Nayib Bukele’s administration was an important supporter of imperialism’s anti-immigration policy in the Trump era. https://www.eleconomista.net/actualidad/Bukele-acepto-acuerdo-antiinmigrante-de-Trump-que-ignoraba-la-corrupcion-en-El-Salvador-20210226-0024.html.
Today Bukele has fallen out of favour with Biden-Harris and is coming into conflict with American imperialism in Central America, approaching China. Bukele is a bourgeois politician who passed through the FMLN (Farabundo Martí Front of National Liberation), being mayor of the capital San Salvador in 2015, from which he was expelled in 2017. From there he approached the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA),with which he took advantage of weariness with the bipartisanship constituted by the FMLN and ARENA, being elected president in 2019 and thus ending almost 30 years of bipartisanship in El Salvador.
https://fundacionfaes.org/es/prensa/46848/a-el-fin-del-bipartidismo-en-el-salvador-a
Bukele will not be the first or last puppet of imperialism to fall into disgrace with his master in the North. In Panama, the dictador Manuel Noriega, received millions of dollars from U.S. imperialism, for 31 years participating in the crackdown of his country’s government, was a CIA agent for a long time, and was central to the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration. Noriega supported U.S. military operations against Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front and the FMLN in El Salvador itself. But despite this explicit history of services to imperialism, Noriega was overthrown by an American military invasion of Panama in 1989, when it was discovered that Noriega was playing a double game and, only since then, was he accused by the U.S. of trafficking drugs and weapons. Noriega played a double game because he also maintained close relations with staunch enemies of the United States, including Cuba, Libya and Nicaragua. Noriega smuggled weapons from Cuba and the USSR to the Sandinistas, charging much silver for that. Noriega sold thousands of Panamanian passports to the Cuban government for use by its intelligence services. Cuba also used Panama to triangulate the purchase of computers banned by the U.S. embargo. In return, Cuba provided Panama with weapons and military advisers.
Very more recently, in Guatemala in 2015, Pérez Molina, which although having nothing left-wing about him, came into contradiction with U.S. imperialism for proposing the decriminalization of drugs, thus affecting the interests of drug traffickers that stands behind the “war on drugs”. As we noted in 2018 in a document, http://tmb1917.blogspot.com/2018/11/crisis-migratoria.html). The case of Pérez Molina in Guatemala is that of another government that entered into some contradiction with imperialism. It was the international context of the time that stopped his government from approaching the Russian-Chinese pole.
Today in El Salvador, when Biden-Harris tries to displace Bukele, we take note of what happened to Noriega, Molina, and others. To avoid the same fate, Bukele seeks support in China. China then assists El Salvador with $500 million non-refundable aid for a public works construction program. The non-refundable nature of the loan means that it does not have to be repaid https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/internacional/el-salvador-firma-millonario-acuerdo-de-cooperacion-con-china-y-se-pone-en-la-mira-de-ee-uu-nota/
American imperialism fearful of losing influence in Central America has already launched a campaign against Bukele’s ruling layer, denouncing acts of corruption https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/internacional/el-salvador-firma-millonario-acuerdo-de-cooperacion-con-china-y-se-pone-en-la-mira-de-ee-uu-nota/
Bukele learned from the experience of Central America and the Latin American group of bourgeois governments that had some contradiction with imperialism. Thus, judicial coupism such as lawfare (legal war) was prevented as in the cases of Guatemala, Ecuador, Argentina, and Brazil, with Bukele himself moving forward in judicial “cleansing” taking advantage of his official majority in the legislative assembly. This was achieved in early May this year, displacing the judges from the constitutional chamber of the supreme court of justice, and also the attorney general. This preventive maneuver by Bukele was explicitly condemned by the sector of US imperialism represented in the Biden-Harris government.https://www.cronista.com/internacionales/estados-unidos-tiene-grave-preocupacion-por-la-destitucion-de-jueces-en-el-salvador/
It should be noted that the attitude of imperialism, as we said, is aimed at not losing influence in Central America, not only in El Salvador. Immediately El Salvador would be relevant to the whole gulf of Fonseca, a geographical point constituted by an inlet on the Pacific Ocean formed in an archipelago that constitutes one of the best natural ports in the world, where three Central American countries have ports: El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golfo_de_Fonseca. The anti-China hysteria of U.S. imperialism sees in this a threat from China to its interests in the Gulf of Fonseca
This is a sign of the times, of the decline of the U.S. and its overcoming by China and its allies: In Honduras, in 2011, Zelaya suffered a coup d’état of imperialism led by the Obama-Biden Democratic Party government, because he flirted with Venezuela and the Eurasian pole. In El Salvador, in 2021, a decade after Zelaya, Bukele flirts with the same Eurasian pole so as not to suffer a coup d’état of imperialism. Both in the Area of the Americas (Central America) which constitutes the area of direct geostrategic dominance of American imperialism.
In accordance with the revolutionary tradition demonstrated by the exploited and oppressed of El Salvador in the 80’s when they became a fighting reference point for much of Latin America and the world, It is necessary to point out the limitations of the contradiction with imperialism that a bourgeois leadership like Bukele manifests today. It must not be forgotten that workers in El Salvador and Central America need to be independent of the Bukele government and all capitalist forces to advance their anti-imperialist demands, uniting democratic with socialist tasks in a process of permanent revolution, part of revolutionary struggles in Central America and all Latin America.
