The new president of El Salvador, first elected in June of 2019, is being praised by American MAGA enthusiasts at a CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference ) conference as the greatest thing since sliced bread. But is he?
On October 26, El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele officially submitted his application to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) to register as the presidential candidate for his Nuevas Ideas party in the upcoming February 2024 elections, despite numerous constitutional prohibitions on consecutive presidential terms. Days before, the National Civilian Police had closed off the streets around the TSE, while rumors swirled about the presidential battalion taking over the building to make way for Bukele’s anticipated arrival.
It was in this context that the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs Brian A. Nichols flew to El Salvador to shake hands with Bukele at the Presidential Palace. On Twitter, Nichols touted the October 24 meeting as “excellent,” noting topics of discussion such as “mutual efforts to address irregular immigration” and “bilateral collaboration on rule of law,” a deeply troubling prospect given the Bukele administration’s widespread disregard for Salvadoran and international law.
This visit and its timing solidify a concerning trend of increased public support from the U.S. government for the Bukele administration in the months leading up to the 2024 presidential, legislative and municipal elections, all while his intention to remain in office in violation of at least five articles of the Salvadoran constitution and to further consolidate political control through drastic changes to the country’s electoral system has been entirely clear. In August, Secretary Blinken welcomed El Salvador’s Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill Tinoco with a press conference in Washington, followed by a September donation of two helicopter engines by the U.S. Ambassador William Duncan to the Salvadoran Air Force.
When asked during a press conference about the legality of reelection, Assistant Secretary Nichols washed his hands of the matter, saying that “[Salvadorans] will have the opportunity to express their will at the polls and they can decide if they are in agreement or not with the process.”
But what does “a large percentage of the vote” mean in El Salvador? Let’s see.
Here are excerpts from a 2003 report from El Salvador about how poor people there do not vote. I think it is fair to say that this report gives a good idea of voting behavior more recently as well.
In September 2003 I traveled to El Salvador through the generosity the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and the Hackworth family to conduct interviews with members of the lower classes, community leaders, academics and politicians. In a series of eight interviews in the capital city of San Salvador and four in the campo, or rural areas, I was able to complete twelve full in-depth interviews about everything from what services local community programs provide, how they are financed, and how many people depend on their services, to how much contact community leaders have with elected government representatives, whether or not people vote, how much confidence they have in the government, what their greatest problems and needs are, and whether or not they believe the democratization process has improved the quality of their lives.
…
All poor persons I interviewed except one indicated that they did not vote because it was difficult to obtain the proper voting card and to get to the correct voting place, and all the effort seemed futile as both poles of the political spectrum are viewed negatively.
…
The "president" of the community, Jose Santos Alfaro Villena is young and very well-spoken. He told me that while he is incredibly active in his own community, he has never voted in the actual elections because he has never been convinced by any of the politicians that anything will change. He said that he had "never seen the government respond to any of the needs of this community."22 The community provided for its own safety and health care, running a local neighborhood watch program and a clinic.
The experiences of community organizations across El Salvador seemed very similar in their financial structure, provision of basic needs and detachment from the political system. When asked if community organizers mobilized their communities in order to vote, all responded no. Thus, politics and politicians in these community organizations are seen not as resources or partners in solving problems, but as problems themselves-sources of corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency.
…
Professor Artiga emphasized that the stagnation in the development of political parties in El Salvador has contributed greatly to a lack of action on the national level. In his research, he has discovered that in terms of two of the greatest problems facing the nation today, security and economics, in the case of the former, the parties aren't much interested, and in that of the latter, they are very set in their ways. In addition, voter abstention has been a serious blow to the democratization process. As he stated,
In the 2003 congressional elections, statistics show that around 41.5 percent of eligible voters nationwide cast their votes. Now this is very low if we consider that in all of Latin America only Guatemala and Colombia have lower levels. There is a general sense that whoever wins, the problems don't change. So voter apathy is a serious issue. Some say that the problem of voter abstention is located in the organization of the voting system. It is difficult to get voting cards and voter centers are poorly located. But all political parties need to see to it that the population feels more represented in their interests. Only then will people vote more.23
…
In terms of political behavior, El Salvador ranks lowest in all of Central America in voting behavior, which is defined as registering to vote and actually voting in the last election. It also ranks dead last in campaign activism, which is defined as working on campaigns in prior elections or attempting to convince another person to vote one way. In terms of attempting to contact public officials, El Salvador ranks second to last after Nicaragua.27 This statistical evidence is interesting because it places El Salvador in the forefront of community activism, but at the tail end of political activism.
Note, the Gini index of economic inequality shown below is a measure of how much of the wealth would have to change hands to make everybody equally wealthy: a Gini of zero means everybody is already equally wealth; a Gini of 100, i.e., 100%, means one person has ALL the wealth and so virtually 100% of the wealth would need to change hands to make everybody equally wealthy. As you can see below, economic inequality in El Salvador is substantial and has not decreased since the election of president Bukele in 2019.
It seems that Bukele’s 85% of the vote means that 85% of the kind of people who do actually vote in El Salvador—the wealthier people—voted for him, which is a FAR cry from 85% of the people of El Salvador voting for him!
Bukele is clearly a representative of the wealthier El Salvadorans who want to solve (or don’t particularly mind solving, or don’t understand that their vote means solving) the “gang problem” with extremely cruel anti-poor-people methods (as indicated below) INSTEAD of by eliminating economic inequality and the despair and hopelessness it creates for the poorest people who tragically see gang membership as their only “way up” in the world.
What is Bukele’s crackdown on the gangs all about? Let’s see.
Bukele’s operation is achieving its goal of reducing street violence and bringing down the gangs. But it is also dogged by allegations of human rights abuses, as well as lack of transparency. As of January, nearly 63,000 people have been arrested in the crackdown, according to Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro. There is nothing casual about this number: it is the estimated number of gang members in El Salvador, which is home to just under six million people.
Police officers critical of the regime have revealed that they are given arrest quotas to meet. Only 5% of inmates detained under the state of emergency have been released, according to Bukele. But according to human rights organizations in the country, only a third have proven links to gangs. What’s more, they argue that crimes such as belonging to a “terrorist organization” are so broad as to include almost anyone.
The Mara Salvatrucha, the largest and most dangerous criminal structure in the country, is losing ground thanks to President Nayib Bukele’s state of emergency. But at what cost?
“Now you can walk around here, and you won’t see any gang members, but I don’t recommend doing it because the police could take you away, particularly you because you have tattoos,” says Eva, a 27-year-old from La Montreal, a populous neighborhood in the metropolitan area of San Salvador. Since the government of Nayib Bukele declared a state of emergency in El Salvador eight months ago, the inhabitants of La Montreal, a historic stronghold of the Mara Salvatrucha-13 (MS-13), are less afraid of gang members. Now, instead, they fear the police and the army, who have besieged the community and many others like it across the country.
“Here the police and the soldiers have absolute power. They can take away anyone just because they don’t like him. They have become like another gang,” says Eva, sitting in an old armchair in the small room of her house, as she looks out of the corner of her eye to make sure that no one is listening to the conversation. Eva, who does not want to reveal her full name for security reasons, is with her husband, mother, two young children and two other neighbors who have come together to talk about how life in La Montreal has changed under President Nayib Bukele’s state of emergency.
…
“A few months ago they took my son-in-law, Jorge Erazo. He is 24 years old and is a young worker and student doing his third year of a Business Administration degree. His father had the same name as him, and he was the driver of the bus that the gang members burned in 2010,″ says Ana, one of the neighbors gathered in the living room.
…
According to some of the locals consulted for this report, people are leaving La Montreal in droves. In addition to gang members who fled the community fearing arrest, many residents without any links to gangs have had to flee the country after police threatened to imprison them if they did not cooperate and provide information.
Deaths in custody, extreme overcrowding, torture and arbitrary arrests. These are just some of the many accusations that have been leveled against the Salvadoran government of Nayib Bukele, who has held the country in a state of emergency for over a year as part of his controversial crackdown on gang violence. EL PAÍS spoke with two former inmates, who confirmed the systemic abuses denounced by international and national human rights organizations. Both watched people die in their cells, both were tortured, and both lived in overcrowded prisons, with hardly any food and without ever speaking to their family or lawyer.
…
Manuel recalls that another prisoner, “a 21-year-old boy who was called Daniel,” also died in the cell. “He was desperate and screaming for medicine or complaining of hunger and pain.” The police responded by beating him. He was kicked, smacked with batons and hit with the butt of rifles. “One day they beat him so badly that they beat him to death and dragged him out like an animal.”
…
"I can shoot you right now"
Dolores, 53, was arrested by five police officers on May 6, 2022, on charges of extortion. “They told me that my children collected money from businesses and I collected it,” says Dolores, an office worker in Cuscatancingo city council. She explains that they gave her a document with the charge Ds, but that she did not sign it because “they did not have any proof.” She asked to see a lawyer but received no legal assistance in the five months she was incarcerated. Dolores, a union member, says she was arrested for leading several strikes to raise wages and receive uniforms.
Three people wait for a detained family member in front of El Penalito headquarters in San Salvador.VÍCTOR PEÑA
Once at the police station, officers put her in a cell with heavily tattooed inmates. “Some had MS tattooed on their foreheads.” Dolores says that she was not afraid because she “has never belonged to any of that.” Like Manuel, she decided not to talk to the other detainees. On the first night, she remembers being told by a policeman: “Now you are the target. I can shoot you right now and say you wanted to escape.”
On the first day in Ilopango prison, half an hour from San Salvador, they lined her up with the other prisoners. They stripped her naked, made her bathe in a barrel in the yard along with 20 other women, put her through a scanner and carried out a vaginal search “in case I had drugs or something, I guess.” Dolores spent 22 days in a 150-square-meter cell with a tin roof and metal mesh walls. Dolores estimates that there were more than 800 women there, sleeping side by side on the cement floor. Each with their heads at the height of the other’s feet. The toilet was a bucket and the shower was a hose. The food was “dry bean paste.”
One of the inmates, Esmeralda, had a tattoo with the infinity symbol under the nape of her neck. Dolores remembers that “she vomited everything she ate.” She also suffered from diarrhea and ended up dying of dehydration. When she lost consciousness, she was carried by several inmates “because she was chubby.” The police took her away, and they never saw her again. “They told us that she died on the way to the hospital.” Human rights organizations have spoken out against authorities for not reporting the death of prisoners. Several people have filed complaints after finding the corpse of their detained relative in a common grave.
“Politicians were working only for the people in power,” Arevalo said of previous administrations. “We wanted to give him [Bukele] a shot because he said he was different.”
But then, Arevalo’s son was accused of being a gang member and arrested. So far, he has spent more than nine months awaiting trial in jail, where he is allowed no access to the outside world.
Santos Arevalo, 53, poses for a portrait on January 18 in San Salvador, El Salvador [Camilo Freedman/Al Jazeera]
Arevalo has therefore been unable to ascertain his son’s wellbeing. The experience has left him feeling betrayed by the Bukele administration.
“Now he has turned against us for no reason,” Arevalo said of Bukele. “The president was supposed to go after all the gang members. That’s what he promised, but he went off the rails and now is going after innocent families.”
Arevalo only makes the minimum wage: about $243 dollars a month. Nevertheless, he spends $100 each month to deliver a food package to the penitentiary where his son is imprisoned, three hours from his home in the eastern department of Ahuachapán.
Since he is unable to reach his son, Arevalo never knows if the care packages reach him.
“This isn’t a war against gangs. This is a war against poor people,” Arevalo said. He hopes to have his son set free, although he fears his child could face a mass trial, where he would be lumped in with gang members.
El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland on Feb. 22, 2024. The Conservative Political Action Conference launched in 1974 to bring together conservative organizations, elected leaders, and activists.KENT NISHIMURA/BLOOMBERG
The number of migrants arriving at the United States’ southern border has increased dramatically over the past six years, and immigration consistently ranks among Americans’ top concerns, including in the run-up to this year’s general election.
For decades, American politicians have been looking for ways to address the root causes of migration, especially from countries in the “Northern Triangle” — commonly used to refer to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. A growing group of American politicians and pundits believe they have finally found an answer in Nayib Bukele, the young, hip president of El Salvador.
Bukele and his administration claim that migration from El Salvador to the United States has declined precipitously on his watch. The reason? He says it’s because of his government’s exceptionally forceful crackdown on crime and gangs — making El Salvador safer and its citizens less likely to leave. However, our recent analysis of US immigration data shows that Bukele’s purported success may be vastly overstated.
Once ruled by powerful gangs, El Salvador has gone from having the highest homicide rate in the world to what Bukele says is the lowest in the Americas. He also enjoys unprecedented levels of public support: At least 8 out of 10 citizens approve of Bukele and say that their neighborhoods are more secure. Corporations are paying attention to El Salvador’s transformation, too, and investing in the once unstable country. Googlehas partnered with the government on initiatives like digitizing health care and education, and its logo sits atop one of the highest skyscrapers in the country’s capital. Cryptocurrency companies are flocking to invest after Bukele declared Bitcoin legal tender.
Given these developments, Bukele contends that Salvadorans are now staying home rather than migrating to the United States. American news outlets and politicians arerepeating that claim: “Migration has fallen in recent years under President Nayib Bukele,” The Washington Post reported in late June. Politico reported that “Bukele’s iron-fisted crackdown on gangs and crime has led to a dramatic drop in out-migration.” Fox News went further, stating on June 8 that Bukele has “stopped migration cold.” Senator Tom Cotton cites a “40 percent drop” in Salvadoran migration to the United States under Bukele — a zombie statistic that keeps cropping up in news articles.
This narrative — that Bukele’s takedown of the gangs improved life in El Salvador such that far fewer people want to move north to the United States — makes intuitive sense. But the data say otherwise: Bukele’s purported triumph in reducing migration may not be real.
We calculated how many Salvadorans US Customs and Border Protection agents encountered at the US southern border each month from late 2013 through 2024 as a percentage of El Salvador’s national population. For comparison’s sake, we did the same for El Salvador’s neighbors, Guatemala and Honduras.
If Bukele’s crackdown on gangs really did result in less out-migration from El Salvador, we would expect to see the numbers diverge from the levels of migration out of Guatemala and Honduras beginning in 2019 when Bukele took power and then especially in 2022 after his State of Exception crackdown on gangs and crime began.
But the data paint a more nuanced picture: Changes in migration from El Salvador largely mirror those of Guatemala and Honduras in this period. If Bukele’s crackdown in 2022 were responsible for the drop in Salvadoran encounters at the US border, we would expect El Salvador’s trendline to look decidedly different than the other two. Moreover, related research finds no change during Bukele’s tenure in the number of Salvadorans petitioning for asylum in Mexico.
Bukele’s State of Exception policy permits the government to conduct mass arrests and suspend citizens’ right to a trial. Seemingly overnight, El Salvador’s prison population swelled to 109,519 people, about 2.5 percent of the adult population — the highest incarceration rate in the world. Many Salvadorans have told us stories of aninnocent family member or friend stuck in prison with no trial or communication. There are numerous accounts of torture and avoidable prison deaths.
Bukele proudly circulates videos of the inhumane prison conditions on social media. “This was literally the most dangerous country in the world. … You have to stop that, right?” he told Tucker Carlson in June. Bukele strongly defends his policies as the only way to take away gangs’ power, break the cycle of violence, and stop the tide of Salvadorans leaving the country. Keen to find political solutions to the border crisis, both MAGA politicians and a high-level delegation from the Biden administration traveled to El Salvador for Bukele’s second presidential inauguration this June, after which several US representatives praised him as a visionary leader.
But the dataon Guatemala and Honduras undercut Bukele’s explanation for migration trends. It’s more likely that something else is influencing migration from all three countries, such as, for example, the US’s contentious Remain in Mexico border policy that began in early 2019, in which border patrol agents began sending migrants with registered asylum claims back to Mexico rather than permitting them to stay in the United States. The Biden administration rescinded the policy in January 2021, but it was reinstated later that year after a federal judge ruled against the suspension of the policy. It remained in place until the US Supreme Court overturned it in June 2022. The program officially ended that fall.
At the very least, it’s unlikely that Bukele’s crackdownalone is responsible for fewer Salvadorans crossing the US border.
In the face of a complex immigration situation, misleading narratives like Bukele’s can be tempting for US politicians. In reality, American policymakers promoting Bukele’s methods are not only falling short in condemning his human rights abuses; they are giving him credit for reducing migration far more than he has. Instead, they’re supporting an anti-democratic illusion.
Jeffrey Swindle is a college fellow and lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. Matthew Blanton is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
Very informative. Thank you. I so wish more people took the time to learn the fact rather then respond emotionally (and tribalistically) to a one liner headline on social media
Depressing reading John. We need a miracle to stop the accelerating universal moral decline.
Very informative. Thank you. I so wish more people took the time to learn the fact rather then respond emotionally (and tribalistically) to a one liner headline on social media