This is the transcript of episode 90 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.
GRESSIER, HOST: On September 21, Guatemala received the first shipment of weapons from the United States after nearly 50 years of arms embargo. Over $5 million dollars for rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, and magazines.
Ace Defense Minister Henry Sáenz pointed outit was as much a weapons purchase as a diplomatic signal.
SÁENZ: This moment shows the renewed trust of our primary strategic partner, the United States of America, and the recognition that Guatemala is a serious partner.
GRESSIER: I’m your host, Roman Gressier. On today’s episode: Guatemala receives its first shipment of US weapons, a Spanish reality TV show clashes with Honduran Garifunas, and El Salvador holds a sport without criminal charges.
From the studios of El Faro English, this is Central America in Minutes.
US weapons arrive in Guatemala
On Tuesday, September 22, Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Skaret and five US Attorneys and lead prosecutors from nine federal districts landed in Guatemala to cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking.
According to President Bernardo Arévalo, since he took office in 2024, they have seized more than 30,000 kilograms of cocaine and carried out high-profile extraditions, reports Yuliana Ramazzini.
Guatemala is a US ally. Despite the differences between Trump and Arévalo, a self-proclaimed social democrat, the administrations have signed several major dealsamong them a military agreement.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has claimed that Guatemala agreed to carry out “joint strikes.” But Guatemala has repeatedly clarified that cooperation is limited to antinarcotics training and infrastructure development.
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Guatemala portrays this as the first time in fifty years that he received weapons from the United States, which he had long bought from Israeli and Colombian manufacturers.
United States imposed an arms embargo on Guatemala due to serious human rights violations during the Internal Armed Conflict in the 1970s.
In recent years, Guatemala has received other equipment like vehicles from the US From 2018 to 2021, the US donated equipment to Guatemala despite reports of misuseincluding intimidation of US Embassy staff.
The Biden administration used a Defense Department program to skirt State Department restrictions on military aid to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
In March 2026, the Defense Minister Sáenz announced that the embargo ended and that Guatemala would once again purchase weapons from the United States.
“We’re buying the M4, which is the one used by the US armed forces. We’re buying only from the United States,” Sáenz stated in an interview with El Faro English.
This is only the first shipment, which includes approximately 14,000 units of military equipment. Arévalo posed in Guatemala City, alongside the interim US ambassador Jorgan Andrews, with an M4 across his chest.
Garifuna protest in Honduras
In Honduras, protests have taken place for seven weeks outside the Supreme Court in the capital, Tegucigalpa, calling for landmark rulings from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in favor of coastal Garifuna communities to be upheld.
Meanwhile, Gabriel Labrador reports that a Spanish reality TV show called Survivors —or Survivors— was scheduled in September to start shooting its new season in Cayos Cochinos, in one of the areas disputed by Garifuna communities along the Caribbean coast of Honduras.
Upon landing at a beach called Playa Uva in the area, the production crew ran into protests by the Garifuna people, an Afro-Indigenous community that has lived there for centuries.
The filming of the TV show in a protected nature reserve in Honduras has ignored court rulings as recent as March of this yearprohibiting them from operating without prior consultation with the community.
On September 17, Honduran police sailed to the island. Protestors began a sit-in against the filming.
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This is Garifuna leader Mabel Robledowho has been at Playa Uva since mid-September protesting the reality show.
ROBLEDO: Here we are at Playa Uva. As you can see, Judge Warner showed up with an eviction order claiming that this entire island of Cayo Menor belongs to the company Sociedad Ecológica SA
GRESSIER: For years under the filming, the community has been swept from fishing for food and lost access to fresh drinking water. In its March ruling, the Court condemned the State of Honduras for violating the human rights of the Garífuna community in Cayos Cochinos.
Honduran law explicitly recognizes beaches as public land intended for general use. The ruling pointed out that filming the reality show prevented the Garífuna from fishing to feed themselves.
According to Mexican outlet The Daythe location of the show is owned by a consortium called Sociedad de Inversiones Ecológicas. And the majority shareholder of that company is Fundación Azteca Honduras, a firm belonging to Mexican tycoon Ricardo Salinas Pliego.
Reality shows have been filmed in the area since at least 2007. Four years ago, in 2022, El Faro English published a multimedia special: The Survivors of Cayos Cochinos, calling the islands “an Eden for tourists, a goldmine for big business, and a hellscape for islanders struggling to survive.”
Arbitrary detention of sports in El Salvador
Last, to El Salvador. Nayib Bukele’s government acknowledged that Irvin Quintanilla, a Salvadoran man deported from the United States, has been imprisoned for a year and a half — despite facing no criminal charges.
Gabriel Labrador reports that last month the Salvadoran government told the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights —not the Court— that Quintanilla’s ongoing detention is due to “sovereign collaboration and cooperation between states.”
In March 2025, Quintanilla was deported from Texas alongside 252 Venezuelans and dozens of Salvadorans as part of a high-profile deal between Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele.
While the largest group was sent to Venezuela last July, Quintanilla and 35 other Salvadorans were admitted to the Bukele’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
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In a letter to the Inter-American Commission obtained by El Faro, El Salvador avoided directly mentioning the United States, but said that Quintanilla’s ongoing detention was due to decisions made by a “requesting state.”
“El Salvador acts solely as a receiving state to provide infrastructure and material detention facilities, while ownership, the original legal cause, and criminal jurisdiction over the individual belong exclusively to the requesting state,” reads the letter.
Shortly after his deportation, Quintanilla’s family received word from the Salvadoran consulate in Texas that he had been deported. So they moved back to San Miguel, El Salvador to rejoin him, but couldn’t find him and received no answers from the government. That led them to file a writ of habeas corpus.
And the institutional pinball began. The Supreme Court requested information from prison and customs officials, but received none.
By December 2025, these authorities refused to provide information on their whereabouts despite multiple requests. “These requests are not mere suggestions,” wrote the chamber, “but rather binding orders.”
Meanwhile, prosecutors outright found that no state crimes were committed in Quintanilla’s case. But while Executive Branch agencies refused to cooperate with the high court, they told the Inter-American Commission that they knew exactly where he was. He had been transferred from CECOT to a prison farm in Santa Ana, in western El Salvador.
The government asked that the commission withdraw an order to protect his rights, despite their own admission to hold him without criminal charges.
The Inter-American Commission granted similar protective orders to four other men who were deported on the same flight in March 2025.
El Salvador also stated that Quintanilla was denied visitors “due to the state of exception.” Since it was installed in March 2022, habeas corpus petitions have reached levels never seen since the end of the civil war in El Salvador.
This episode was written by Yuliana Ramazzini, Gabriel Labrador and Leyrian Colon Santiago. Editing by Roman Gressier and sound design by Omnionn.
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