Central America Archive

Panama’s seven presidential candidates are wrapping up their campaigns ahead of the country’s election on Sunday. In an email interview, Orlando J. Pérez, a professor in the Department of Political Science at Central Michigan University who has done field research in Panama, explained the country’s electoral landscape. WPR: What are the major domestic issues at stake in Panama’s presidential election? Orlando J. Pérez: The electoral campaign has been framed around the dynamic of continuity versus change. The government has touted social spending, infrastructure investments and economic growth. The government candidate, Jose Domingo Arias, has campaigned on continuing and expanding President […]

Early this month, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina announced he was considering a plan to legalize the production of marijuana and opium poppies in the country. In an email interview, Adriana Beltran, a senior associate for citizen security at the Washington Office on Latin America who specializes in Guatemala, explained how drug legalization might affect levels of violence in Guatemala. WPR: Who are the main actors driving insecurity in Guatemala, and what are their primary activities? Adriana Beltran: Violence in Guatemala comes from many sources. Organized criminal organizations are one of the main drivers of violence. Their members include former […]

El Salvador’s leftist FMLN won the country’s presidential election in March by a razor-thin margin, despite pre-election polls that indicated the party would score an easy victory over the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). After a “final scrutiny” of the second-round vote, the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) declared that the FMLN’s Salvador Sanchez Ceren had won a majority of the vote—50.11 percent to 49.89 percent for ARENA’s Norman Quijano. Two weeks later, both the TSE and the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber rejected petitions from ARENA alleging fraud and demanding a ballot-by-ballot recount. Following ARENA’s relatively poor first-round performance, the […]