“We’re not talking about recycled plans”: Ricardo Zúñiga, Joe Biden’s special envoy, responds to Nayib Bukele

Zúñiga, who is the special envoy of Joe Biden’s government in the Northern Triangle countries, responded to statements by Nayib Bukele, who a few weeks ago said the United States was trying to implement “recycled” plans in the region.

The United States aims to fight corruption in Central America to reduce mass migration, President Joe Biden’s diplomatic envoy for Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the source of a large number of undocumented immigrants on the southern border, said on Friday. US.

“Corruption causes much of the instability and lack of development that has led us to end mass migration for several years,” said Ricardo Zúñiga, special envoy of the State Department for the North American North Triangle.

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“So we have a strong interest in ensuring stability and good governance in Central America and we want to work with those who have the same interests,” he said in an interview with AFP.

Zúñiga, who traveled to Guatemala and El Salvador last week and met with Honduran authorities in Washington, said the United States is making progress on its announced plan to set up a regional anti-corruption working group.

“There will be a working group led by the Department of Justice and other partners to help Central American governments and civil servants find them not only for specific cases involving acts of corruption, but also for systems that help combat impunity and preventing corruption, ”he explained.

“Concrete implementation is something we will negotiate with partners in the region,” said Zúñiga, a Honduran-born American.

He stressed that there are already efforts in the Northern Triangle to seek transparency: in civil society, in prosecutor’s offices and in the independent press.

“There is a lot of work going on, which we will continue to support through our embassies and with the presence of our legal attachés and others,” he said.

Ricardo Zúñiga met with representatives of various institutions in El Salvador, including the Attorney General’s Office. Photo: Archive

Bukele’s foreign policy has moved further and further away from Washington

Weeks ago, especially on March 24, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele strongly criticized the term “Northern Triangle” and decided that if the United States wants to seriously address the issue of immigration to Central America, it must abandon this concept. .

In his words, published through his Twitter account, the president also said that the United States should collaborate with its partners “from all times” to promote proven solutions.

However, the statement that sparked reactions in Joe Biden’s special envoy was that Bukele assured that the plans that Washington is trying to implement in the region are “recycled” because they have already been implemented in 2014. and “they didn’t work.”

Days later, on April 1, Bukele again called into question the term “Northern Triangle”, while ensuring that any plan that contemplated the existence of that term had a “zero chance of success”.

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In the same tweet, the president referred to the work of various congressmen who in recent weeks have questioned the president’s policies, including the representative of the 35th district of California, Norma Torres, who was attacked by Bukele and many of the his followers in the social field. networks, claiming that the congresswoman confused El Salvador with Ecuador.

Faced with this disqualification of the term that includes the three countries in the region (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador), a journalist from the medium La Voz de América asked Zúñiga if the US government’s plans will work without Bukele’s full support.

Zúñiga, for his part, responded: “We are not talking about recycled plans, we have worked a lot with the governments of Central America,” adding that there is a lot of cooperation from Salvadoran institutions in implementing the plans that the government is trying to lead. Joe Biden, however, failed to make any direct comments about the president’s lack of support.

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