Why has El Salvador expelled diplomats from Venezuela? | Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela |Axisoflogic.com

Chris Fisher posted the question above on the website Quora. What follows is a response by Les Blough, my co-editor at Axis of Logic.

By the way, Les is a regular contributor to Quora and you can sign up to be notified whenever he responds to a reader's questions. Just follow the link to this article and you can sign up.

Also, it's worth reminding readers that Les's responses are forged from having lived in the belly of the beast for most of his life (i.e. in the USA) and from now being a permanent resident in Venezuela for more than a decade.

- prh, ed.

Thanks for asking me this important question, Chris. El Salvador's new government under president Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez expelled Venezuela's diplomats for 2 reasons.

The first, to put it succinctly, is that Bukele is a US pawn doing his job for Washington. He's the wealthy owner of Yamaha Motors El Salvador, touted as a successful entrepreneur - but really his wealth is inherited. He was expelled from the FMLN, El Salvador's political party on the left, for “promoting internal division and performing defamatory acts” against the party which has the familiar ring of US/CIA intervention in many Latin American and Middle Eastern countries. Bukele then ran for president as an independent with US backing and won. Upon winning the election he stated,

“For us, the United States is not only a partner and an ally, but also a friend. And we're going to show that friendship. That's one of the reasons we signed the agreement - because we want to show the friendship to our most important ally, which is the United States.” (source: NPR).

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Bukele immediately after the election, praised him for his “shift to the US” and had this to say in the ensuing press conference:

“El Salvador with its new leadership has made a clear choice to fight corruption, promote justice and partner with the United States, and together both of our peoples will reap those benefits.”

Pompeo also praised Bukele for recognizing Juan Guido, the self-appointed and US-funded “interim president” of Venezuela and for rejecting Venezuela's elected government which Pompeo described as, “the corrupt Maduro regime… We applaud the government of Nayib Bukele for ensuring that El Salvador is on the right side of history by recognising Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela.”

Then Ronald Johnson, the US ambassador to El Salvador, quickly chimed in with more praise, eager to partner with the new president and to run the country alongside him as US ambassadors are wont to do in Washington's client states.

The second reason El Salvador expelled Venezuela's diplomats is the the US held a cocked pistol to the country's head with one hand and a piece of cake to it's mouth with the other.

The Pistol
In this case, US pistols are on two heads, Mexico and El Salvador. The US demands that Mexico stop Salvadorans from immigrating to the US border where Trump's infamous militarized border control and interment camps await those who make it through. With the other pistol on El Salvador, the US demanded the expulsion of Venezuela's diplomats and Bukele's signature on a US-El Salvador immigration agreement.

The immigration agreement: Bukele immediately fell into lockstep by signing the agreement ensuring that the thousands of Salvadoran asylum seekers who reach the southern border of the U.S. would automatically be sent back home and that Bukele would deploy hundreds of armed police to patrol El Salvador's borders and prevent emigres from leaving the country. Bukele was also kind hearted enough to thank the US for cutting off foreign aid to El Salvador saying, “We don't want free money.” Pompeo didn't object.

Salvadorans are not leaving their homeland to take the jobs of US workers to live the “American Dream”, as Washington and the MSM often suggest. Rather, they are fleeing for their lives from a land of extreme poverty, inequality and violence, known as one of the most dangerous countries in Latin America, a gift of US-Latin American foreign policy over the decades.

CBS cites World Bank data reporting, “Over the past decades, El Salvador has consistently topped the list of countries with the highest homicide rates that are not in open war."

Mneesha Gellman, Emerson College, has documented “a culture of impunity across Central America and Mexico, focusing on the indigenous people, women and political dissidents who are so often victims of political violence.” Reporting on El Salvador she says:

“Hundreds of Salvadorans are killed every month. In July, the country went a day without a murder, and it was headline news, Murders, disappearances and tortures almost always go unsolved in El Salvador. Criminals, especially those with access to power, are rarely punished for their wrongdoing. But Gellman adds this, “Since Bukele took office in June 2019, murders in El Salvador are down. The president credits his tough-on-gangs policing with improving security in the country.

Manipulating the murder rate
Gellman contues:

“But some crime analysts say the apparent drop in homicides change is actually a manipulation of crime data. The government recently changed how it counts murders, eliminating deaths that result from confrontation with security forces – police killings – from the homicide category.”

So I think it's fair to ask, is Bukele serving the people of El Salvador or Washington's agenda to keep them trapped with his hundreds of new heavily armed border police patrolling the country's border, cracking down on fleeing refugees. To help answer that question I now quote Gellman at length:

“In any case, levels of violence in El Salvador are still among the world’s highest.

“Police regularly turn a blind eye to violence by gang members, including both MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs, either due to corruption or concern for their own safety. As a result, Salvadoran police frequently fail to meaningfully protect people from gang violence.

“Often, officers themselves victimize Salvadorans, roughing up suspected gang members who may just be teenage boys hanging out on the street…

“In these circumstances, sending migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border to El Salvador may violate an international law called “non-refoulement… According to the 1954 United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees, which both the U.S. and El Salvador signed, states cannot expel refugees to a territory 'where his life or freedom would be threatened.’ Migrants know El Salvador can’t protect them from the dangers they flee. Only about 50 people have applied for asylum there in recent years. El Salvador has just one asylum officer on staff, according to the Salvadoran investigative news site El Faro…The future of the U.S.-El Salvador migration agreement is not assured, as the Salvadoran Congress has not yet approved the measure. But if it goes into effect, migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. may soon become collateral damage from this political deal.”

The Cake
It so happened that Pompeo and Bukele signed the new agreement to keep Salvadorans from fleeing their country only days after the US government extended The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) protecting Salvadoran people already living in the US - but only for one year. They received this protection in the US following two devastating earthquakes in 2001 that killed 8,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. But given Trump's brutal treatment of Latin American immigrants. there's little hope that it will be extended to Salvadorans again 11 months from now even after having lived in the US for 18 years. Again, Bukele returned this TPS favor with his own piece of Salvadoran cake by rejecting US foreign aid.

TPS is very rarely extended beyond expiration to foreign immigrants by the Trump administration and according to AFSC,

“Since taking office, President Trump has ended crucial protections for immigrants from six countries. Over 300,000 people are at risk of losing legal Temporary Protected Status… TPS is a provision under which the government grants protection from deportation to people from certain countries afflicted by natural disasters, war, or other dangerous conditions.

“These moves continue a series of cruel attacks on immigrants in the U.S. that rip apart families and hurt our communities. The administration must extend TPS. And Congress should enact a permanent solution that creates a roadmap to citizenship for recipients and the millions of other immigrants in the U.S.”

I'll follow your question Chris, “Why has El Salvador expelled diplomats from Venezuela?” with another. Did Bukele kick the Venezuelan diplomats out as a service to the people of El Salvador or in service to the US who demanded it of him?

Thanks again for asking me.

To follow the dynamic economic and political changes currently sweeping across Central and South America be sure to check in with us daily at Axis of Logic

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