El Salvadoran president refuses to meet with U.S. envoy over 'slights' by Democrats, Biden
President Nayib Bukele declined to meet this afternoon with visiting U.S. diplomat Ricardo Zuniga following similar snub of Bukele in D.C. by Biden in February
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele declined to meet with visiting U.S. diplomat Ricardo Zuniga Thursday over a perceived pattern of slights from Democrats and the Biden administration.
The refusal comes just days after Bukele's government awarded a $1.2 million lobbying contract to the State Department's former top diplomat in an attempt to strengthen ties with President Joe Biden.
On an unannounced trip to Washington in February, Bukele allegedly received a similar snub from U.S. officials.
Zuniga, the Biden administration's envoy to the Northern Triangle countries of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras), traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday after visiting Guatemala to discuss the surge of child migrants at the U.S. border.
After arriving in El Salvador, he announced a $2 million U.S. contribution to an international commission to strengthen the fight against corruption. Biden officials see corruption as a root cause of illegal immigration. The implication, whether intended or not, was that the Bukele administration in El Salvador is suspected as being corrupt. The reality is, Bukele is a conservative populist along the lines of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump.
U.S. officials had told local reporters in the capital of San Salvador that Zuniga hoped to see Bukele before heading back to Washington on Thursday.
But Bukele has told aides that he won't meet with any Biden officials until the U.S. softens criticism raising doubts about his commitment to democracy and the rule of law, according to the sources connect to ACV, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the diplomatic sensitivities.
Specifically, the two said Bukele was angered by State Department spokesman Ned Price's comments Monday that the U.S. looks forward to Bukele restoring a "strong separation of powers where they've been eroded and demonstrate his government's commitment to transparency and accountability."
The Salvadoran presidential press office did not respond to a request for comment. ACV cannot help but note the irony of a demand for separation of powers in El Salvador by a Biden administration that is busily in the process of undermining the separation of powers detailed in the U.S. Constitution. Perhaps Bukele, a friend of Donald Trump and a populist people’s candidate dedicated to democracy sees the same hypocrisy.
Price's comments followed a spat between Bukele and one of his fiercest U.S. critics, Rep. Norma Torres, a Democrat who co-chairs the Central America Caucus in Congress. In a series of tweets last week, Torres accused Bukele of behaving like a "narcissistic dictator" indifferent to the plight of Central American migrants who undertake great risks to reach the U.S.
Rep. Norma Torres (R-CA) attempted to smear El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, indicating her fear — as well as that of the Democrats, for his populist views — with this photograph of a dead Salvadoran and his daughter in the Rio Grande which happened before Bukele even became president. (Photo: Julia Le Duc/AP)
She attached a photograph that was widely circulated in 2019 showing the bodies of a Salvadoran migrant and his daughter laying lifeless in the Rio Grande on the Texas border. Then again, Torres once, from the well of the House, called Republicans opposed to abortion “sex starved males.” Her criticism may be taken with a grain of sale.
Bukele pointed out that he wasn't even in office at the time of those deaths, which came during a previous surge in Central American migration early in the Trump administration. He urged Salvadoran and other immigrants living in Torres' Southern California district to vote her out of office.
"She doesn't work for you, but to keep our countries underdeveloped," he wrote.
Biden’s handlers consider Bukele “combative,” but Bukele, 39, is by far the most popular politician in Central America, a region plagued by corruption and criminality. His New Ideas party swept legislative elections by a landslide in February 2019. Bukele, who cultivates the image of a hip pragmatist, has sought to leverage China's growing influence in the region to court new foreign investment.
Bukele would prefer not to engage with China, but has indicated that if the U.S. and Britain will not consider support of El Salvador, he will seek it from whatever country he can identify. He has struggled to draw close to the Biden administration, which is seeking to undo Trump's hard-line immigration policies restricting asylum requests. Bukele embraced Trump’s restrictions in exchange for strong U.S. support for his tough governing style, which has been described in some quarters as “populist.”
With U.S policy under review, El Salvador last month hired former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon to engage Bukele's many critics, according to foreign lobby records with the U.S. Department of Justice disclosed this week.
The one year, $1.2 million contract with Arnold & Porter, which was signed by Bukele's office on March 25, aims to strengthen El Salvador's relations with the U.S. and multilateral institutions at a time the country is reportedly negotiating $1.3 billion in assistance from the International Monetary Fund.
"President Bukele is the most successful, politically stable and important leader in Central America," Shannon said in an interview Thursday. "It behooves the U.S. and El Salvador to have strong and positive working relations. It is my hope to be able to help build those relations."
Shannon, who served as acting secretary of state for two weeks before Rex Tillerson took up the post at the start of the Trump administration, retired from the State Department in 2018 after a career that included long stretches working on Latin America.
President Bukele has hired a former U.S. Undersecretary of State, Tom Shannon, to assist with public relations for El Salvador following the development of the obvious rift between the Central American nations and the U.S. under Joe Biden. (Photo: Eugene Hoshiko/AP)
Respected by both Democrats and Republicans, Shannon has brought Arnold & Porter a roster of lobbying clients that includes the governments of Argentina and Ecuador.
The law firm was also hired in 2019 by the government of Honduras in what federal prosecutors say was an attempt to push aside an investigation into drug trafficking by President Juan Orlando Hernandez's brother. Shannon played no role in that contract, which had the stated aim of providing legal advice to Honduras concerning financing in the international market. Shortly after the deal was signed, Honduraan lawyers reached out to New York prosecutors to warn of potential "collateral consequences" for their case on U.S. relations with the country, according to recent court filings.
El Salvador's hiring of Shannon took place before the latest Honduran row with Washington.
The two Salvadoran aides said they trusted that Shannon will be able to build support in Washington by highlighting the enduring ties between the two countries. Foremost among them are the more than three million Salvadorans living in the U.S., many of whom fled during the U.S.-funded Civil War in the 1980s and who send back home money that is a major driver of the dollarized Salvadoran economy.
The contract with Arnold & Porter was first reported Wednesday by Foreign Lobby Report, an online publication that tracks the influence industry in Washington.
Bukele swept into office in February 2019 as an independent, leading a slate of other independt candidates under the banner of the “New Idea Party,” vowing to rescue El Salvador from the deep divisions left by uncontrolled gang violence and systemic corruption in both right- and left-wing governments that followed the end of a bloody civil war in 1992.
Increasingly U.S. Democrats — and some U.S. Republicans — have criticized him for strong-arm tactics like sending troops to surround the El Salvadoran Congress last year to pressure lawmakers to vote on funding for the fight against the gangs.
Relations with the Biden administration got off to a rocky start when U.S. officials refused to see him when he traveled unannounced to Washington in February this year, according to people familiar with the decision.
Bukele has vehemently denied he was seeking a meeting with Biden officials during what he characterized as a private visit, which only came to light when it was reported by the AP. Bukele has gone on something of a lobbying spree since last fall, signing contracts worth more than $2.8 million with four lobbyists, now including Arnold & Porter.
But he allowed one of those, a $450,000 lobby contract with Sonoran Policy Group, to expire on February 14 of this year, foreign lobby records also show. Sonoran is run by Robert Stryk, who built one of the most successful lobbying firms during the Trump presidency representing clients facing sanctions or with bruised reputations in Washington like the governments of Venezuela and Somalia and backers of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.