had already tried the mano dura, or the iron fist, ruling of indiscriminately throwing people in jail. And, you know, it's that government, the FMLN government was a little bit more friendlier to members of the social movement and grassroots organizations just by the nature of where the party came from. And so I think that's kind of why El Salvador was on that trajectory already. Then, you know, the pandemic changed things for El Salvador. Nayib Bukele came in, and that's when he started experimenting with the state of exception by, you know, installing curfews so people can't be out because of Covid. And so El Salvador is also in a different spot than they were pre pandemic. And yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:02] Well Nayib Bukele definitely is a strongman president. And his tactics are similar to strongmen all over the world. And since we have a strongman wannabe presidential candidate in the United States, I thought it would be helpful to draw some possible parallels. And of course, you mentioned that violence has already reduced, but I think it has been reduced even more because he randomly just mass
arrests people. So there's a sense of lawlessness and a sense that the law applies unevenly. Right? Like the president and his cronies have amassed a lot of brute force power, like a military state. So in a way, actually, it seems to me that even though there is less gang violence, it's overall less safe everywhere in El Salvador.
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:10:50] Yes.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:51] What are your thoughts here?Daniel Alvarenga: [00:10:53] So at the same time that the local population is being terrorized by the police, who's this new El Salvador for? People are saying it's for the tourists. It's for the crypto bros. It's for this sort of attempt at gentrifying El Salvador with these influencers that are being flown in to promote the Bitcoin project. So the everyday Salvadoran, the working class Salvadoran, they're the ones that are experiencing the violence from the state. So while it's gotten more dangerous for those people, at least in perception has gotten better for the tourists or the diaspora person who just comes in, you know, two weeks out of the year on their vacation and talks about how good Bukele has made El Salvador, but doesn't have to live with his everyday policies.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:36] Yeah, I think this is a good time to pivot to your new podcast, Humo, where you expose the systemic failures and the harrowing realities faced by the families of the disappeared. Now, El Salvador has one of the highest rates of murder and disappearances in the world. And the podcast was really a riveting and heartbreaking listen. Tell us how the show came about and why is it important to hear these stories?
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:12:04] The journalist in the heart of it, Bryan Avelar... I had been following his work. He was working in El Salvador uncovering this case, a former police officer who had a mass grave in his backyard and uncovering what that means in El Salvador. And I saw Nayib Bukele tweet negatively at him, and I saw all of Nayib Bukele trolls. So I remember that we activated on the internet, and we brought attention to Bryan's case that he's a journalist who's being harassed by the most powerful man in the country because he is trying to uncover a mass grave that implicates a former government employee, a cop. So when it came to the series, they were already producing it in Spanish, so they wanted to not just adapt it to an English language
audience, but they also wanted to capture an element of being in the Salvadoran diaspora, because we're a transnational people, like we just said, you know, a third of us are outside of the country. So they had the foresight to think about like the Salvadoran American audience is also an audience, and it works for all audiences who speak English. But I got to bring some of my personal story to it, like two of my uncles disappeared in the war, and we still grapple with things like that in my family from the 1980s, and it's just awful that it's happening again in a different way. But people are still disappearing, and the state is still either actively involved or dragging its feet. So I wanted to kind of bridge it and make it this transnational, trans generational conversation.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:40] Mhm.
Mila Atmos: [00:13:43] We're taking a short break and we'll be back with Daniel in just a moment. But first I want to share about a podcast we think you'll enjoy, called Moral Repair.
Moral Repair: [00:13:54] Want to dive into how technology and black spirituality intersect or confront the challenges new tech is creating. Maybe even catch a vision of hope for the future. Check out Moral Repair: A Black Exploration of Tech, a podcast about the innovations that make our world and break our societies, and how we can all heal just a bit. Available on Spotify, Apple, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
Mila Atmos: [00:14:22] And now let's return to my conversation with Daniel Alvarenga. As you think about it, how do you think this gets better?
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:14:35] Yeah, I think for one, El Salvador needs to stop investing so much in military and prisons. It's just egregious because right now, you know, El Salvador has had the US dollar as currency since 2001. And when prices in the US inflate, the dollar also inflates in El Salvador. So right now, El Salvador is is living the economic crisis in similar ways, if not worse, because it's a poorer country. And on top of that, Nayib Bukele is slashing the budget for important things like schools and universities and even healthcare. So I think, you know, we need to get our priorities in
order. And, you know, think of El Salvador and its people as a priority in education and healthcare. All of those sort of determinants of quality of life.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:23] Yeah, I feel like there's so many parallels actually to the United States. It's kind of shocking because here also, of course, public education is being gutted, especially in red states. And here also we have a presidential candidate and ex- president who likes to tweet at people who are critical of him, and that could be journalists. Tell us a little bit more about how Nayib Bukele came to power.
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:15:45] Well, first I want to say that Nayib Bukele is really close with the Trump administration. Or was. And he's a close friend of Tucker Carlson, and he appears on Fox News, kind of almost exclusively before he was president. He was mayor of San Salvador. So El Salvador is a tiny country. Most of the population is in the capital of San Salvador. So what that means is that if you are the mayor of San Salvador, you're kind of in the running to be president, or at least you're expected to be a candidate at some point. He started as mayor of a smaller city, and he cleaned up the smaller city, and then he, quote unquote, cleaned up El Salvador. And really he just removed street vendors and, you know, made the downtown look more nice and proper. But really, it was like a cosmetic thing. But he also said a lot of the things that people wanted. You know, we mentioned the war in 1980s. It has had a profound effect on El Salvador, where we were incredibly divided on those lines of being a leftist, a socialist with FMLN, or being a fascist, authoritarian, neo liberal government. And so given those choices, and given the back and forth between a couple decades, Nayib Bukele came in saying like, I'm like, neither of these people, we need to move away from the war. And so he really played on people's sort of like war trauma and trying to get over this difficult moment. And he was the answer. He was this third party that, um, supposedly, you know, wasn't going to be like anything we've ever had before. And really, he is following the playbook of just any strongarm dictator. You know, he went through a legitimate election in 2019, though terms in El Salvador are only one. You can do as many times as you want, but they can't be consecutive. And the terms are five years. We're about to be five years of Bukele. He already held some questionable elections, and he's already has tried or is actively trying to amend the Constitution because you cannot have two consecutive terms as a president of El Salvador. There's nothing that I can think of that is an obstacle right now. He has control of all of the government branches. In his first term, he fired all the Supreme Court judges, and he just dismantled all of the checks
and balances that could have existed. And he used to fire people on Twitter. And he not only parallels Trump, he actively models himself after Trump. The fact that he came up during the Trump age is no coincidence. So I think slowly people are starting to realize that he's not really fixing El Salvador. He is maybe adding some cosmetic changes. Maybe he's gotten El Salvador a new PR agent because people are not scared of it anymore. But when it comes to actually changing people's lives in terms of safety, you know, one of the reasons we can't really tell if murders are down or if disappearances are down is because he's kind of fudging the numbers and, you know while...
Mila Atmos: [00:18:43] Is he actually bothering with publishing numbers or just like, not publishing any?
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:18:47] There's no transparency. There's no transparency. You can't ask his government anything and get an answer. So it's actually grassroots organizations that are tracking, you know, missing persons. And homicides are officially down, but there is still more and more missing people all the time that are being reported on by community organizations. So if it's so safe, why are people disappearing? People say, well, you know, if they're disappeared and there's no body, you don't have to count it as a homicide. You know, there's been a phenomenon of mass graves. And we touch on that with Humo, very specifically on one of the first mass graves of his presidency.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:22] Right, right. Well, the parallels are just so clear between him and Trump. And like you said, he models himself specifically after Trump. This is maybe how a future Trump administration might look like. Or possibly, and I hope not. So tell me about the people who throw in the towel and leave their home and their country. What are the main factors that make them give up everything and try to come here? What have you heard is basically a common reason. You know the straw that broke the camel's back?
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:19:56] A lot of people want to just reunite with their family, because maybe they're undocumented in this country and they can't go back to El Salvador. So family reunification is at the top of the list. A lot of people still migrate for economic reasons. A lot of people feel that El Salvador cannot provide the life for them. You know, they've done everything right, and they either can't get a job because they
don't know anyone high up. So, you know, they weren't already born in wealth or there is just not a lot of jobs, like there's a big brain drain that has been happening with El Salvador. Some of the best people come here and try their luck out here. So those are the big reasons. And people still flee violence. You know, a lot of people were fleeing the violence of the war, fleeing the violence of the gangs, and now we're starting to see people fleeing the violence of this administration, whether it is journalists who are in exile because of their reporting or, you know, someone who was unlawfully detained or their loved one was unlawfully detained, and they do not want to partake in that.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:54] Yeah, it makes sense. I want to circle back here to U.S. foreign policy, because there's something that the U.S. government can do to foster healthier democracies in Central America, so that people there don't feel compelled to come here. Of course, as we both know, there's an impression that migrants only come here to take our jobs. But actually, no, they are often taking huge risks. So I'm sure this would require a whole new way of thinking at the State Department. But having reported on the region for some time now, what kind of foreign policy do you think would create lasting stability? Like what is the low hanging fruit opportunity here in the short term?
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:21:35] I would, for once, stop funding anything related to the military and Central America. I know they call it security. You know, this is for security. But really it's just arming the cops and arming the armed forces in El Salvador. But, you know, or diverting some of that money that goes into that into social programs. How about that money goes to build a sustainable water infrastructure for El Salvador? Right now we also have El Salvador is banning abortion or has had a total abortion ban for years. It's kind of scary, really, in El Salvador where, you know, miscarriage, you could be 40 years in jail. And instead of trying to improve reproductive rights around the world, the United States is sort of exporting more of its pro-life stuff that is very anti women and girls and anti-humanity, in my opinion. But it's a very complicated problem.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:30] Yeah. So to connect the dots to our own lives here in the United States as an everyday citizen, what are two things I could be doing to demand policy change in Central America?
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:22:42] Well, write to your Congresspeople and you can specifically write to Norma Torres. She is the head of the Central American Caucus. So
I really urge you to write to them, but also get involved in your local community. Get to know the Central American community or whatever local immigrant community you have. There's lots of grassroots organizations, people in solidarity with the CSPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, or like an organization that exists in like DC and LA, CARECEN that helps immigrants with direct services. So act local, but also pressure your leaders. And if anyone's voting on any spending packages in Central America, like, let's all be informed and I feel like being informed also just means get involved with the people who know, who know best and, you know, reaching out to your local immigration advocates.
Mila Atmos: [00:23:33] Yeah. Good advice. So here's my last question. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:23:39] I see a lot of young people engaging with my work and journalism. I see a lot of Salvadoran Americans coming up to me and being like, thank you, I can share this podcast with my parents, and now we can have this conversation about what's going on. And, you know, they have the information in English and, and Spanish and the podcast is bilingual. So just being able to change someone's mind or bring a new perspective, or especially with Salvadoran Americans, you know, the opportunity for them to learn something about themselves because the curriculum is not going to teach you about Salvadoran Americans. So, you know, I hope to just add a little to our collective archives with my work.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:20] Thank you so much for joining us on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Daniel Alvarenga: [00:24:25] Likewise. Thank you so much.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:28] Daniel Alvarenga is a journalist who covers immigration, racial equity and Latinx cultures. He's also the English language podcast host of Humo, Murder and Silence in El Salvador.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Joe Spielberger, the policy counsel for the effective and Accountable government team at the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO.
Joe Spielberger: [00:24:58] We know that whistleblowers play such a crucial role. We call them the eyes and ears of the American taxpayer, because they are really on the front lines in that first line of defense at rooting out federal corruption before it can really fester.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:14] That's next time on Future Hindsight.
And before I go, first of all, thanks so much for listening. If you liked this episode, you'll love what we have in store. Be sure to hit that follow button on Apple Podcasts or the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app, so you'll catch all of our upcoming episodes. Thank you. Oh, and please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. It seems like a small thing, but it can make a huge difference for an independent show like ours. It's the main way other people can find out about the show. We really appreciate your help. Thank you.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me. Until next time, stay engaged. The Democracy Group: [00:26:12] This podcast is part of Daniel Alvarenga.