This is the transcript of episode 82 of the weekly El Faro English podcast, Central America in Minutes.
ORTEGA: There will be no more elections. That’s the end of the story. The political parties backed by the Yankees and the Somocistas will never return to power. Never. There will be no more elections for them to try to seize the government or seize power.
GRESSIER, HOST: That’s Nicaraguan co-dictator Daniel Ortega announcing last Sunday, July 19, that “there will be no more elections” in 2027. It was quite the way to commemorate the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in Managua.
I’m your host, Roman Gressier. From the studios of El Faro English, this is Central America in Minutes.
Threats against Nicaraguan elections
On Wednesday, July 22, the president of the Nicaraguan National Assembly, Gustavo Porras, said that he will meet with the regime-controlled Supreme Electoral Council to determine which laws need to be changed to comply with the presidential order.
Porras also indicated that they’ll introduce a new reform bill by the end of the month.
Ortega’s statements sparked a wave of international and regional criticism. In Central America, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama rejected the regime’s position.
Meanwhile, the most notably quiet voices in the region have been Honduras and El Salvador, both close US allies.
On Tuesday, July 21, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Ortega and Murillo of “deepen(ing) repression at home and manufactur(ing) instability that threatens US national security.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, condemned the recent events in Nicaragua and said that “people of all political views must be allowed to vote and run for public office.”
The secretary general of the Organization of American States, Albert Ramdin, also condemned Ortega’s statements. “Eliminating elections is the ultimate denial of the people’s sovereign right to elect their government,” he said.
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The Way Out Is Inward
The next elections were scheduled for November 2027. But two years ago, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that Ortega’s reelection in 2011 was unconstitutional. He has been reelected twice more. Last time, in 2021, the regime arrested seven opposition candidates and dissolved the political parties of the two main opposition movements.
Now, Ortega’s wife Rosario Murillo is installed as co-president without ever being elected to that position, which the couple created for her a year and a half ago. The presidential couple took their first step toward scrapping elections altogether. But who can stop them?
In-custody deaths in El Salvador
“Pulmonary edema” is a phrase that shows up again and again in Salvadoran prison autopsies. The state has repeatedly concealed violent deaths in prison under this clinical euphemism. It’s what they wrote on the death certificate of a 24-year-old fisherman named Dionicio Adonay Ramírez Rivas, but the photos of his body tell a very different story.
On August 24, 2022, Ramírez Rivas arrived at the Zacamil Hospital morgue. The hospital estimated that he had been dead for six to eight hours. His body showed signs of sunstroke. Pictures obtained by El Faro show a reddened puncture wound below his right collarbone.
But signs of violence on his body were ignored in official reports. The Forensic Medicine Institute’s autopsy states that the death is related to high blood pressure. “Taking into account, furthermore, the deceased’s obesity, which increases the risk of metabolic diseases,” reads one of the official documents in El Faro’s possession.
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José Valle: “My son’s body had a hole straight through his chest”
Months earlier, he’d been arrested while helping his father clean a swimming pool. He had no tattoos and no gang history, yet four police officers took him in anyway, accusing him of collaborating with gangs. He was sent to Mariona Prison, leaving behind his four-year-old daughter and pregnant wife. His father, José Valle, recounts that the stress of the arrest caused her to miscarry unborn twins. He believes his son was murdered.
Ramírez Rivas spent two months in Mariona before his death. His family wasn’t even told about his first court hearing.
Ramírez Rivas is one of the 547 people who have died in Salvadoran prisons since President Nayib Bukele installed the state of exception in March 2022. That’s according to a count by Socorro Jurídico Humanitario. The total is current as of July 15, 2026.
El Faro has published dozens of testimonies of victims of human rights violations under the state of exception.
The UN, Inter-American Commission, and US Congress have each received reports of possible crimes against humanity being committed within the Salvadoran prison system.
Over the last four years, the newsroom has repeatedly requested interviews with the police, the Attorney General’s Office, and the Bureau of Prisons. None responded.
As El Faro English reported on Wednesdaythis is part of a broader policy of silence by the Salvadoran regime in the face of corruption cases, negotiations with gangs, and systematic human rights violations.
Ixil genocide case in Guatemala
Last, to Guatemala. On July 15, after a hiatus of nearly two years, a hearing took place in the Maya Ixil genocide case against former General Benedicto Lucas.
Benedicto Lucas is accused of acts of genocide against the Maya Ixil people during the internal armed conflict, in the eighties. Back then, he was head of the Joint General Staff of the Army. His brother, Romeo Lucas, was de-facto president in years when state violence made Guatemala a pariah.
He’s now almost 94 years old. The defense has argued that the former general is in poor health and cannot remain in pretrial detention. He has been under care at the Military Hospital since the hearings began in April 2024.
This month, his defense requested that he has been allowed to go home pending the trial. The court granted the request.On Wednesday, the plaintiffs appealedarguing that those charged with genocide are ineligible for pre-trial privileges under national and international law.
This decision is still up in the air. He could be sent back to pretrial detention for this case.
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Since November 2024, the final hearings in the case have been on hold because the defense filed an appeal requesting that months of testimony and evidentiary hearings be annulled. The defense wanted the trial to be restarted before a different court.
Private plaintiffs in the case filed a constitutional appeal to prevent the change of court, but the high court has dragged its feet on that decision, too.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Mario Trejo, from the Association for Justice and Reconciliation, told El Faro English that the house arrest is limited to the metropolitan area.
Benedicto Lucas is accused in two additional cases. The first involves the high-profile enforced disappearance of 14-year-old Marco Antonio Molina Theissen in 1981, as well as for crimes against humanity and the rape of Emma, Marco’s sister. He was sentenced to 58 years in prison, which were transferred to house arrest in 2023.
The second is another enforced disappearance case called CREOMPAZ, named after one of the country’s largest military bases. Investigators found more than 550 victims in clandestine graves near the base. In 2024, the case was overturnedand Benedicto Lucas and the other defendants were released.
As El Faro English reported in July, on the day Benedicto’s lawyers filed for his release in the genocide case, a major burial took place in rural Chimaltenango, outside the capital.
Dozens of families of victims of the internal armed conflict finally buried their loved ones, who were murdered by the Guatemalan Army in 1982. The government left their remains in a vault for decades and failed to properly bury them. So relatives took matters into their own hands.
This episode was written by Leyrian Colon Santiago, Yuliana Ramazziniand Megan Mandrachio. Editing by Roman Gressier and sound design by Omnionn. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, amazon, iHeart, and YouTube.
