This is the transcript of episode 93 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.
GRESSIER, HOST: In San Salvador on October 13, Nayib Bukele announced his government has a plan to grant conditional release to potentially tens of thousands of Salvadorans accused of collaborating with gangs.
BUKELE: We have a plan, as I mentioned before. I think it would benefit roughly 50 percent of the prisoners in El Salvador who collaborated with gangs. They could receive early release. In other words, they are guilty, but they could be released under certain conditions, with monitoring.
GRESSIER: I’m your host, Roman Gressier. On today’s episode: Bukele says thousands of alleged gang collaborators could be released. The October 9 earthquake in Panama affects thousands. And rising tides displace Central American coastal communities.
From the studios of El Faro English, this is Central America in Minutes.
Bukele announces plan for gang ‘collaborators’
Under the state of exception in El Salvador, since March 2022, around 92,000 people have been arrested with their constitutional right to due process suspended.
At his October 13 press conference, Bukele compared the gangs to cancer and the mass arrests to chemo. He said the government will eventually do away with the state of exception, but that it can’t risk a gang relapse.
Two years ago, by the end of 2024, Bukele himself estimated that at least one in ten detainees were innocent. Lack of transparency makes Bukele’s word the only game in town in terms of arrest figures.
Now, the government will look at how closely each person worked with gangs. Bukele said half of all gang collaborators could be released, but he didn’t give a hard number or say on what hard criteria it would be calculated.
Those released will be deemed guilty, placed under monitoring, and required to meet certain unspecified conditions.
Bukele made no mention of the courts or prosecutors, or what role they would play in a plan purportedly directed from the Presidential Palace, Casa Presidencial.
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This is the first time he has acknowledged that people may be in prison for crimes purportedly committed under coercion. He said, “If we were to arrest everyone who collaborated with gangs, we would have to arrest 20 percent of the population.”
Last April, the president’s brother, Ibrajim Bukele, revealed online that he and a slate of officials were part of a commission reviewing arrests outside the legal system. He said First Lady Gabriela de Bukele was even on it.
But on Tuesday, Bukele denied that such a commission exists. He said his brother Ibrajim—an advisor who holds no official position—was not involved in any body of that kind.
This year, mass trials began for up to hundreds of people at a time, charged with collective —not individual— gang crimes.International investigators testified before the UN, Inter-American Commission, and US Congress that El Salvador has committed crimes against humanity including torture, forced disappearance, arbitrary arrests, in-custody deaths, detentions of minors, and sexual violence in custody.
Bukele has snarled at these reports, claiming without evidence that an international conspiracy is seeking to undermine security in El Salvador.
Panama earthquake affects thousands
Now, to Panama. A week after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck the southern part of the country on October 9, the Panamanian government reported that more than 2,500 people remain in shelters and over 10,000 people have been affected.
At a press conference on Tuesday, October 13, authorities reported that 27 people were injured. To date, there have been no reports of missing persons and one report of a fatality related to a preexisting condition.
According to Minister of Canal Affairs José Ramón Icaza, that same day alone, the number of affected homes increased from 1,200 to 3,300.
More than 600 public schools and almost 90 government buildings were affected. There are also reports of damage to roads, bridges, infrastructure, and access to basic services.
The provinces most affected by the earthquake were Los Santos, Herrera, Coclé, Veraguas and Chiquirí. In Tonosí, a municipality located in the province of Los Santos, the closure of accessible roads due to damage has left communities without communication.
President José Raúl Mulino reported that 7,100 members of the National Security Force were deployed to distribute humanitarian aid, 1,100 officials were assigned to handle emergencies on the ground, and 450 firefighters were sent to affected areas.
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To prevent irregularities in the delivery of aid to affected communities, the government ordered the Agricultural Marketing Institute to handle door-to-door food deliveries.
Before the Panamanian government declared a national emergency on Saturday, October 10, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that military assets would be redeployed to support humanitarian relief efforts.
According to the US ambassador to Panama, Kevin Marino Cabrera, the US quickly mobilized $5 million in humanitarian aid, military personnel, helicopters, and emergency specialists.
Regional aid to Panama has arrived in response to direct requests from the government. At their requestthe US sent 20 specialists from FEMA to help evaluate structural damage to critical infrastructure.
Costa Rica sent healthcare personnel for mothers and newborns. Venezuela sent a group of 51 experts and infrastructure specialists to provide technical assistance. Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile also offered humanitarian relief.
According to the University of Panama, the earthquake itself was only the beginning. More than 400 aftershocks followed quickly.
Rising tides in Central America
For more than a decade, Central Americans living in coastal areas have watched—and fled—as parts of their mangroves and communities have been devoured by rising tides.
For a series of photo essays published in El Faro English this week, Carlos Barrera profiled residents of the Cedeño mangrove forest in Hondurasthe Térraba-Sierpe wetland in Costa Ricaand the La Tirana mangrove forest in El Salvador.
According to the UN, rising sea levels are caused by the warming of the oceans and the melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers. This is based on data from the World Meteorological Organization and UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.
What is happening thousands of kilometers away from these Central American communities is drowning them, Barrera writes.
Between 2024 and this year, El Faro English visited these communities, which periodically moves a little further inland to escape the sea. But sooner or later, the waves catch up with them.
In Honduras, over half of the country’s mangrove coverage has disappeared while Cedeño, a village along the Gulf of Fonseca, is being swallowed by the tide. Hundreds of people need to be relocated and, within two years, more families will become climate refugees.
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Costa Rica’s largest mangrove forest is receding. In the Térraba-Sierpe wetland, an area under pressure from African palm plantations, one reforester said “we’re trying to repair what our ancestors did.”
And in El Salvador, Cándido Hernández and his family have for years lived off what the La Tirana mangrove forest provides in the Jiquilisco Bay. But every morning they go out, Barrera reports, they know that the mangrove is dying.
On September 24, 2026, at the UN General Assembly, the Declaration on Sea Level Rise was launchedcalling on countries to commit, among other things, to protecting mangroves and the most vulnerable communities.
These communities subsist primarily on what they gather from the mangroves, while the ocean advances and destroys their homes — in most cases, their only family assets.
While countries deliberate, in La Tirana, Cedeño, and Sierpe, the sea continues to devour meters of land. Some residents are organizing to try to outpace the waves and save their mangroves. But the rising sea can’t be stopped.
This episode was written by Gabriel Labrador, Leyrian Colon Santiagoand Carlos Barrera. Editing by Roman Gressier and sound design by Omnionn.
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