The 2009 coup ratcheted up the sell-off of land and resources, enabled state-sponsored drug trafficking and corruption, and fueled a migrant exodus—all with U.S. and Canadian support.
The 2009 U.S.-backed coup ruptured Honduras’s three-decade-old democracy. Despite a media blockade, militarization, and deadly repression, the people took to the streets—and refused to back down.
Often overlooked in the story of U.S. imperialism in Central America, Honduras has served as a training base and staging ground for interventions throughout the region. In the 1980s, the impacts were devastating.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has been reelected in a landslide. Supporters praise his security gains despite widespread human rights abuses, and leaders across the region are looking to emulate his model.
Guatemala's new president Bernardo Arévalo is now in office. But the struggle to defend democracy against the forces fixated on blocking his rise to power isn't over yet.
Broadcasting the Salvadoran government's atrocities throughout the armed conflict, the guerrilla radio station Venceremos had a clear goal: bringing down the U.S.-backed dictatorship.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration poured billions of dollars into El Salvador's military to crush the left-wing FMLN, littering the country in mass graves in the process.
U.S.-trained and sponsored state forces killed 200,000 mostly Indigenous Guatemalans in a genocide in the 1980s. Forty years later, justice remains elusive.
The dreams of a democratic Guatemala were dashed by a 1954 CIA coup against President Jacobo Arbenz spurred by the landed interests of the United Fruit Company.
