The insufficient and vulnerable development that Central America lived in the last three decades is suffering a setback of great magnitudes that places this region of eight countries before “the worst and most dangerous situation since it left behind the military political conflicts at the end of the eighties,” said a recent international report that monitors the political, social, economic and environmental course of the intranquila wax of the continent.
The Region State Report 2025, a sum of investigations that monitor the eight integral countries of the Central American Integration System (SICA) as a whole, shows a coincidence of internal misfortunes before an adverse global environment and now aggravated by the new Government of Donald Trump in the United States, which in this year closed the greatest flows of financial cooperation towards Central America and maintains a hostile atmosphere on migrants.
Keeping national particularities, the general lines point to a critical panorama in the region of 65 million Central Americans, including 11% of them who live far from their country of origin and some of the extra -regional migrants who have anchored here after failing in their attempt to cross the isthmus towards the “American dream.” The desire for democratic stability and progress in these territories equivalent to half of Colombia languishes in the region that, in addition, has become a factor of US policy because it is the main immigration corridor and pulse zone in the struggle of influence of Washington against China.
Research in the state of the region includes Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, but also the Dominican Republic, in what the authors call “card” and analyze jointly for reasons that go beyond the mere geography. There are common environmental challenges for the region that is among the most threatened by climate change, they share a strong intra -regional commercial relationship and reach them the cross -border shade of organized crime, but also the similar migratory dynamics and decades of integrationist efforts that, however, are now in their lowest hours, concludes the report. The SICA does not even have general secretary and this position has spent half of the time since 2021, while the presidents reduce high level meetings. Each government operates in isolation and with little response capacity to external actors or common problems. Among these, drug trafficking stands out with dirty money and violence that leaves in transit between South America and northern consuming markets, while “security issues have lost priority in the agenda of the regional integration process,” reports the state of the region.
Despite the abandonment of integrationist efforts, political trends show similarities in the internal events of each country. “The deep erosion of democracy in several countries of the region generates immediate risks for the exercise of citizen rights and freedoms. The deterioration is of such magnitude that, in several countries, the performance is similar to that of the times in which they faced crisis political crises and armed conflicts in the twentie Murillo after seven years from the social outbreak of 2018 that caused a strong diaspora, and El Salvador, where a totalitarian control of Nayib Bukele and popular support for authoritarianism is consolidated.
Although political conditions vary between each nation, in all countries in the area (except for Nicaragua) the support of citizens to the idea that the president acalle to the opposition parties, one of the indicative features of the self -criticization of a political system, according to the investigators. This growth was greater in El Salvador, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, where that group almost reached half of the population, according to measurements of the Public opinion project of Latin America (Lapop) used in the report. “Vast sectors of citizenship agree on the reduction of political liberties, certainly a very worrying indicator,” reads the document, which also identifies an erosion of the weight and counterweight system by measures aimed at limiting judicial independence, to the control bodies and the press.
An analysis contained in the report reveals that the largest population groups in the Card region are the “populists”, a category that refers to individuals who express support to democracy, but that would also approve the concentration of power in a strong leader to solve the problems, although it does not fully comply with the rules of democratic. That group ranges between 37% and 60% in each country, with the exception of Guatemalans and Hondurans, which are distributed more equitably among extreme positions: authoritarian or convinced Democrats. The openly authoritarian are around 20% in the region and almost equate the convinced Democrats, except in Costa Rica, where the latter group represents 34% and the first 11%.
Now the crisis that already identified the State Report of the region of 2021, when a deterioration of democratic institutionality and the strong blows to COVID-19 at times that had thought were to dedicate to celebrating 200 years of independence, is deeper and deeper. In the last four -year period there was an insufficient, erratic and dissimilar economic recovery, while social spending was contracted in health and education, which was reflected in less coverage of teaching and other basic services. “This is very serious for itself, but even more in the light of the demographic trend and the impact it can have on the productivity and quality of life of people in the coming years,” said Alberto Mora, coordinator of the report after the launch in the first week of May in Panama.
The first edition of the report, in 1999, reported that children under 14 were 41% of the population, but now they are only 26%. The people of working age were then just over half and now represent two thirds, but the educational profile is low and the lack of opportunities pushed to migrate to one in nine, especially to the United States, where the new government promotes policies that threaten the rights of migrants and refugees, collects the compendium. Uncertainty surrounds the source of remittances, which in 2023 represented a quarter of the GDP of El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, while in Guatemala they reached 20%. The average volumes of the region quintuplic those of Latin America, although the data of 2024 are to be seen and especially the effects of migratory pressures on remittances in 2025.
This cocktail of adverse factors compromises the illusions that sprouted with the peace agreements in the final layouts of the cold war. Institutional efforts, the promotion of civil liberties and the creation of economic opportunities for the great majorities were insufficient to support the demands of the population, the pressure of the dominant elites, of the populist attacks of authoritarian court. “If at that time pacification opened a hope for sustainable human development and democracy, today that hope has faded to a large extent,” the report ends.
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