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All member countries of the Central American Integration System (SICA) have brought the Ortega era at the General Secretariat to a close. That period was marked by institutional paralysis caused by the insistence of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo on placing its political operatives at the helm of the regional organization.
The deadlock ended on Wednesday, June 10, 2026, with the election of Costa Rican diplomat Lina Eugenia Ajoy Rojas as Secretary General. She will become the first woman and the first Costa Rican to lead SICA.
Ajoy Rojas’s appointment for the 2026–2030 term was ratified during a virtual meeting of SICA presidents and heads of state. Participants included Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo, Honduran President Nasry Asfura, and Dominican President Luis Abinader. Also attending were Costa Rica’s First Vice President Francisco Gamboa, El Salvador’s Vice President Félix Ulloa, Nicaragua’s co-foreign ministers Denis Moncada and Valdrack Jaentschke, and deputy foreign ministers Amalia Mai of Belize and Carlos Hoyos of Panama, according to a statement from Costa Rica’s Foreign Ministry.
Over two separate periods totaling more than three and a half years, SICA operated without a Secretary General because of the Nicaraguan dictatorship’s refusal to compromise in its efforts to impose its will on the regional body. Rather than changing course, the regime repeatedly sought to install its own representatives in order to advance and implement its international agenda within the Central American organization: expelling Taiwan as an observer partner and replacing it with China and Russia.
Since April 2021, Nicaragua’s dictatorship has nominated twelve Nicaraguans and one Guatemalan for the post of Secretary General. However, only the candidacy of Werner Vargas Torres was officially accepted by the other member states, in June 2022. The Nicaraguan lawyer, who had extensive experience in Central American integration affairs, was forced to resign from the position on November 16, 2023.
The New Secretary General
Lina Eugenia Ajoy Rojas, who will take office on August 9, 2026, is a career diplomat who has held several positions within Costa Rica’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship.
“Ajoy brings 27 years of experience in the Diplomatic Service. She is a career ambassador, attorney, and notary public, with training in mediation and cooperation. She is fluent in English and Italian. Her most recent international posting was as Costa Rica’s ambassador to El Salvador, where she also represented Costa Rica before SICA and Belize,” Costa Rica’s Foreign Ministry said.
Her résumé also includes positions within the Foreign Ministry as Director General of the Foreign Service, Deputy Director of Foreign Policy, and Deputy Director of International Cooperation.
During the administration of former President Carlos Alvarado Quesada (2018–2022), she was appointed Costa Rica’s ambassador to El Salvador, assuming the post in January 2019. In July 2021, she was additionally designated as non-resident ambassador to Belize.
She remained head of the diplomatic mission in San Salvador until March 1, 2026, when the Government Council under former President Rodrigo Chaves ordered her return to internal service at the Casa Amarilla, as the Foreign Ministry is commonly known.
Ajoy Rojas is the paternal half-sister of Melina Ajoy Palma, a former lawmaker from the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC). The party expelled Palma in April 2026 after she voted against lifting former President Chaves’s immunity in December 2025.
The former legislator has also been accused of having “protected” former congressman Fabricio Alvarado of the New Republic Party during a parliamentary investigation into allegations of sexual harassment.
Costa Rica’s shortlist for the SICA post was headed by former congressman Gilberth Adolfo Jiménez Siles and also included former ambassador Catalina Crespo Sancho.
The Change That Made the Election Possible
SICA, established in December 1991, is made up of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic.
Costa Rica submitted its slate of candidates on May 22, one month after seven of SICA’s eight member states approved a reform to the organization’s internal voting rules. The change eliminated the requirement for unanimous consensus and replaced it with a qualified majority for decision-making, including the election of the Secretary General.
This procedural change dismantled the veto power that Nicaragua’s dictatorship had used to block the appointment of a Secretary General and keep the position vacant.
