Martha Cruz, a Nicaraguan who has been living in Costa Rica for more than 35 years, celebrated 201 years of Central American independence by attending the tour of the so-called “Torch of Freedom” in San José.
Cruz laments the situation in his country of origin, where he says that “freedom of expression” has been “annulled” by the government of President Daniel Ortega, in power since 2007.
“Here there is freedom,” said the woman when attending the event in the center of the Costa Rican capital.
This September 15, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica celebrate their independence from the Spanish Crown in 1821. But the celebrations are overshadowed by concerns about the bleak outlook for democracy in the region, analysts say.
Great challenges for democracy in the region
Eduardo Ulibarri, former Costa Rican ambassador to the United Nations, points out that Central America, from the peace processes that took place towards the end of the 1980s, have not yielded the expected results from the socioeconomic and political point of view. The current situation “is not what we imagined about a decade ago,” he said.
The most marked setback, “because it has regressed towards a dictatorship,” is that of Nicaragua, Ulibarri said, adding that there are extremely worrying signs in other Central American countries, such as El Salvador, “with an autocratic government, that of Nayib Bukele, and also Guatemala, with a progressive weakening and even attacks from sectors of informal and formal power against the rule of law.”
Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, according to the former diplomat, there is an executive power that until now has used a discourse that is disrespectful of the institutions and the important bastions of democracy, such as the independent press; while in Honduras there is a quite volatile political situation, due to security problems and the influence of drug trafficking, he pointed out.
“All of this forms a situation that could have been better and that (…) has generated very large migratory flows to the United States, has affected living conditions in several countries (…) above all [en] Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua,” Ulibarri said.
Tiziano Breda, analyst of the International Crisis Group, a thinktank of analysis and research based in Brussels, assures that in some Central American countries there are problems with the right of association and political freedoms.
Breda pointed out the inability of the international community to promote a negotiated solution to the crisis seen in Nicaragua in 2018 and the perceived lack of consequences for the Ortega government for “the abuses” and “the repression” that his government has launched since then.
“This has been emboldening certain governments with authoritarian overtones to basically launch initiatives or take actions that are similar, that go in the same direction, although, clearly, they are still very distant. We are talking about governments that have been democratically elected, but that They have taken measures that are more or less headed in a direction similar to the drastic situation in Nicaragua,” he added.
In Guatemala there have been signs of a deterioration of democracy due to the persecution of prosecutors who have investigated cases of corruption against President Alejandro Giammattei.
In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele faces criticism for controlling all state powers and imposing an exception regime which has already put more than 50,000 people in jail in just five months.
Emily Mendrala, assistant secretary of the Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs Mendrala, assured during a hearing of the Human Rights Commission of Congress this week on the emergency regime in El Salvador that the State Department is concerned that the regime “drastically reduced the protection of civil rights.
Nicaragua is a key point in the situation in the region, with Ortega accused of imposing a dictatorship and imprisoning all his critics and persecuting the independent press, analysts said.
Ulibarri said that in Nicaragua “there is a dictatorship that has been eliminating any vestige of civil society, it has practically erased the independent media from the map, in the midst of great impunity because the reaction of the international community, although it has not been applauded , neither has [sido de tomar] more forceful measures so that there is an effect on the regime”.
“Foreign interference”, a rhetoric to nullify criticism
Faced with critical accusations, several leaders of the region have argued that they seek to govern with “independence” and without what they have called “foreign interference”.
That concept “has been refined and is being used by governments that have very different ideological overtones, that have very different histories, but they are being brought together by this tendency towards the concentration of power using precisely this sovereignist, national, and even Central Americanist discourse” Breda said.
On the eve of Central American independence, Bukele said that homicides in his country have dropped after the imposition of the emergency regime and that “congressmen from other countries should worry about the problems of their citizens, instead of meddling where they are not. we have invited”.
For his part, Daniel Ortega, during a public speech on September 12, referred to critics and opponents as “slaves of the colonizers” who “had no country.”
Breda added that the concepts of independence and sovereignty have been used by those governments in the region “as an excuse” or as a rhetorical element “to be able to replicate and deny the criticism and possible demands that are being made at the international level on issues of democracy. and human rights”.
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