The U.S. Department of State has continued to expand its list of corrupt and anti-democratic actors in Central America. On July 20, the State Department issued an update to the so-called Engel list, sanctioning judges, prosecutors, and officials from the region, as well as business people tied to a scheme to stack Guatemala’s supreme court.
“The United States is committed to partnering with the people of Central America to strengthen democracy, improve rule of law, and combat corruption,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press statement. “These individuals, through their significant corruption, efforts to obstruct investigations into corruption, and undermining of democratic processes and institutions, weaken the ability of governments in the region to respond to the needs of their citizens.”
The document was leaked just days prior to its publication.
While the title is unofficial, the list’s name comes from efforts by former U.S. Congressmember Eliot Engel, Democrat of New York, who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 2019 to 2021 and oversaw legislation that would deny U.S. visas to officials on the list who had been accused of substantial anti-democratic acts, including corruption. The first list was issued in July 2021 and named fifty-five officials from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The most recent list includes sixty individuals based in the region.
In total this year, the State Department added seven officials from El Salvador, sixteen from Guatemala, and fifteen from Honduras. For the first time, the list also included twenty-three judges and prosecutors from Nicaragua, each of whom are tied to the prosecution of political opponents to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian efforts.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador responded to the leaked list by tweeting “UNITED FRUIT COMPANY”
The governments of Alejandro Giammattei in Guatemala and Xiomara Castro in Honduras have individually rejected the list, with Castro’s foreign ministry decrying it as a violation of their sovereignty, and Giammattei’s office stating that the list submits Guatemalans to “value judgments.” The president of Guatemala’s supreme court also opposed the list, complaining incorrectly that it violates Guatemala’s constitution. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador responded to the leaked list by tweeting “UNITED FRUIT COMPANY,” a reference to the twentieth century U.S. corporation that imposed its will on the region by urging, among other things, the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Guatemala in 1954.
The region’s governments are especially concerned because the newly added officials on the updated Engel list have even closer ties to presidents in Central America. But this reaction could prove to be a mistake, especially as the list does little more than block those accused from entry into the United States.
“It was a serious mistake for the foreign ministry to send that statement saying that the U.S. government is meddling in internal affairs,” Julio Raudales, a Honduran economist and current rector at the private José Cecilio del Valle University in Comayagua, tells The Progressive.
“The U.S. government is not asking for anyone to be extradited, it is not condemning anyone,” he says. “These people have done bad things in their countries, they have fed the kleptocracy. So they are not going to let them into the United States.”
The Engel list includes government officials from the rightwing National Party which took power following the 2009 coup d’etat against current Honduran President Castro’s husband, Manuel Zelaya, as well as businessman Roberto David Castillo Mejia, who was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison for his part in the murder of the renowned Indigenous and environmental rights activist Berta Caceres.
But more troubling for the Castro administration was the inclusion of congressional representatives and a member of her husband’s administration associated with her political party, Libre. These include Rasel Antonio Tome Flores, vice president of the congress, and Edgardo Antonio Casaña Mejia, a congressional representative—both of whom are accused of using their offices to receive bribes—as well as Enrique Flores Lanza, the former minister of the presidency under Manuel Zelaya.
However, the U.S. State Department has made at least one major error in their report by listing two officials, Javier Rodolfo Pastor Vásquez and Carlos Josue Montes Rodriguez, as serving in the Zelaya administration when they actually both served as vice minister of health and minister of labor, respectively, in the administration of rightwing president Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo between 2010 and 2014. Both faced prosecution for the crimes of money laundering and improper passive bribery at the Honduran Social Security Institute in 2021.
“They were not officials [in the Zelaya administration],” Raudales says “Perhaps the foreign ministry should have made a clarification on this [in place of their statement].”
Raudales points out that the congressional representatives should not have been able to run for office because of these accusations, and that they have benefited from an amnesty that was declared earlier this year in Honduras.
In Guatemala, among the sixteen people listed was Rafael Curruchiche, a close ally of Attorney General María Consuelo Porras and current head of the special prosecutors office against impunity (or FECI) in the public prosecutor's offices, who has been accused of protecting corruption. The list also targets officials involved in a plot to stack the country’s supreme court known as “Parallel Commissions 2020.”
The list also includes several members of Guatemala’s private sector, who are accused of bribery and corruption. For instance, businessman Ramon “Moncho” Campollo Codina, owner of the energy company Corporacion Energias de Guatemala, was specifically accused of significant corruption and bribery “that harmed U.S. commercial and policy goals to improve energy efficiency.”
The inclusion of members of the Guatemalan business community highlights the deep-seated participation of the private sector in acts of government corruption.
“Corruption has a nexus with the private sector and even part of the loss of democratic conditions in Guatemala,” Jonathan Menkos, the director of the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies, tells The Progressive. “They have already responded, opposing and giving some arguments to maintain that they should not be on this list.”
He adds, “It is a wake-up call to the business sector that, instead of avoiding or giving arguments against not being included in that list, they should take it into account.”
Key allies of Bukele in El Salvador also were named on the list along with officials from previous governments. Francisco Javier Argueta Gomez, the president’s legal advisor, stands accused of being the mastermind behind the removal of five members of the country’s supreme court and the attorney general in order to pave the way for Bukele to seize control of all institutions in the country.
Also listed are Christian Reynaldo Guevara Guadron, the deputy head of El Salvador’s legislative branch and head of Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party, who is accused of forcing through legislation that strengthened sentencing for being a gang member as a part of the country’s “war on gangs,” and the president’s press secretary, Jose Ernesto Sanabria.
The list continues to show the rot within the governments of the region.
Yet being listed among corrupt and anti-democratic actors means little other than being blocked from entry into the United States. The measure lacks teeth to force change locally, in spite of the Biden Administration’s stated goal of combating corruption in the region.
One clear example: when Attorney General Porras of Guatemala was easily re-elected to office in May 2022, in spite of being listed on the 2021 Engels List.
As the editorial board of the journalist’s alliance Redacción Regional pointed out in a Washington Post op-ed, the list has had an effect, but must do more to root out corruption if the United States wants it to have a lasting impact.
Even as the Department of State expands its list of corrupt and anti-democratic actors, the region continues to experience the co-optation of power, further cementing a culture of corruption and impunity.
This is also important because current policy could push the region to seek relations with China.
“I get the impression that Honduras is not very interested in having good relations with the United States at the moment,” Raudales says. “Not necessarily a break up, but walking away a bit and approaching China.”
So even as the Department of State expands its list of corrupt and anti-democratic actors, the region continues to experience the co-optation of power, further cementing a culture of corruption and impunity.
Meanwhile, El Salvador has continued to renew President Bukele’s declaration of emergency which permits his war on gangs, leaving tens of thousands in prison. In Honduras, the Castro administration has stated that it is open to a United Nations-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Honduras (CICIH) but it is unclear if, given the amnesty law, the administration will permit the investigation of party members and officials who are listed.
On July 20, Guatemala’s congress elected the country’s new human rights ombudsman—José Alejandro Córdova, a former appeals court judge—to replace Jordan Rodas, who finishes his term in August.
Córdova won with widespread support from the country’s ruling party. Yet there are concerns: In 2020, Córdova was included on a list of officials believed to have taken part in the “Parallel Commissions 2020” scheme, according to an investigation by FECI, then led by Juan Francisco Sandoval, who was forced into exile in July 2021. The FECI had requested the removal of Córdova’s immunity from investigation, but the country’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, ruled to not strip him of his immunity.
His selection as the country’s next human rights ombudsman has alarmed human rights defenders and anti-corruption advocates. Corruption and impunity continue to remain deeply ingrained in the region.
“What we expected was going to happen, has happened,” Menkos says. “That this very important public institution, so strategic for democracy, was going to end up like the rest of the institutions, captured by very particular interests directed by a person in whom civil society has no confidence.”
He adds, “It is a warning to us that everything is being reinforced, the entire process of the capture of institutions.”