Central American leaders resisting Biden's anti-corruption efforts [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

By
Mary Beth Sheridan
and Anna-Catherine Brigida
May 10, 2021 at 5:00 a.m. CDT

MEXICO CITY — In a rebuff to the Biden administration, political leaders in El Salvador and Guatemala have forced out several senior judges known for their independence and anti-corruption zeal, underscoring the difficulties facing Washington’s new Central America policy.

President Biden has put the fight against corruption at the heart of that policy. U.S. officials argue that graft is stunting Central American economies and driving citizens to attempt to migrate to the United States. The sidelining of the judges has raised concerns at the highest levels of the U.S. government, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Harris protesting.

The administration is readying measures to increase pressure on El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, known as the Northern Triangle countries — including a name-and-shame list of corrupt politicians who would be denied U.S. visas.
The efforts come as human rights groups warn of democratic backsliding in Central America, where the judiciary had emerged as a key check on presidential power.

In El Salvador, after President Nayib Bukele’s party won a supermajority in Congress, lawmakers voted this month to dismiss the attorney general and all five judges in the Supreme Court’s constitutional chamber. Two weeks earlier, Guatemala’s legislature had refused to swear in the president of the Constitutional Court, a graft-fighting judge named Gloria Porras, after she was reelected.

. . .

Trump became a strong ally of the Northern Triangle leaders after they agreed to crack down on migration and take in asylum seekers who were turned away from the U.S. border. He did not object when Guatemala dismantled an anti-corruption commission that had received tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid. Trump praised Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández even after prosecutors in New York implicated him in cocaine trafficking. (Hernández has not been charged and has denied wrongdoing.)

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/10/biden-salvador-guatemala-bukele-corruption-migration/