El Salvador Perspectives

A recent surge in the price of Bitcoin has increased the value of El Salvador's Bitcoin reserves and led president Nayib Bukele to say "I told you so."  The value of the country's  declared Bitcoin reserves is around $575 million.   At the same time, to obtain a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Bukele is being required to dismantle key parts of his Bitcoin law and cut back on government spending. The price of Bitcoin increased 50% after the election of Donald Trump to all-time highs above $100,000 US.  Since Bitcoin hit $100,00 on December 4, Nayib Bukele has been regularly patting himself on the back on social media:   Despite the surge in the value of Bitcoin as an investment asset held by El Salvador in its reserves. the digital asset never caught on as the form for ordinary daily cash transactions in El Salvador.  One of the major skeptics of the designation of Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador, and Bukele's large investm...

Today is the 43rd anniversary of the 1981 El Mozote massacre in which close to one thousand civilians were killed by a US-trained elite unit of El Salvador's army.  Most of the dead were children, women and the elderly. Of the documented victims, 553, or 57%, were under 18 years of age and 477 were 12 and under. This year's anniversary saw some different visitors to the massacre site : Representatives from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center (HRVWCC) traveled to El Salvador this week to remember the victims of the largest single massacre of civilians in modern Latin American history and commemorate the Dec. 10 United Nations Human Rights Day. The ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)-led HRVWCC brings together criminal investigators, attorneys, intelligence analysts, criminal research specialists and historians from various sectors of the federal government to investigate global atrocities and pursue the perpetrato...