Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele visited the United States but was not received by any official in Joe Biden’s government

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has remained in the crosshairs of the international community after deploying a strong security apparatus, composed of the army and the police, on February 9, 2020, at the seat of the Legislative Assembly of his country, in what was seen as pressure on parliament to approve funding for its security plan. According to the local press, The Salvadoran president visited the United States last week and, despite his efforts to hold meetings with senior officials in Joe Biden’s government, he was not received by any.

According to the portal The Savior, The president, who was in Washington, attempted to meet with State Department officials and Juan González, the senior White House National Security Council adviser for the Western Hemisphere. However, the requests were denied.

A source close to Biden’s work team said Daily newspaper that Bukele only managed to meet Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), during his stay in the North American capital.

This source argued that the rejection of the Salvadoran president’s demands sent a clear message to the president: “The rule of law, respect for fundamental standards in a democracy will be important for the Biden administration based on these principles and not on the ‘ideology.”.

For its part, as this person close to Biden’s team confided, the new American government did not want to be manipulated by Bukele and that the requested meetings serve the head of the Central American state for electoral purposes. legislations and municipal. elections on February 28th.

In fact, this Sunday two members of the United States House of Representatives issued a letter calling attention to Bukele’s government and to support the prosecution’s investigations into two acts of violence that have occurred in recent days: the January 31 attack on militants of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in the center of San Salvador, during an electoral campaign caravan ; and the assault on an emergency team from Médecins sans frontières (MSF) early in the morning of the same day.

“We urge you to cooperate fully with the independent investigations of the Attorney General and to exercise the influence of his office in the pursuit of peace, justice and unity,” wrote the Democratic representative for California, Norma Torres, who is also President of the Central American Faction in Congress and Democratic Representative of New Jersey, Albio bulls, member of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee.

The assassination of FMLN supporters sparked controversy in the country due to the confrontation between the executive and the prosecutor Raúl Melara. The version of the police, supported by Bukele, is that the death of the activists was due to an exchange of gunfire and not a direct attack by the three defendants.

Police accused the prosecutor’s office of “hiding” some tapes of the attack after he held a press conference in which he showed other footage. Melara responded to the accusations via Twitter and said that “this video has also been shown and shows that there is no gunfire from the truck” in which the murdered and injured people were transported.

“By wanting to distort the conclusions of the investigation, what the @PNCSV (Police) is doing is still discrediting itself and minimizing the work its investigators have done with prosecutors. I don’t understand who they are defending “the prosecutor went wild.

Last Friday, a court ordered the preventive detention of the three accused of the murder of the two sympathizers of the FMLN, among whom, according to the judicial body and the local press, the head of security of the Ministry of Health (Minsal).

Bukele himself was active on social media, questioning the actions of the Attorney General: “Violence must be punished, COME FROM WHERE IT COMES. EQUAL. Those who hide evidence are nothing more than cover-ups of crimes ”.

Representatives of the international community in the Central American country have turned to condemn the attack and request an investigation to clarify what happened.

After what happened, the Salvadoran president first accused the FMLN of orchestrating a car attack. But then he said it was not an automatic attack, but a crossfire between armed groups.

In response to statements by Bukele and the national police last week at a press conference The attorney general said he would make a formal request to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to examine the evidence gathered by his office. And he underlined: “The presidency does not have to intervene in the investigations of the prosecution (…) The day when an attorney general is due to a political party or […] in the presidency of the Republic, on that day, the guarantees of all Salvadorans will be lost ”.

Salvadoran deputies René Portillo Cuadra, from ARENA, and Cristina Cornejo, from the FMLN, spoke about Bukele’s intention to hold meetings in the United States with the Biden government and the subsequent reaction of North American congressmen to what has happened in the country in recent weeks. .

“We learned that the President (Bukele) paid a visit to the United States which was not invited and that there was advice not to be received until there was a change in attitude, we must remember that the president is of all Salvadorans ”said Cornejo.

For his part, he pointed out that the letter issued by North American members of Congress urges the president to give up your speeches of “hate, persecution and confrontation” which has already caused deaths, in reference to the deaths of the two militants of the FMLN: “I like these calls for attention and we hope that the President of the Republic will at least pay attention to the international authorities since he does not want to pay attention to Salvadorans, with violence nothing is accomplished, we have seen this violence that generates division, hatred and death and we will continue to insist on changing this reality.

“President Bukele has paid a visit to Washington in recent hours without being invited to the United States, no member of Congress, no member of the Biden administration cabinet has received him, precisely because he is classified as a president who encourages hatred, which promotes division, disrespect for institutions and the rule of law, disrespect for journalists and the opposition and this means that it has no form of acceptance in Washington’s political circles, ”added Portillo Cuadra.

Read on:

Nayib Bukele: How the “World’s Coolest President” Became a Model of “Millennial Authoritarianism”

Nayib Bukele’s extreme measure against gang members imprisoned in El Salvador: “You will not be able to see outside the cell”