A photo circulating on social media Friday showed a smiling Trump hugging Milena Mayorga and two other contestants, Miss USA and Miss Guatemala, outside the 1996 Miss Universe pageant, where she was the tenth most sensible finalist. contest.
Mayorga, 44, appointed President Nayib Bukele on Thursday night as El Salvador’s next ambassador to the United States.
She is a political neophyte with no diplomatic experience, having been elected to Congress for the first time in 2018.
But Salvadorans have known her for years as a popular TV presenter.
Mayorga drew the president’s after denouncing corruption in his conservative party ARENA, which, as a dominant force in Congress, blocked the agenda of Bukele, who then left the party.
As an ambassador, she will face a difficult-to-verify war to settle the deteriorating appointments with Republicans and Congressional Democrats who have expressed fear that Bukele, while very popular, is overcoming her authority and threatening controls and balances in the small Central American country. Out.
While Bukele has been made enjoyed through Trump in supporting his immigration policy, he has been criticized by human rights and pro-democracy activists for defying the Supreme Court and the El Salvador Congress.
On Thursday, six Republican congressmen led by David Royce of Ohio and Mario Díaz Balart of Miami wrote a letter to Bukele expressing their fear of what they called El Salvador’s “slowness but estrangement from the rule of law and the norms of democracy that our hemisphere has. “fought. ” so hard to preserve.
The letter provoked a reaction on Bukele’s national television, which rejected the letter, which followed similar judicial cases of Democrats, such as paintings by a small organization of lawmakers that do not even account for 3% of the entire U. S. Congress.
“Getting members of Congress to write a letter is the simplest thing in the world,” Bukele said.
Bukele’s complaint stems from his repeated for Congress and the Supreme Court.
In February, he sent heavily armed infantrymen to surround Congress to pressure lawmakers to approve a loan to fund a fight against gangs. Then, in April, Bukele ignored several decisions of the Supreme Court of El Salvador that overturned strict measures that led to detention in quarantine centers. crowded with many other people accused of violating the coronavirus lockdown rules.
He also recently attacked one of Central America’s most independent investigative media, El Faro, after uncovering evidence that the government had secretly negotiated with imprisoned members of MS-13, a terrorist organization in El Salvador.
Throughout the confrontation, he remained strong from the leadership of Trump and U. S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson, who signed a bilateral agreement last year that would allow the United States to send asylum seekers from other countries to El Salvador, a policy that had not been implemented before the pandemic.
In August, his government signed a $450,000 contract with a well-connected Washington leader, according to documents filed through the U. S. Department of Justice. Lukele claims to have cancelled the contract with the Sonoran Policy Group that disbursed funds.
Mayorga has caused controversy in El Salvador for honoring on social media the army commander who died after the 1981 raid on the village of El Mozote, a terrible low point of the country’s long civil war. Counterinsurgency troops trained by the United States in search of left-wing guerrillas.
“Some other people never die, they simply become myths and legends,” He wrote in a 2018 tribute to Colonel Domingo Monterrosa on the anniversary of the birth of the commander, who then died when a guerrilla bomb destroyed the helicopter he was traveling on.
Mayorga was one of 10 1996 Miss Universe finalists won through Alicia Machado, a former Miss Venezuela who campaigned against Trump in the 2016 campaign. Machado accused Trump of labeling her a sexist nickname, “Miss Piggy,” which caused him misfortune and humiliation after being crowned Miss Universe.
-+
Goodman reported from Medellín, Colombia.
24/7 policy of the latest news and events