Criticism of Maduro, the redimensioning of the Chinese embrace and greater immigration control mark the harmony with Washington after ten years of the FMLN

The surprising use of the army to pressure the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly in early February to approve a security appropriation has raised international alarm about what the presidency of Nayib Bukele, who came to power in June 2019, may hold. Having tightened relations with the United States in his first half year, after two decades of government by the former FMLN guerrillas, Bukele may have thought that his authoritarian gesture would be excused by Washington. The unanimous reaction in the region made him correct the shot, at least for the time being.

▲ Swearing in of Nayib Bukele as president, in June 2019, together with his wife, Gabriela Rodríguez [Presidency of El Salvador].

article / Jimena Villacorta

El Salvador and the United States had a close relationship during the long political dominance of the right-wing ARENA party, but the coming to power in 2009 of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) meant an alignment of El Salvador with the ALBA countries (Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, fundamentally), which led to occasional tension with Washington. In addition, in 2018, in the final stretch of the presidency of Salvador Sánchez Cerén, diplomatic relations with Taiwan were severed and the possibility of strategic investments by China was opened, which were viewed with suspicion by the United States (especially the option of controlling the Pacific port of La Unión, due to the risk of its military use in status of crisis).

Nayib Bukele won the early 2019 elections presenting himself as an alternative to the traditional parties, despite the fact that he was mayor of San Salvador (2015-2018) leading a coalition with the FMLN and that for the presidential elections he stayed with the GANA acronym, created a few years earlier as a split from ARENA. His denunciation of the corruption of the political system, in any case, was credible for the majority of an electorate certainly tired of the Bolivarian tone of the last governments.

During his electoral campaign Bukele already advocated for improving relations with the United States, for being an economically more interesting partner for El Salvador than the ALBA nations. "Any financial aid that comes is welcome and better if it is from the United States", said one of his advisors. These messages were immediately received in Washington, and in July the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, visited El Salvador: it was the first time in ten years, precisely the time of the two consecutive presidencies of the FMLN, that the head of US diplomacy visited the Central American country. This trip served to accentuate the partnership in subject of the fight against drug trafficking and the gang problem, two shared problems. "We have to fight against the MS-13 gang, which has sown destruction in El Salvador and also in the United States, because we have its presence in almost forty of the fifty states of our country," said Pompeo.

In line with the change of orientation that was taking place, El Salvador began to align itself in regional forums against the regime of Nicolás Maduro. Thus, on September 12, the Salvadoran representation in the Organization of American States (OAS) supported the activation of the Inter-American Reciprocal Treaty of attendance (TIAR), after years of abstaining or voting in favor of resolutions supporting Chavez's Venezuela. On December 3, Bukele announced the expulsion from El Salvador of Maduro's government diplomats, an action immediately replicated by Caracas.

In those same months El Salvador accepted the terms of the new immigration approach that the Trump Administration was outlining. During the summer, the White House negotiated with the countries of the Central American Northern Triangle agreements similar to the safe third country mechanism, whereby Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador agreed to process as asylum seekers those who had passed through their territory and ended up in the U.S. by formalizing that application. Bukele met with Trump in September at the United Nations General Assembly framework and signed the agreement, which was presented as an instrument to combat organized crime, strengthen border security, reduce illegal trafficking and human trafficking. 

The signature of agreement was controversial, as many authorities questioned the guarantees of security and protection of rights that El Salvador can offer, when it is the lack of such guarantees that drives the emigration of Salvadorans. Rubén Zamora, former ambassador of El Salvador to the UN, criticized that Bukele was conceding a lot to the United States, with hardly anything in return.

Bukele, however, was able to exhibit in October a US counterpart: the extension for one year, until January 2021, of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that gives legal coverage to the presence of 250,000 Salvadorans and their families in the US. The total number of Salvadorans residing in that country amounts to at least 1.4 million, the largest number of Latin American migrants after Mexicans. This sample shows the great link of the Central American nation, where 6.5 million people live, with the great power of the North, which is also the destination of 80% of its exports and whose dollar is the currency of use in El Salvador.

The new Salvadoran president seemed to truncate this harmony with Washington in December, when he made an official trip to Beijing and met with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. The US had warned of the risk of China taking strategic advantage of the door that was opening in Central America with the subsequent establishment of diplomatic relations with the countries of the American isthmus, which until a few years ago were a stronghold of support for Taiwan. Specifically, the US embassy in El Salvador had been particularly active in denouncing the alleged efforts of the government of Sanchez Ceren to grant China the management of the Port of La Union, in the Gulf of Fonseca, which could be joined by a special economic zone.

However, what Bukele did on this trip was to resize, at least for the time being, this relationship with China, limiting expectations and calming U.S. suspicions. Not only does the question of the port of La Union seem to have been put aside, but also the Salvadoran president circumscribed the Chinese attendance to the field of the financial aid to development and not to the granting of credits which, in case of non-payment, condition national sovereignty. Bukele specified that the "gigantic cooperation" promised by China was "non-refundable" and referred to typical international cooperation projects, such as the construction of a Library Services, a sports stadium and a sewage treatment plant to clean the sewage discharged into Lake Ilopango, near the capital.