In its seemingly eternal return, the democratic fragility of Central America is once again perceived not only as a latent threat but as a palpable reality, repositioning the Central American isthmus countries on the map of progress/regression in the quality of life within the historically explored territories of resistance on the planet we have come to call the Global South. The present of the peoples of this unique geographical space, a bridge and strait between oceans and continents, the Central American isthmus, appears to be anchored once more in the past, trapped between violence and resistance, between dystopia and utopia, which intertwine and overlap with the possibilities of the future.

The societies of our countries, which experienced the "madness and hope" of civil wars in the last decades of the 20th century, have not returned to open warfare or unrestrained confrontation between ideologically opposed factions in these early years of the 21st century. However, since the Esquipulas Peace Accords (late 1990s), a weak form of democracy and a semi-patrimonial state have been established in all the national governments of the isthmus—particularly in the countries of the so-called Northern Triangle. This type of regime has allowed political and economic elites to use national institutions for their own ends, manipulate the law, and avoid public and transparent accountability. It is a model that, although procedurally, in its foundations and liberal logic, appears democratic, in practice operates under profoundly authoritarian principles.

It appears to be prevalent in the region, encountering little obstacle on its path to consolidation, that there is a renewal of the old transnational logic of citizen repression and the suppression of civil liberties as a standard form of power. We coexist with a system of government that rewards impunity and is weary of the exacerbated and violent use of force to maintain territorial control, a system entrenched in nation-states since the end of the armed conflict.

In recent years, parallel to the democratic deterioration and restriction of rights faced by most countries in the Central American region, there has been a new increase in state repression and violence under Zero Tolerance policies. In short, what we are experiencing today in Central America is the rise of "iron fist" security models, already proven to have failed in the recent past throughout the region, with the manipulated use of legal mechanisms to repress and imprison opponents under the pretext of combating citizen insecurity and corruption.

This phenomenon is observed particularly, but not exclusively, in the countries of this famous Northern Triangle of Central America -- El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras -- to which Nicaragua is added in a resounding way, where an openly dictatorial regime of government has been established since at least 2018, amid the current wave of new authoritarianisms that trivializes and instrumentalizes the meanings of "state of exception".

El Salvador is the most prominent case of the current historical period. Since coming to power in 2019, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has ironically declared himself on social media "the coolest dictator in the world," has implemented a security policy in the country that has drawn attention throughout the Americas. Intense repression and imprisonment, especially for "mareros"—members of the notorious organized crime gangs in Central America—is his motto, characterized by massive raids in outlying neighborhoods and summary trials, which have already resulted in the arrest of up to 75.000 people.

The majority of Salvadorans—based on public opinion polls that approve of the Bukele administration—celebrate living in a supposedly safer climate, with streets emptied of dangerous criminals who until recently terrorized the population. There is undeniable popular support in the country for a zero-tolerance policy toward gangs, which have become intertwined with drug trafficking and have been sowing terror in the country since the early 2000s. Ultimately, for the vast majority of Salvadorans, these individuals are not entitled to fundamental rights. Human rights organizations denounce the irregularities and violence committed by the Salvadoran state, including disappearances, deaths in prisons, and arbitrary arrests of anyone who appears suspicious, among other abuses.

THE ETERNAL RETURN AND BEYOND

Our reflections started from the premise that the events in the Central American isthmus region cannot be fully understood without considering its deep links with the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, where in several of its territories the growth of authoritarianism has also been felt.

In addition to the resurgence of this type of worldview, which often translates into governments and regimes of imposition and intolerance, and is accepted and even celebrated in some cases of Latin American social realities in general, Central America specifically still has historical characteristics that make the region a champion of imbalances and segregation: central regions and metropolitan capitals concentrate resources and investments to the detriment of rural peripheral areas; the Central American Atlantic-Caribbean coast, to the detriment of the Pacific, is the scene of greatest inequality and poverty. This area has the greatest contemporary expansion of the agricultural/livestock frontier (in some countries, violently, as in Nicaragua and Guatemala), and is the target of infrastructure development projects (hydroelectric dams or canals), mining concessions, the expansion of monocultures, and the privatization of environmental reserves. And it is no coincidence that the religious fundamentalisms currently prevalent throughout the region serve as ammunition for attacks on educational systems, claiming that these systems "indoctrinate" students. to students, when critical reflection on social reality is promoted. There have also been attacks on the teaching of Human Rights and on studies and policies on gender equality, sexual and reproductive rights.

In societies with such high levels of inequality and a marked tendency toward or open presence of authoritarianism, fundamentalisms, including and particularly religious ones, become institutionalized. A kind of symbiosis is created between "iron fist" and the voice of God, which protects its figures and forms of oppression from within the power structures. They strategically install themselves in government ministries, making their presence felt in decision-making spaces for education, health, culture, public safety, and in agencies that safeguard the human rights of vulnerable populations. They generate public policies steeped in religious moralism disguised as secular rhetoric.

The regression is democratic, but it is also civilizational; it is a symptom of a polycrisis, so poorly exemplified in our Central American isthmus, and it reveals systemic exhaustion, where the tendency is toward an interregnum until other, more just and cooperative systems are conceived and can flourish. Our epistemologies are peripheral because our concerns are central.

As for Central American Articulation, O Istmo has maintained a Working Group in CLACSO for 09 years (since the period 2016-2018) and is currently mobilizing its fourth three-year period of activities for the period 2026-2028.

We have been producing editorial and audiovisual works with in-depth and well-founded analyses of the economic and sociocultural logics intertwined in the Central American isthmus, primarily through questioning the hegemonic historical, sociological, and literary narratives of our isthmian territories. All this dedication has been generating an epistemological reflection-action from the peripheries toward the center, an authorial theoretical contribution from the collective of O Istmo, which remains open and evolving, and which we have termed the "Isthmian Perspective."

The name "O Istmo," incidentally, attempts to semantically problematize, through a phonetic/grammatical play on Portuguese and Spanish (considering that the Articulation arose from initiatives of Central Americans in the diaspora in Brazil), the fact that "O Istmo" does not simply correspond to the Portuguese equivalent of "El Istmo" in Spanish. It is a name that seeks to politically position the semantic relationship of the phoneme [o] in these two languages ​​with respect to the isthmian identity of Central America. That is to say, the phoneme [o], which exists in both Portuguese and Spanish, is classified in different grammatical classes in the two languages. In Portuguese, this phoneme is the personal pronoun. , and in the Spanish language it is the disjunctive conjunction The same phoneme in two different languages ​​that demonstrates the certainty/questioning of the isthmian condition of these territories in Central America in their identities.

The foundation of our work is a three-pronged approach to understanding the isthmus: Territories and Nation-States; Bodies and Subjectivities; Arts and Cultures. From this thematic interweaving, we develop a critical perspective on the turbulent history and contemporary reality of the isthmus, aiming for a profound and authentic understanding of the phenomena that shape its development. Within the framework of Central Americanist reflection and action that we promote, this means that we are dedicated to sharing, producing, systematizing, and disseminating knowledge about Central America, and to facilitating and connecting cultural and sociopolitical expressions with the struggles of the peoples in the isthmian territories of Central America and in their diasporas, who are already actively promoting emancipatory social transformations in the region.

Our unique sociopolitical and geostrategic physiognomy gives Central America a distinct geographical position between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as a region within the architecture of the world-system. And "region" is a term to which we pay special attention and emphasis. Broadly speaking, it is often understood as a simple, albeit fundamental, category in the political lexicon in general, and specifically in Central America, it serves to refer to a supposed social and identity homogeneity—as understood primarily by foreign perspectives—of the group of countries located on the map of the Greater Caribbean Basin. In the Isthmus, however, this notion is not simply accepted. Thinking about, questioning, and proposing new meanings of the term "region" is also central to our work. In this direction, O Istmo seeks to listen to and echo the diversity of voices that make up this geographical, territorial and symbolic space, and our name seeks to reflect politically and linguistically the awareness of fundamental theoretical and epistemological reflections in our work and proposals.

Within our conception and understanding of knowledge as a collective construction, we consider interdisciplinarity fundamental. For this reason, we promote the presence of multiple traditions, disciplines, theoretical approaches, and diverse generations within our CLACSO Working Group, which serves as the academic arm of our Central American Articulation, O Istmo. Therefore, we are also a research, communication, and socio-political and cultural mobilization network at the Latin American level, affirming the need to deepen the establishment of horizontal relationships and strategic links between the intellectual sphere and socio-political struggles in Central America, promoting a continuum of resistance and alternative epistemologies in different Central American spaces.

We understand that this position and proposition is necessary when analyzing what could be called the "Central American vicious circle," the spiral of sociopolitical fragilities and setbacks in the region (the "eternal return") that reveals the profound shortcomings of the nation-state project and the incomplete nature of democratization processes in Central America. Therefore, a fundamental axis of our work is the questioning of the form of the state and its possibilities, and we propose two basic starting points for this analysis:

A critical appropriation of the theory of the sovereign Nation-State that accounts for the current Central American States and the reality of the current socio-political conflicts that manifest themselves at the identity/territory interface.

A proactive approach to the forms of relationship between "people" in its different meanings (subalternities, multitude, masses, civil society, citizenship, otherness, alterities, social movements, peoples in motion, popular majorities, among others) and "Nation-State" in the present globalized capitalist conditions in the particular Central American context.

From all of this emerge, are based and projected our thematic and action lines of the Central American Articulation O Istmo and of our CLACSO Working Group:

Nation-State, Territoriality, extractivism, environmental justice, democracy and geopolitics;

Peoples in motion, social movements and critical spiritualities and pedagogies;

Literature, arts, identities, bodies and sexual divergences and cultural activism

Thus, we are part of the collective and committed effort of intellectual and political energies that coordinate to seek and produce meanings of Central American identity that allow us to trace and mobilize characteristics of this complex and heterogeneous sociopolitical space where we live, suffer, admire, yearn for, and pluriversalize.

Thus, with the idea of ​​broadening horizons, innovating epistemic perspectives, transdisciplinary methodologies and theoretical approaches – in accordance with the regional and global situation, as well as opening new areas of action and struggles – we seek to study, understand and give meaning to Central American societies.