 and we're recording too. Okay. All right, here we go. Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America, Code Pink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast every Wednesday at 4.30 p.m. Pacific, 7.30 p.m. Eastern on Code Pink YouTube Live. On May 1st, lawmakers aligned with Salvadoran President Buquele to remove all of the top judges on the country's Supreme Court, which the opposition and a range of international critics slammed as a dangerous power grab. But just minutes after the vote, the judges responded with the ruling that the congressional vote was unconstitutional, setting up the clash of the country's top powers. The unprecedented congressional vote came on the first day that lawmakers from Bukele's new ideas party took firm control of Congress after midterm elections in February that gave the party a more than two-thirds supermajority in the unicameral legislature. The motion to remove the judge's past was 64 votes in favor or nearly 80% of the 84 seats. To talk more with us about the political crisis in El Salvador, we are joined today by Alexis Stombellis of CISBIS, the community in solidarity with the people of El Salvador. Alexis is the organizational coordinator and executive director of CISBIS and a wonderful friend of ours here at Code Pink. So welcome, Alexis. So nice to have you with us. Thank you, Terry. It's great to be here. So why don't let's start with what happened on Saturday, May 1st in San Salvador. And tell us a little bit about what actually happened constitutionally and judicially and perhaps give us some background as well. Absolutely. Well, your description at the beginning was very, very on point. May 1st was the first day of the new legislative session in El Salvador, and it was the first time that any member of Bukele's new ideas party was taking action. And anyway, this is their first time being in the legislature. And they did win a very significant majority in the recent elections, as you said. And what is notable about what happened on May 1st, this is their first day in office, clearly they're going to send a message. Whatever it is they do is what the message is that they were trying to send that day. And I think what's very notable is that once we saw back in the end of February, beginning of March, when the election results came in, that they would have such a significant majority in the Congress, it was clear that they would be replacing a group of justices on the Supreme Court, that they would be replacing the Attorney General, because in El Salvador, that it's the legislative assembly that votes to approve every legislature or every three years is what the Constitution says to align with the legislative periods in theory, that they elect a group of Supreme Court magistrates, they elect the Attorney General, and they elect some other sorts of different government institutions that act independently from the Congress or from the executive. And what's important about that is that that was something that was partially a result of the peace accords process that ended El Salvador's 12-year, very brutal civil war. And so what you see in a lot of the democratic institutions that were sort of forged out of that process is that the legislative assembly, which theoretically is the most representative body in the country. So I'm going to go charge, charge this computer, I can talk while I go, has the most control, it is the most representative democratic body. And so it's the one that gets to appoint the Supreme Court magistrates and the Attorney General, unlike the United States, where the President does that. And obviously that decision came one second. Okay, we're back in just a moment. Oh, sorry, I thought that was the one that was going to have the problem with the challenge. No, no, no. Nope, me. This is obviously the challenges of doing live interviews from your home. With job responsibilities and child responsibilities, I'm more just thankful that you're with us this afternoon. Yes. Okay, we should be good. I'm plugged back in. So like, you know, obviously what happened at the end of the Civil War in El Salvador was a real intention to make sure that the President never had too much power. And so a lot of El Salvador's decision making bodies, including the Electoral Tribunal, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, they're appointed by the legislative assembly, which theoretically would have been the broadest, most representative type of body. And so it was already going to be their purview to appoint new Supreme Court magistrates and to appoint a new Attorney General. But they decided to do it in the middle of the night on their first day of office without following any of the legal procedures that are laid out to do that without giving the Supreme Court, it was before their terms were up. And so it's one of, it was, in that sense, it was indefinitely intended to be a power play by Bukele and his supporters to say like, yeah, we're not going to wait until the appropriate legal time in which we have the right to make this decision. We're going to do it in the middle of the night because we are going to dare anybody to stop us. Basically was the message that I think he was trying to send that the rules do not apply to him. They do not apply to his party and that the Congress is now going to do what they want when they want Constitution be damned is pretty much the message they were sending with that. And one of the things that was noticeable that was very concerning was, you know, the same during the time when they're making this, having this vote, you know, the the head of the police and members of the police had already been dispatched to the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court to make sure that if any of the magistrates tried to come back into the building from which they had just been, you know, ousted from their posts that the police would be there to stop them. So sort of in parallel to the political agenda that we see very, very clearly from in which he makes no bones about hiding whatsoever. You know, it's clear that he has very quickly converted the military and the police in El Salvador to sort of be the personal enforcers of this agenda in a way that is also a real shift away from from the peace accords, which one of their biggest achievements in El Salvador was really reducing both the size and the scope of the country's security forces and making it very, very clear that the military were only there for foreign defense and that the police were of a civilian, democratic and apolitical nature. And he has really torn down sort of both of those pillars very quickly. He has basically taken, understands clearly how the Constitution and the judiciary is set up to prevent an imperial presidency, as we would say in the United States, and has manipulated both so that he essentially is the principal power in the country. He did something similar to this a year or so ago. Did he not with the national assembly on a Saturday or a Sunday, if I recall correctly? Yes, he in a special session of the legislature, which the Constitution does allow the President to do in like a real emergency, you know. But this emergency last February was that the Congress was not sure whether they were going to approve a loan that he wanted, which by the way was for additional security funding and specifically surveillance equipment like drones and other things like that. And the Congress was like, we just approved a loan for your phase two of your security plan. We're not quite sure we want to approve one for phase three, given that you've given us very little accounting of how you spent the first loan. And that was enough to not only have him, you know, you invoke this constitutional power to convene a special assembly, he also incited the population to invoke their constitutional right to for an insurrection and basically called on the population to wage an insurrection against the legislative assembly for not having this vote that he wanted them to have. And that was the first time they really saw how he planned to use the military and the police because he was accompanied by military and the police in entering and sort of occupying the legislative assembly. Many members of the legislative assembly from the leftist Faribundo Marti National Liberation Front Party and from the right wing Nationalist Arena Party, they reported that military or police in some cases had come to their house looking for them. I mean, it was a very intentional show of force on his part. And I think that's the thing that should be understood about Bukele. Every single thing that he does is extremely intentional and it's intended to draw attention to himself and to consolidate his power and to show how he is consolidating his power. And I think one of the things that Sispis is calling for, and we haven't called from this from before what happened on May 1st, is that the United States can say whatever they want. Vice President Harris can speak out. The Secretary of State can speak out. They can say, this is unacceptable. But at the same time, they're continuing to train and arm the police. They're continuing to train and arm the military and sort of saying one thing and doing another at the end of the day sends the same message that the United States is still happy to be part of what the Salvadoran police and military are doing. So this leads me, I've got a bunch of questions now. Thank you. So I'm thinking of several things simultaneously. One, what is the reaction of the Salvadoran population in the streets in El Salvador right now? And two, what exactly are U.S. interests in Salvador, El Salvador, to tolerate what you and I and many of our audience would consider basically two attempts at soft coups between last February and this May. But the U.S. continues, as with other countries in the region, to fund military and police grade armaments as well as loans, infrastructure loans, etc. So let's talk about the population and then let's talk about the U.S. interests for El Salvador. Absolutely. I think the reaction of Salvador was very mixed and it is a very complex time politically and socially in the country. And I think when what's really remarkable and challenging for the left is that the right wing, the traditional right wing of El Salvador, is responding in much the same way as the traditional left in El Salvador. And so you see the same denouncements very strong and very correct that the left has always made when anti-democratic things happen. Now the Salvadoran traditional right, including the Nationalist Republican Party, the Nationalist Republican Alliance arena and sort of their associated traditional landed oligarchy party of the Salvadoran death squads, they since last February have put themselves out as the champions of democracy and human rights in El Salvador, which is just absurd. But Bukele is very much against their interests as well, partially because he represents sort of a different face of the economic elite in El Salvador and a different set of economic interests than their traditional right wing landed oligarchy's interests. He's sort of the new oligarchy of El Salvador. And so there's a competition there around economic interests, but also politically. I mean he has the potential to draw the base away from the right wing as well as from the left, which he more successfully has done. So arena is clear that Bukele is their enemy for multiple reasons. And so they have put themselves out there as the sort of champions of democracy and human rights. And so what you see in El Salvador is a real sort of parallel between the left and the traditional right in their total outrage to what Bukele is doing. And what it means is that because the traditional right wing still owns a lot of the media and still also has a lot of connections to the U.S. right wing, you know, you're seeing these, it's in its bizarre, you're seeing these same similar statements from Marco Rubio and other Senate Republicans and Senator Leahy, who is much more in line with actually caring about human rights. So it's a bizarre time in that way. I think a lot, there were protests in El Salvador that night when the decision happened. It is also true and it would be, it would be a misrepresentation of the situation to say that Bukele's level of support is not really high amongst a lot of Salvadoran voters, not everyone. And there's a lot of people who didn't vote at all in the last election either. But there were also many people who sort of cheered on his decision in the name of, you know, his framework is, you know, out with the old and in with the new kind of thing. And so a lot of people are really just getting on board with that. And I think it is, it's very, it's very difficult political terrain for people in El Salvador to navigate right now. It's also the case a lot of people in El Salvador are extremely scared right now about what taking leadership positions of public opposition to Bukele is going to mean for them. And this is a time where people in El Salvador, especially people on the left, need a lot of international solidarity and a lot of international accompaniment. There have been multiple cases over the last few months in which women in particular on the left in El Salvador, women who've been in the FMLN, women who've been in the leadership of labor unions and feminist organizations, have been targeted by Bukele personally, and have been, you know, verbally and harassed and attacked with threats of sexual violence, publicly on the internet, on television, on the radio, by his supporters. And so it is becoming an extremely, once again, I mean, this is not in the case in El Salvador for many, many years that, that political persecution like this was so high. And we're seeing a really scary return to that in El Salvador right now, especially for women on the left. And so, you know, there, if, if, if we aren't seeing, you know, huge massive outpourings in the streets of protests against what Bukele did, I think a lot of it, a lot of it has to do with that. People are really scared about what, what he's going to do. And so it's all the more reasons. A couple of Columbia, right, for the persecution of social movement, union, women, indigenous people. Yeah, it is, it's scary, you know, and, and he, he goes after people personally and publicly and, you know, his followers go right along with him. And so we, you know, I think it's all the more reason why the solidarity work here in the US to challenge the US's complicity in all of this, even though they, they are, you know, on the surface, you know, they're speaking out against what Bukele is doing. And they're saying this is anti-democratic, and they're saying this is a major rollback. But at the same time, you know, the United States has a very clear agenda right now in, in El Salvador, I mean, it has an agenda everywhere in Latin America and all over the world, of course. But, you know, for El Salvador, Guatemala and, and Honduras right now, which has sort of come right back into central focus in, in a sort of way that is very reminiscent of what happened in the Obama administration and that like, right before there is some momentum on President was Joe Biden was Joe Biden, but a very similar, I mean, it's very, I don't, I'm not having quite figured out exactly what to make of it, except that it was a very similar pattern in that, you know, there was potential to actually pass comprehensive immigration reform and things might actually be moving on that. And then then there's a border crisis that gets framed in the media and comes to dominate the entire political discussion. And then the, you know, the response of the Democratic administration is to really push this root causes agenda. And, and of course, without addressing the US as a root cause, without addressing the US as a root cause, you know, and I think that's, that's definitely, that's definitely the challenge we face right now, because, you know, as people may have been following already, the Biden administration is sort of pushing this $4 billion package, so to say, and it's not, I mean, from what I have can tell, it doesn't really represent anything different from what the, what the Obama administration previously's agenda really was. And it's sort of just an increase in the existing type of funding that's going to the same existing type of State Department and USAID programs in the region with an extra benefit on sort of bringing private corporations and the private sector into the mix. And what that looks like a lot, and I can speak for El Salvador, and I can't speak for El Salvador, but in sort of looking at how this has played out in El Salvador, you know, what that looks like is things like the US State Department, the US Treasury Department, USAID, Millennium Challenge Corporation, sort of working in concert to promote very particular private sector industries in El Salvador. And that looks like this whole constellation of things, you know, one, the United States helps to write legislation for El Salvador, for example, to create a public-private partnerships law that would offer up all of El Salvador's national industries to bidding for, you know, management by, and then thus profit making from private sector corporations. And then the United States, you know, this happened in 2012, 2013, then the United States said, well, if you don't pass that law that we helped you write, we're not going to give you this $277 million development aid package through the Millennium Challenge Corporation. At that time, the FMLN had more seats in the legislative assembly and was able to figure out a way to pass some version of the law that's still protected water, healthcare, education, public security from public-private partnerships. But then the United States comes in and sets up, you know, these partnerships that the USAID is going to help fund a wastewater treatment facility in certain town with a certain corporate partner. And meanwhile, USAID has been promoting, you know, youth business leadership development programs where they're training young leaders who then go work for these corporations. Or in the case of what we, what recently came out in El Salvador, some of those people have gone on, for example, to become Nuevas Ideas legislators, i.e. members of Bukele's party, who are now going to be able to promote a public-private partnerships agenda in the legislative assembly. So you see, you know, all these agencies, you know, a lot of people celebrate this. Oh, finally, everyone's working together to promote a common agenda. But what you see is that so many different agencies and types of programs and types of financing, even if, you know, they don't directly give the loan for the big infrastructure project, are working to lay the groundwork for those projects to be able to take place. And then of course, in parallel to that, you have the United States still in the name of fighting the so-called war on drugs, you know, is, you know, giving money to training, arming, cooperating with, doing joint exercises with the police and the military in all three of those countries, which in practice, in addition to whatever they're doing with their joint patrols, you know, are the agents of repression that are trying to crush opposition to that economic agenda, as well as to increasing authoritarian control by right-wing governments in the region. So it really is a lot of, you know, it's, of course, positive to hear many Democratic leaders in Congress and in the Biden administration speaking out about what's happening in El Salvador, but it's not really going to matter much until they're willing to stop collaborating with the sort of repression itself by way of cooperation with the military and the police, or for that matter, on the economic agenda. Well, and they're both related, correct? I mean, you have the, you basically have U.S. corporations, transnational corporations using the U.S. government to implement these policies to privatize economies or what our audience may define as neoliberalism and using funding military police and training them to, like you said, to maintain the peace, as we like to say in Washington, D.C., but basically suppress the public from pushing back on the privatization of their economies. I mean, that is a vision of my experience in traveling the Americas, and I think you would agree with this as well. That's basically the vision for the hemisphere. Yes. For the world, I would argue, but specifically in the work you and I do, we can see that happening all over the Americas, but we also see people pushing back. And we saw last year in Ecuador and then Chile, we're seeing this very, very clearly in Colombia right now. And so we've got these two forces, this militaristic, this imposition of neoliberalism and the organization of people in the streets pushing back to get out from that stranglehold. Yeah. And I think something else that's really important, there's a lot of shared economic interests between many certain economic actors in the U.S. and people in the region. There's a lot of their big, big money people in Honduras and in El Salvador and Guatemala who have their own agenda for what they're trying to do, which collaborates very nicely with what a lot of the transnational corporations are trying to do. And I think what often doesn't get named and what solidarity organizations like ours are really trying to do is to name what are those ties and what are those connections and what are the ways in which the United States is sort of paving the way and financing and incentivizing both U.S. corporations as transnational corporations as well as local corporations that are there because they all have a shared set of interests and a lot have to do with natural resource extraction and access to labor force. And I think what's really notable around what the Biden's plan for Central America is, on the one you're reading it and it's talking about addressing the root causes and it all sounds really good. And then in the same breath, it makes it very clear that it's about countering China and that China has become is the real motivation behind a lot of this, which should give everyone pause around the United States is the United States real interest in the region about doing what is best for poor and working communities in the region or is it about how making sure that the U.S. is there to get the resources first before China gets them. And I think in a very basic level, that is the motivation behind a lot of it. You know, one of the things you mentioned China and I was, as you know, I was in Nicaragua in March and then went from there to Ecuador for the second round presidential elections April 11th. And one of the things that came up in one of our post election day meetings in Ecuador was and I was shared this with you in the audience that in my very U.S. paradigm have never, when I hear and talk about the Asia Pacific Rim, I'm looking historically from California, where I, you know, West, you know, Hawaii, Japan, China, Vietnam, West, but of course the Pacific Rim is what those of us who live and work in Latin America and well the Americas is that ring of fire that we learn about that whole rim, you know, what goes along Asia and then, you know, Antarctica and then comes up the coast of Chile, Central America, U.S. Canada. And so one of the things we talked about after the Ecuadorian elections and what the composition of the hemisphere could potentially look like, one of the factors is the preservation of U.S. control of the Asia Pacific Rim. And that does include the coast of Chile. That includes part of the coast of Ecuador. It includes the coast of Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and a little bit of Honduras, but also the coast of El Salvador. Yeah. It's a, so from a geopolitical perspective, it's more than just trade as well. And I think that this is really, I mean, I think this is really key. And I think part of what is so complicated and important about what's happening in El Salvador right now is it is not fit in the logic of the United States' traditional types of control. You know, the United States, you know, what Bukele is doing right now is, are many things that Juan Orlando Hernandez did in Honduras before, including when Hernandez was president of their Congress. He also illegally got rid of all the Supreme Court magistrates and put in people who would be friendly to himself, so that when he became president, he could get the Supreme Court to agree to extend presidential term limits in violation of the Constitution and then have a sham second election, which even the Organization of American States denounced, which was extremely rare when it comes to any right wing government getting reelected in Latin America. And so, but Bukele doesn't follow the same patterns in other ways as Juan Orlando. And I think the United States is reacting so strongly right now because they're not quite sure what to make of it. And something I'm very curious about and want to learn more about is sort of what are the very specific economic interests that Bukele is pursuing in El Salvador because they may not exactly line up with what the United States is are. And he may know that very well. And he may want to make sure that the business associates of his are the ones who get in on the contracts and are the ones that get in on the resources and that that is setting up. That's what this conflict is really about between Bukele and the United States right now. Not so much of the United States has really become so committed to challenging any right wing authoritarians in in in Latin America because we know that they're they're able to cooperate with a lot of them when their interests coincide. So, well, this is a lot for a little country. And in geographical size as well, but it's so it's such a key part of the US vision for the hemisphere of the Americas. And so countries of all sizes, big and small, are are part of the the puzzle and the chess game going on right now. Before I let you go, Alexis, let our audience know or we should talk about what we as activists can do for El Salvador right now. What are some of the two or three best things that we can we can get involved with and help with. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, Sysbis is is doing a campaign right now to the the congressional appropriations process is is is is live now in Congress. And we've been pushing not just a Sysbis, but with a number of other Central America Solidarity organizations, faith organizations, migrant justice organizations have been pushing for language to be included in the upcoming budget that would restrict US state both State Department of funding and Defense Department funding to the militaries and police of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. So that's one piece that's one piece of the puzzle. And then another piece of the puzzle would be to introduce language language that would restrict State Department money from going to economic development projects that are going to violate indigenous land rights, harm the environment, violate labor laws, promote privates privatization or private sector involvement in the delivery of essential public services like water and healthcare electricity education. And so there's there's an action alert that's on the Sysbis website, which is www.Sysbis.org, C-I-S-P-E-S .org. I used to sing it on the radio, people can see it because we're on on YouTube. But people can go there and find find our action alert there, which will take you to a page where you can make a call or send an email to your member of Congress and and ask them to to support those restrictions. That's one piece of the puzzle. I think, you know, the other thing we hope that people will, you know, sign up for our mailing list to get news about other things. You know, we because of the pandemic, we haven't been doing the types of people to people exchanges that are so important for building solidarity, whether that's delegations or speaking tours or other ways of getting people together. But we are trying to do as much of that as possible, albeit it's not as great of a tool to do online. So, you know, doing webinars with leaders from the struggle in El Salvador to defend the right to water or from anti militarization organizations to make sure that people here are getting to hear directly from people who are who are in these fights fights in El Salvador. So those are two things that we love for people to do. And I think, you know, we are, you know, as this was also this is, you know, part of part of a broader issue around sort of the military budget itself. And there are fights to be many fights going on right now about about challenging that and similarly there. We've got a number of campaigns to defund the military defund the Pentagon. So yeah, and it's it's all like you said it's all connected. And you know, I think we, as I was saying before, I think this is a very dire time in El Salvador. I think it's definitely the sort of most critical moments for Salvador's democracy, which is worth mentioning again and again and again, you know, was really something that thousands and thousands of people sacrifice their lives for in El Salvador. I think that's what's so heartbreaking and angering about what Bukele's actions and his attitude about the whole thing, in that, you know, thousands of people gave up their lives and their families in El Salvador to fight against a right wing military dictatorship in order to come to some kind of negotiation that was the piece of court's process, where at the very minimum they could hammer out a functional democracy. Was it even a participatory democracy? No, that was still a goal that the left in El Salvador was fighting for in the post war period to sort of have a more participatory democracy and instead of a bourgeois democracy as they called it. But at least they had a functional bourgeois democracy and it wasn't as a, it wasn't a gift from God. It was something that people gave up their lives to win. And I think when Bukele, you know, derides the piece of courts as a farce, you know, he is very intentionally trying to rewrite history and he's trying to erase that legacy of struggle and sacrifice that so many people in El Salvador made for decades. And he's trying to erase all that because, and that is why in so many ways the struggle for historical memory and for education and for sharing knowledge is so essential because Bukele relies on trying to eliminate that history from people's awareness. He's a constitutional removal. Exactly. And he's younger, younger than me. Yeah, he's younger than I am. He's younger than I am. He's one of the youngest presidents in the hemisphere, I believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think in that sense, you know, the more people can pay attention to what's happening in El Salvador will be really, really essential because the calls for solidarity are certainly going to continue. I mean, this was only day one. This was day one of his, his, his, his legislature's term here. So, you know, this was their opening salvo. And it's, it's clear that the battle is going to become much more intense. And we really do hope of course that like it won't become the type of violence that has clearly been the case in so many other countries where they have, you know, where protesters are routinely repressed by military and police trained by the U.S. But there's not really much of a reason to think that that won't happen. We can hope that it won't happen, but, but history would say that it would. So, you know, I think our solidarity with social movement organizations there is going to be really essential. Well, and we at Code Pink certainly stand in solidarity with the Salvadoran people. And we're so pleased to have you join us today. We're so happy to have, we had protests outside the Salvadoran embassy and then outside the Salvadoran consulate in Los Angeles last week. So we're very happy to have Code Pink with us and a really genuine, genuine expressions of solidarity and commitment, which we really know are true. So thank you. You are more than welcome and we will continue to do so. So thank you, Alexis, for joining us today. Always a pleasure to have you on our wonderful for me to see you. Yeah, yeah, it's great to see you too. So thank you again. I want to just remind our audience that this is what the F is going on in Latin America, Code Pink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast every Wednesday, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, 4.30 p.m. Pacific on Code Pink YouTube Live. And also don't forget to catch Code Pink Radio every Thursday morning, 11 a.m. Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific. We simulcast on WBAI out of New York City and WPFW out of Washington, D.C. So thank you everyone. And thank you again, Alexis, just a real pleasure to talk with you today. Thanks so much. Talk to you again soon.