Criticism of Maduro, the resizing of the Chinese embrace and greater migration control mark the harmony with Washington after ten years of FMLN rule.

The surprising use of the military 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. Bukele's first half-year of closer relations with the United States, after two decades of rule by the former FMLN guerrillas, may have led Bukele to believe 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, 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) brought El Salvador into alignment with the ALBA countries (mainly Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba), which led to occasional tension with Washington. Furthermore, in 2018, in the final stretch of Salvador Sánchez Cerén's presidency, diplomatic relations with Taiwan were severed and the possibility of strategic investments by China was opened up, 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 a crisis). status .

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 acronym GANA, 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 that was certainly tired of the Bolivarian tone of recent governments.

During his electoral campaign, Bukele had already advocated improving relations with the United States, as it is a partner more economically interesting 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 FMLN's two consecutive presidencies, that the head of US diplomacy had visited the Central American country. This trip served to accentuate the partnership at subject in the fight against drug trafficking and the gang problem, two shared problems. "We have to fight the MS-13 gang, which has sown destruction in El Salvador and also in the United States, because we have its presence in almost 40 of the 50 states in our country," Pompeo said.

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

In the same months, El Salvador accepted the terms of the new migration 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 US by formalising this 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 organised crime, strengthen border security, reduce smuggling and human trafficking. 

The signature of agreement proved to be 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 is driving the emigration of Salvadorans. Rubén Zamora, El Salvador's former ambassador to the UN, criticised the fact that Bukele was conceding a great deal to the United States, with hardly anything in return.

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

The new Salvadoran president appeared to cut short 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 successive establishment of diplomatic relations with the countries of the American isthmus, which until a few years ago were a stronghold of support for Taiwan. In particular, the US embassy in El Salvador had been particularly active in denouncing the Sánchez Cerén government's alleged efforts to grant China the management of the Port of La Unión, 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 US suspicions. Not only does the question of the port of La Unión seem to have been shelved, but the Salvadoran president also confined China's attendance to the realm of financial aid at development and not to the granting of credits which, in the event 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.