A heavy storm caused flooding in areas of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, on August 16. These phenomena mostly occur during the rainy season, partly due to the environmental degradation of a water recharge area known as El Espino. Credit: Cruz Roja de El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 25 2025 (IPS)

Two construction projects pushed by the government of El Salvador, in a water recharge area adjacent to the country’s capital, on the slopes of the San Salvador volcano, threaten to make the area more vulnerable and increase the risk of flooding in the city’s poor neighborhoods downstream.

That is what environmentalists, and especially residents of communities who have lived for decades in this green area and witnessed the impact of urban expansion, told IPS.  Like a cancer, it is slowly eating away at the 800 hectares of what was, in the 19th century, one of the main coffee farms, El Espino, in what is now the western periphery of San Salvador.“I was born here, I am a native of this farm, and I have seen how everything has been deteriorating” –Héctor López.

“I was born here, I am a native of this farm, and I have seen how everything has been deteriorating,” 63-year-old Héctor López, a member of the El Espino Agricultural Production Cooperative, told IPS. The cooperative has 100 members who are mostly dedicated to coffee cultivation.

“It was all pure coffee plantations, owned by the Dueñas family, and over time El Espino has been affected by the constructions”, said López.

The two new government projects continue the pattern of deforestation that the property has been subjected to since the 1990s, a product of the unstoppable advance of the real estate sector.

These are the El Salvador National Stadium, which will hold 50,000 seats and whose construction began in September 2022 on an area of 55,000 square meters, and is expected to be ready in 2027.

Meanwhile, the new Center for Fairs and Conventions (Cifco) will begin construction in the coming months on an area of similar size. Both would cover about 10 hectares.

The cost of the stadium is around 100 million dollars, but the authorities have not revealed the figure for the Cifco.

Runoff coming down from the San Salvador volcano overflows a river, downstream, and floods areas populated by low-income families in the southern part of the city. The capacity to absorb rainwater will be affected by two large construction projects promoted by the Salvadoran government. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The forest turned to cement

With each new construction, the soil absorbs less rainwater, and each storm turns the runoff into a river that reaches the poor neighborhoods of San Salvador, a city of 2.4 million inhabitants, including its metropolitan area, within a total country population of six million.

“When everything is paved, the water flows downward and causes flooding in neighborhoods like Santa Lucía,” Ricardo Navarro of the Center for Appropriate Technology (Cesta) told IPS, referring to a residential area of low-income families located in eastern San Salvador.

“When rainwater soaks into the forests, there isn’t much runoff, but without the forest, flooding increases,” adds Navarro, who founded Cesta 45 years ago, the local branch of Friends of the Earth.

The coffee plantation that still survives in El Espino is a forest populated with a rich diversity of tree species and wildlife.

Both the stadium and the convention center are funded by non-reimbursable funds from China, which also donated a US$54 million library, inaugurated in November 2023, as a sort of reward because El Salvador ended the relations it had maintained for decades with Taiwan in 2018.

China considers Taiwan part of its territory and rewards nations that break ties with Taiwan, which is currently recognized as an independent nation by only 12 countries.

Additionally, as part of this package of donations, China built a US$24 million tourist pier in the port city of La Libertad, south of San Salvador on the Pacific coast, and is constructing a water purification plant at Lake Ilopango, east of the capital, among other projects.

Elsa Méndez, together with Ever Martínez, from the El Espino Agricultural Production Cooperative, laments that urban development in the area affects them every rainy season, to the west of San Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Navarro lamented the lack of environmental awareness among the authorities, and more specifically, of the country’s president, Nayib Bukele, who has governed with a markedly authoritarian style since taking office in June 2019. In 2024, he won a second consecutive term, something previously prohibited by the Republic’s Constitution.

Lawmakers from his party, New Ideas, who control the unicameral Legislative Assembly, amended the constitution on July 31 to allow Bukele the option to run for the presidency as many times as he wishes.

Because of this authoritarian style, it is known that in El Salvador, nothing is done without the consent of the ruler.

“President Bukele: Not long ago there was a storm, which caused serious flooding in the lower parts of the city. President, the climate is changing, I can guarantee you, with absolute certainty, that the climate situation is going to get much worse due to climate change,” Navarro urged.

The environmentalist suggested that, in any case, if the construction is not stopped, the convention center should be built adjacent to the stadium, so that common spaces, such as the parking area, could be shared.

The El Espino farm belonged to the Dueñas family, one of the wealthiest in the country, in the 19th century, then linked to coffee production. Land reform seized the property in 1980 and handed it over to dozens of families who worked there as colonists, peasants who labored on the farm in semi-slavery conditions and received a portion of land to build their house.

However, a court ruling decided in 1986 that a part of the farm, around 250 hectares, was urbanizable land and should be returned to the Dueñas family.

Since then, that segment of the farm has been turning into an area of permanent construction of shopping malls and luxury residences, developed by Urbánica, the real estate arm of the Dueñas family.

“If we analyze the companies that are building there and if we pull the thread, we end up at Urbanística,” economist José Luis Magaña explained to IPS.

“There should be clarity about what the infrastructure needs are,” said the expert on the two government projects. “Instead of financing a school repair project with a loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, the government could have asked the Asian power to rebuild those educational centers”, he adds.

In 2022, several families from the El Espino cooperative participated in the “San Salvador sponge city” project, to increase rainwater filtration levels through the construction of trenches and absorption wells, to prevent runoff from causing floods downstream. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The usual floods

On the night of August 15, a heavy storm caused flooding in several sectors of the Salvadoran capital, whose avenues seemed to turn into rivers and lagoons, with hundreds of cars stuck.

In some areas, trash clogged the city’s storm drains and the water rose and flooded into residential areas. Around 25 families were evacuated and sheltered in safe locations.

San Salvador was founded in 1545 at the foot of the San Salvador volcano, a massif rising 1893 meters above sea level, and this location has placed the city at risk of floods and landslides.

In September 1982, a mudflow came down from the volcano’s summit and buried part of a residential area called Montebello, killing about 500 people.

The southern zone of the capital is the most affected by flooding during the rainy season, from May to November. The rain and runoff coming down from the volcano feed small streams along the way, which in turn flow into the El Arenal stream and the populous Málaga neighborhood.

In July 2008, heavy rains caused that stream to overflow, and 32 people drowned when a bus was swept away by the current.

As a way to reduce the vulnerability of this southern zone, in 2020 the city was part of the “Sponge City” project, promoted by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Some 1,150 hectares of forests and coffee plantations were restored in the upper part of the San Salvador volcano, seeking to reactivate the capacity to absorb rainwater through the construction of catchment tanks and trenches amidst the coffee fields.

Urbánica is the real estate arm of the Dueñas family, which builds luxury residences in the capital of El Salvador, in the area of the former El Espino farm, like the one in the image, called Alcalá. Credit: Urbánica

Environmental hope remains

Members of the El Espino cooperative actively participated in that project, as the communities of former colonists of the Dueñas family continue to live on the segment of the farm the land reform granted them, which currently totals 314 hectares and are also hit by the constructions in the upper part, called El Boquerón, near the volcano’s crater.

Deforestation continues there to make way for more restaurants and luxury residences.

“We are worried that more and more construction keeps happening, and there are fewer trees, and more water runoff flowing downstream,” said cooperative member López, who took part in a meeting of the organization’s board members on August 19 when IPS visited the area.

Elsa Méndez, also a cooperative member, stated: “We try to infiltrate water with the trenches, but when the ground is already too saturated with water, we can’t do everything as a cooperative either. Everyone must raise awareness among all people, because the runoff from the volcano carries trash, bottles, plastic, etc.”

On Saturday, 16 families from the community went to reforest the upper area, and the task also served “to teach our children how to reforest,” said Méndez.

Social movement Todos Somos El Espino (We Are All El Espino) has called for a second rally to protest against the construction of the convention center on Saturday, August 23, as part of their plan to defend the increasingly threatened forest.

“At this march, we will be doing the first preliminary count of the signatures collected in physical form… so that Salvadorans can say, ‘I defend El Espino,'” Gabriela Capacho, who is part of that movement, told IPS.

Representatives of a dozen environmental organisations, united in the Roundtable Against Metal Mining in El Salvador, speak out against Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s goal to reopen this industry, banned by law since 2017. Credit: Roundtable Against Metal Mining in El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Dec 10 2024 (IPS)

Metal mining has a renewed momentum in Central America, encouraged by populist rulers who, in order to soften environmental damage, claim they can develop it in harmony with nature, which is hard to believe

Thus, they seek to win the approval of a majority that seems to follow them blindly, but not environmentalists or other social sectors, activists told IPS.

“The mere popularity of President Bukele is not enough to say that the mine will not contaminate the country,” Rodolfo Calles, an activist with the Association of Salvadoran Community Promoters, told IPS, referring to the interest shown by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in reactivating metal mining, which has been banned for seven years.“The mere popularity of President Bukele is not enough to say that the mine will not contaminate the country”: Rodolfo Calles.

Central America, an isthmus of six nations and 64 million inhabitants, is one of the most environmentally vulnerable regions, where activists and social defenders have been warning for decades about the negative impacts the metal mining industry has had on their ecosystems.

As a result of these struggles, a law banning all forms of metal mining was passed in El Salvador in March 2017, the first measure of its kind in the world and considered a historic milestone.

Costa Rica had done the same in 2010, but only for open-pit mining, and other countries have halted specific projects, such as in Guatemala and Honduras, and Panama last year.

Central America is a region rich in biodiversity and natural resources. It has abundant water and forests as well as mineral resources. With the exception of Belize, the only country without significant mineral deposits, significant quantities of metals such as gold, silver or zinc, as well as nickel, copper and other minerals can be found in all territories.

But several studies indicate that the mining industry’s economic contribution is minimal in the area, and in the case of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, it has not exceeded 1% of their gross domestic product (GDP). GDP per capita in the region is around US$6,000.

Guatemala is the Central American country with the greatest mineral wealth, metallic and non-metallic, while Panama and El Salvador have much lower concentrations of mineral elements of interest, according to a study.

Panama saw its largest protests in three decades, against the largest copper mine in Central America. As a result, in November 2023, a law established an indefinite moratorium on mining. Credit: Luis Mendoza / Mongabay

Going backwards

Now El Salvador and Costa Rica, ruled by leaders labelled as populist, are taking steps backwards.

“Bukele launches the issue because he relies on the credibility he claims to have as president and people’s misinformation,” Calles stressed.

Despite his authoritarian nature, the president continues to enjoy broad popular support, according to all opinion polls.

Meanwhile, Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves announced on 27 November that he had submitted a bill to the unicameral National Assembly to reverse the ban on open-pit mining, setting off alarm bells in a country renowned for its efforts to preserve the environment.

The intention is to finally give the green light to a gold mine that had already won a concession but was cancelled when the 2010 ban came into force, based on the constitutional premise that citizens have the right to live in a healthy environment.

The mine is located in the town of Crucitas, in the province of Alajuela, in the north of the country. It is owned by the Canadian consortium Infinito Gold.

But President Chaves wants to reverse the ban.

“Right now we are just seeing how we are going to counteract what is coming,” Erlinda Quesada, a Costa Rican environmentalist with the National Front of Sectors Affected by Pineapple Production, an organisation that, among other things, seeks to protect water sources from intensive monoculture production, told IPS.

In a telephone conversation from the town of Guácimo, in the province of Limón, in the northwest of the country, Quesada added: “It is no secret to anyone that we have a populist government that… is ingratiating itself with these humble sectors, the poorest in the country, and holding them in its hands” when it wants to approve the proposal.

Meanwhile, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega intensified his relationship with China by granting, also on 27 November, the fifth concession to Xinjiang Xinxin Mining Industry.

The new 1,500-hectare mining project is located between the municipalities of Santo Domingo and La Libertad, in central Nicaragua. In all, the consortium’s operations cover 43,000 hectares.

These concessions granted by Ortega’s dictatorial regime would appear to be, in addition to the economic benefit, a move to tighten links with China and annoy the United States, which is seeking to curb the Asian power on the world geopolitical stage.

In September 2022, the people of Asunción Mita in eastern Guatemala voted against the Cerro Blanco mining project owned by Elevar Resources, a subsidiary of Canada’s Bluestone Resources. The ‘no’ won. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Bukele’s economic hope

Out of the blue, Bukele posted a message on the social network X on 27 November showing his interest in the country’s return to the extractive industry, arousing concern among social sectors that, after a long struggle, had succeeded in getting the Legislative Assembly to ban mining in March 2017.

“We are the only country in the world with a total ban on metallic mining, something that no other country applies. Absurd!” the president wrote.

He added that this wealth can be harnessed responsibly to bring “unprecedented” economic and social development to the Salvadoran people.

That development is what he has promised to deliver in his second five-year presidential term, beginning in June 2024, after winning the elections in February amid sharp criticism that the constitution did not allow him to participate in a second, consecutive election.

Then, on 1 December, in a public act, the president tried to justify his extractivist project stating that the country’s mining potential is enough for an accumulated wealth of three trillion dollars, equivalent to 8,800 % of the current Salvadoran GDP.

There are around 50 million ounces of gold in the subsoil, equivalent to 132 billion dollars at current value. But it’s not just gold and silver, he said.

“According to our initial studies, we have found metals of the fourth industrial revolution, such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, which are used to make batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage,” he claimed.

Rare earth minerals, used for advanced electronics, wind turbines and electric vehicle motors, as well as platinum, palladium and iridium to produce hydrogen and catalytic converters, among others, have also been detected, he added.

Bukele said there will always be environmental impacts in any development project, but they can be minimised. As his New Ideas party controls the Legislative Assembly, it would be very easy for him to revive mining in El Salvador.

An anti-mining banner at a church in El Salvador. Social mobilisation against mining projects has been key in trying to stop the operations of these consortiums and prevent soil and water contamination in the communities. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Cheerful accounts

“The president is making happy accounts of the supposed economic benefits that would be obtained, but he is not accounting for the real damage that would be done to the ecosystems,” said Calles, a Salvadoran who has been fighting against the mines for years.

He added that when the ban on mining in the country was being discussed, Bukele was already involved in politics, and knew there were studies showing that the industry was unfeasable in El Salvador because of its negative impacts on water, soil and people’s health.

“I don’t know where he gets the idea that the impacts will be less. What we know is that mining extraction techniques have not changed significantly, and cyanide, for example, is still being used,” he said. This is a chemical compound that, if misused or unintentionally leached into bodies of water, can be lethal.

Central America’s experience with the extractive industry is negative and long-standing, as in other regions of the world.

At a forum organised in 2009 in San José, Costa Rica, by the Latin American Water Tribunal, the regional experiences of open-pit mining in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Peru were analysed and testimonies were heard about the adverse effects in these countries.

These included testimonies from representatives of the Honduran Association of Non-Governmental Organisations and the Environmental Committee of the Siria Valley, where the San Martín mining project, run by Minerales Entre Mares de Honduras, was operating at the time. It was shut down in 2008.

In 2022, the international organisation Oxfam stated that the mine left behind “a trail of complaints about human health (…), as well as reports of contamination and destruction of flora, fauna and local ecosystems; economic, social and cultural damage to the communities”.

Meanwhile, in late 2023, Panama ordered the closure of the largest copper mine in Central America, operated by Minera Panama, a subsidiary of Canada’s First Quantum Minerals. This came after the courts ruled that the concession contract was unconstitutional.

The closure was the result of massive social protests, due to allegations of serious environmental contamination, and led the government to promote a law establishing moratorium on mining activity in the country for an indefinite period of time.

In Guatemala, social mobilization led to court rulings that stopped the country’s main mining projects.

“The most emblematic projects have been suspended by the Constitutional Court, whose members, although corrupt, accepted that the companies never complied with two fundamental requirements: providing information to the community and holding citizen consultations,” Julio González, of the Madreselva Collective, told IPS from Guatemala City.

González added that these include the nickel mine owned by the Solway Investment Group, located in the municipality of El Estor, and El Escobal, owned by the Canadian company Pan American Silver, near San Rafael Las Flores, both in the east of the country.

The Progreso VII Derivada mine, known as La Puya, owned by Exploraciones Mineras de Guatemala, in the central-south department of Guatemala, as well as Cerro Blanco, owned by Canadian Bluestone Resources, located in the vicinity of Asunción Mita, in the eastern department of Jutiapa, have also been added to the list.

González questioned the authenticity of the environmental impact studies carried out by the mining consortiums, as they are based on a specific, very restricted geographical area.

“The biggest lie are these environmental impact studies, carried out in the so-called areas of influence, which is the place where the mine is located and the three or four surrounding villages, but the water, which is going to be contaminated, goes far beyond this area of influence,” he said.

On El Salvador’s backtracking on the possible reactivation of mining, he added: “What I see is Bukele’s alignment with the hegemonic economy, which is not exercised by the US government but by US corporations”.

Rural women in El Salvador participate in a literacy class in the Santa Rosa canton of the municipality of Sensuntepeque, in the northern department of Cabañas. Education authorities in this Central American country have done very little to continue with programs that teach adults to read and write, especially in rural areas. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SENSUNTEPEQUE, El Salvador , Sep 4 2023 (IPS)

El Salvador’s efforts to improve the educational level in the country seem to be falling short, with rundown schools, especially in rural areas, and little progress in overcoming illiteracy.

In almost a decade, this Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants has moved just two percentage points in its fight against illiteracy, going from 11.8 percent in 2013 to 9.7 percent in 2021, the last year with available official data.

Illiteracy is higher in rural areas: 15.2 percent. And among people over 60 years of age the rate is 45.7 percent"Sometimes I would go to the offices in the town of Ilobasco, and I felt bad when I saw signs with messages written on them and I couldn't understand the words." -- Carmen Molina

Literacy efforts in the freezer

Even more worrisome is the suspension in the last three years of the government’s adult literacy program in rural areas, people involved in this effort told IPS.

“It is worrying, the literacy program ceased to exist,” Verónica Majano, executive director of the non-governmental Association of Popular Education (CIAZO), told IPS.

Her organization has been working on literacy programs since 1989, during the country’s 1980-1992 civil war.

And now CIAZO is perhaps the only organization that still runs adult literacy programs in rural areas of the country.

Other institutions that carried out similar projects have given up because they say the education authorities have abandoned the national effort.

“It is not only stagnation, it is a setback; the COVID-19 pandemic affected initial, basic, middle and higher education, but right or wrong it has continued. But in literacy nothing is happening,” Majano stressed.

The cancellation or suspension of the government’s Literacy Program has become evident, she said, since Nayib Bukele became president in June 2019.

She added that the effort to teach reading and writing to those who did not have the opportunity to go to school, or who had to drop out for one reason or another, had previously continued regardless of which government was in power, left or right.

She was referring to the administrations of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, which governed for four terms between 1989 and 2009, and those of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, which was in power for two terms between 2009 and 2019.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has pointed out that acquiring and improving literacy skills throughout life is an intrinsic part of the right to education and brings enormous empowerment and many benefits.

“Literacy drives sustainable development, enables greater participation in the labor market, improves child and family health and nutrition, reduces poverty and expands life opportunities,” the UN agency states.

According to UNESCO, a country can be declared free of illiteracy if less than 3.9 percent of the total population over 15 years of age is illiterate.

It has also stated that illiteracy is another form of modern slavery.

However, it notes that despite the progress made worldwide, 763 million adults still do not know how to read and write.

The hands of an elderly woman fill in a primer with which she is learning to read and write. Most of the women who participate in the literacy circle in Santa Rosa canton, in northern El Salvador, are over 60 years old. But that has not discouraged them from continuing to learn, despite the fact that some have vision problems and getting their eyes examined and buying glasses involves a cost that many cannot afford. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Academic Óscar Picardo told IPS that part of the problem in El Salvador is that, historically, the arrival of each new government has meant a change of strategy and vision on how to promote education in general and literacy programs in particular.

This has generated discontinuity with some of the achievements or progress made by the previous authorities, he said.

“The country and the Ministry of Education have had a recurring problem that is still present, which is the absence of state policies,” said Picardo, director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Innovation, of the private Francisco Gavidia University.

He added; “The education system works with government policies, and every five years the whole system is rebooted, the minister changes and plans change, priorities change, but the major problems remain intact.”

The expert pointed out that if progress is to be made in education, and in particular in reducing illiteracy, the problem of school dropouts, caused by poverty and the insecurity generated by gangs, must be tackled.

According to official figures, 1.3 million people aged four to 29 (47.4 percent) reported not attending school in 2022.

The poverty rate stands at 26.6 percent of the population, but in the countryside the figure rises to 29.6 percent.

Picardo stressed that the so-called “war against gangs” waged since the end of March 2021 by the Bukele administration, which has succeeded in largely dismantling the operations of these criminal groups, is likely to lower the dropout rates and this is already reflected in the figures for the next school year.

“Of course, if the dropout rates decrease due to improved security that would be very positive; hopefully we will see statistics in that regard,” Picardo said.

The “mano dura” or iron fist strategy against the gangs, known here as “maras”, although it has largely dismantled the criminal activity of these groups, has also generated a dynamic of human rights violations and abuses by police and military authority that have been denounced by local and international human rights organizations.

With an average schooling of only 7.2 grades, it will be difficult for the Salvadoran populace to pull out of poverty and for the country to find foreign investment that offers better paying jobs, said the expert.

In El Salvador there are three grades of initial education, up to seven years of age on average. These are followed by nine grades of basic education, up to the age of 15, and three more of middle school, up to the age of 18. Schooling is considered compulsory until the completion of basic education.

Most other Central American countries face a similar problem to El Salvador, Picardo added, although Costa Rica has always shown better development in the educational and social areas, in general, and is the only country in the sub-region declared free of illiteracy.

The Salvadoran government has made a commitment to reducing the technological gap, with the distribution of thousands of laptops to elementary and high school students, which is an important achievement.

But the Bukele administration has also been criticized for the low level of investment in improving the conditions of most of the more than 5,000 schools in the country, especially in rural areas, and in remedying the deficiencies in teaching.

Blanca Velazco, a schoolteacher, shared with IPS the difficulties she faces every day in teaching essential knowledge to her kindergarten and first grade students, who share the same classroom at the Santa Rosa canton school in the municipality of Sensuntepeque, in the northern Salvadoran department of Cabañas.

“My first graders should be reading better by now, but I’ve had a hard time teaching them, because they are together with the kindergarteners, and that shouldn’t be the case,” said Velazco, 47.

She added that at 10:30 AM the kindergarteners leave and she only has 45 minutes to teach the first graders Language Arts and Math.

“”Forty-five minutes are not enough,” she stressed. In the afternoon, she also teaches fourth grade.

Livestock and small-scale and subsistence agriculture are the main economic activities in the canton of Santa Rosa, in the jurisdiction of Sensuntepeque, in northern El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Winning the battle against illiteracy

In this canton, where some 50 families live, the Association of Popular Education, CIAZO, is organizing five literacy circles aimed at adults, mostly women, who want to win the fight against illiteracy.

Official figures reveal that of those who cannot read or write in El Salvador, 14.4 percent are women and 7.7 percent are men.

One of the literacy circles is made up of a dozen peasant women over the age of 60. Half of them were present when IPS visited the area on Aug. 28, and several of them are visually impaired due to their age, but they are not giving up.

“Sometimes I would go to the offices in the town of Ilobasco, and I felt bad when I saw signs with messages written on them and I couldn’t understand the words,” said Carmen Molina, 66, as she worked on a primer, writing words and solving simple addition and subtraction equations.

She said that as a child she attended school but only got as far as the second grade, and what little she learned was forgotten over the years.

“I didn’t want to go anymore,” she explained, because she had to take breakfast to her father and siblings to the milpa – the traditional agricultural system that intermingles corn with beans and vegetables. “And then coming all the way back to school was very hard,” she said.

She got up the courage to go to the literacy circle because some of her younger children would ask her what to write on their assignments.

“Some have a harder time learning than others, but in general they have advanced quite a bit, little by little,” said Flor Echeverría, 30, who has been teaching in the circle since the beginning of 2023.

Echeverría commented that she herself only studied up to the eighth grade and did not want to finish ninth grade, the last grade offered at the school she attended.

“At that time the facilities to go to school didn’t exist, everything was even more complicated,” she said.

“It’s nice to dedicate time to share knowledge with people who did not learn to read or write,” she said.

Although some men participate in the literary circle, such as Julio, Carmen’s son, the vast majority are women who have come to understand that learning to read and write is in itself an act of rebellion and also of liberation.

Alleged gang members are transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison built by the government of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador to house 40,000 detainees accused of belonging to organized crime. CREDIT: Presidency of El Salvador

By Gustavo González
SANTIAGO, Apr 17 2023 (IPS)

Violence involving organized crime has made Latin America the most dangerous region in the world and has helped paved the way for a repressive kind of populism with a dangerous future, whose most visible symbol is Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador.

According to United Nations reports, Latin America, home to eight percent of the global population, accounts for 37 percent of the world’s homicides. (These statistics do not include deaths in wars, accidents and suicides.)

Observers talk about a generalized security crisis, and the Salvadoran president boasted of a 56.8 percent decline in the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, while Ecuador, at the other end of the spectrum, showed an increase of 82 percent.

But comparisons in percentages from one year to the next are misleading if the absolute numbers are not taken into account. For example, the homicide rate in Chile increased 32.2 percent in 2022, although in actual numbers that meant 4.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. In El Salvador, the figure for the same year was 7.8 per 100,000.

Statistics in percentages, magnified by the media and by the rise in the degree of violence in the crimes committed, spread a sensation of insecurity and fear among the public.

The terrain of politics

Politics have seized onto the insecurity crisis, which serves in some cases for the opposition to question the government, or in others for those in power to seek to neutralize their opponents. Both sides come up with shortsighted measures that do not attack the roots of the problem and can actually aggravate it in the medium to long term.

The most common reaction is to beef up the police force while providing it with greater means and authority to crack down on criminals. Police officers are given a greater margin of discretion to size up the danger and shoot – in other words, to become “trigger-happy”.

The expression is not new in the region. It became widespread in various countries between the 1960s and 1980s, under military dictatorships, when the law enforcement and armed forces murdered opponents in staged shootouts or brutally cracked down on social mobilizations.

The revival of these practices in the 21st century has required legitimization through laws, such as the so-called “law of privileged legitimate defense”, passed in Chile on Apr. 10, or broader norms that involve the police, the military and the powers of the State, as Bukele has pushed through in El Salvador.

Bukele, the leader of El Salvador’s Nuevas Ideas party, used his majority in the legislature to allow him to be re-elected as president. And on Mar. 22, 2022, he declared a state of emergency, accompanied by various legislative reforms that in practice gave him a free hand in his fight against crime, namely gangs known in Central America as maras.

More than a year after the state of emergency was declared, Amnesty International denounced widespread violations of human rights in the small Central American country:

“This policy has resulted in more than 66,000 detentions, most of them arbitrary; ill-treatment and torture; flagrant violations of due process; enforced disappearances; and the deaths in state custody of at least 132 people who at the time of their deaths had not been found guilty of any crime,” the human rights watchdog said in a statement released on Apr. 3.

“Key to the commission of these human rights violations has been the coordination and collusion of the three branches of government; the putting in place of a legal framework contrary to international human rights standards, specifically with regard to criminal proceedings; and the failure to adopt measures to prevent systematic human rights violations under a state of emergency,” it added.

A member of the carabineros, Chile’s militarized police, is photographed while opening fire on a street in Santiago. CREDIT: Courtesy of El Desconcierto

Repressive populism

Bukele replaced prisons with virtual concentration camps. A total of 1.5 percent of Salvadorans are currently deprived of liberty, which means the Central American country has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

However, opinion polls show that eight out of 10 Salvadorans are satisfied with the current president and want him to be reelected, while some dissident voices warn that the State is replacing the gangs as an agent of intimidation and concentration of power.

The temptation to imitate Bukele with repressive populism that feeds on showy measures is present throughout Latin America. While the “privileged legitimate defense law” was being debated in Chile, Rodolfo Carter, mayor of the municipality of La Florida, in Santiago, demolished houses registered as belonging to drug traffickers, in front of the television cameras.

In Ecuador, President Guillermo Lasso, threatened by impeachment, announced in early April that he was authorizing the “possession and carrying of weapons for civilian use for personal defense” as an urgent measure against the “common enemies: delinquency, drug trafficking and organized crime.”

Delinquency, drug trafficking and criminal organizations are recurring terms when talking about insecurity, but a dangerous drift is often observed where ‘trigger-happy’ laws and measures give way to repression against social protests or empower political persecution under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Criminalizing the poor

Javier Macaya, president of the Unión Demócrata Independiente, a far-right Chilean party that vindicates the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), accused the United Nations of supporting “political violence” when its High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned of the dangers posed by the “law of privileged self-defense”.

The authoritarian scope of “trigger-happy” laws also includes the criminalization of immigrants and poor neighborhoods, classified as gang territories that shelter drug trafficking rings, although large drug traffickers and drug users from high-income sectors are rarely prosecuted in the cities of Latin America.

Political persecution is often disguised as security, as in Nicaragua in February when 222 dissidents were expelled and stripped of their nationality. The government of Daniel Ortega accused them of “treason”, described them as “terrorists” and “mercenaries” and justified the measure in the name of national peace.

Security has been instated as Latin America’s most pressing issue. The latest Amnesty International report documents arbitrary acts in Venezuela that include forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions. Haiti, mired in ungovernability, is another country where human rights are a victim of insecurity.

The complexities of the fight against crime involve strengthening the police and also growing vigilante justice on the part of citizens. In Brazil, the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) authorized the police to kill criminals and loosened restrictions on gun ownership for civilians. His successor, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, suspended the measures after taking office on Jan. 1.

Latin America has become a kind of arsenal, with more powerful weapons for the police, and also with the illegal trade that feeds organized crime. A third of the firearms seized in 2017 in El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama came from the United States.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele (C) tours the facilities of the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in January, when through a video he showed for the first time the interior of the new mega-prison, built to hold 40,000 gang members. Some 65,000 people accused of belonging to the gangs or maras have been arrested since the state of emergency was declared in March 2022. CREDIT: Presidency of El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Mar 13 2023 (IPS)

Despite serious allegations by the US justice system that two officials of the government of Nayib Bukele reached a secret agreement with the MS-13 gang to keep the homicide rate low, the Salvadoran president seems to have escaped unscathed for now, without political costs.

The MS-13 gang members reached the agreement, according to investigations, in exchange for benefits offered by the Bukele administration after the president took office in February 2019.

One of the benefits was apparently not to extradite to the United States leaders of the gangs who are in prison in El Salvador, according to the criminal indictment filed by the Attorney General’s Office of the Eastern District of New York.

The legal action was filed in September 2022, but it was made public on Feb. 23, and it targets 13 leaders of the fearsome MS-13 gang, who are held responsible for murders and other crimes committed in the United States, Mexico and El Salvador.“I do not believe the legal action in New York will damage Bukele’s reelection prospects.” -- Jorge Villacorta

“The accusation (in New York) merely confirms something we already knew,” analyst Jorge Villacorta told IPS.

Villacorta was referring to investigative journalistic reports by the newspaper El Faro, which since 2021 revealed the secret negotiations that the Bukele administration held with the gangs, which the president has consistently denied.

But it is one thing for a newspaper to report this and quite another for it to come from an accusation from the United States Attorney’s Office, in an investigation in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) participated.

“Because in this case we are talking about legal action” by the U.S. justice system, which could affect the two officials implicated, Mario Vega, an evangelical pastor who studies the phenomenon of gang violence in El Salvador, told IPS.

Since 2012, the United States has considered MS-13 a transnational criminal organization.

A grand jury has reportedly already heard the evidence presented by the prosecution and has endorsed a trial, at an unspecified date.

Three gang members and others who could be captured later could at some point in the trial testify against the two Bukele officials, “and we are going to find out about all the secrecy that has surrounded the negotiations,” Vega added.

The two officials are the director of the General Directorate of Penitentiaries, Osiris Luna, and the head of the Directorate for the Reconstruction of the Social Fabric, Carlos Marroquín.

Neither of them are mentioned by name in the legal action, but they are clearly identifiable by their government positions.

Nor is it mentioned that they reportedly reached an agreement with gang members under the auspices of the Salvadoran president, but that is obvious because given the president’s authoritarian style, no one moves a finger without his consent.

Bukele, a millennial neo-populist who governs with increasing authoritarianism, has been waging a frontal war against gangs since Mar. 27, 2022, which has led him to imprison more than 65,000 members, with the help of a state of emergency in place since then.

However, the war apparently broke out once the pact with the gangs broke down. In the course of the trial in New York it may be verified that the secret negotiations took place since 2019 and were suspended in March 2022.

So far, the crackdown on the gangs, known here as maras, has drawn the applause of the majority of the population in this Central American country of 6.7 million people, according to the opinion polls.

But the president has also come under fire for abuses by soldiers and police, who have arrested people with no ties to the maras.

Around 2,000 suspected gang members were transferred in late February to the mega-prison that the government built to hold a large part of the gang members arrested under the state of emergency, which has suspended some constitutional guarantees since March 2022 in El Salvador, allowing abuses and arbitrary arrests by soldiers and police. CREDIT: Presidency of El Salvador

Immune ahead of the elections

And what could spell a major blow to their credibility for any president and would perhaps shake the foundations of a government would not make a big dent in Bukele’s popularity, said analysts interviewed by IPS.

With regard to the news about the case in New York, “people see it as suppositions or simply do not believe it; I do not see it as generating significant political costs for Bukele,” added Villacorta, a former leftist member of Congress.

It will apparently not affect the president even as he is getting ready to seek reelection in the Feb. 4, 2024 elections. He has already announced that he will run again, but his candidacy has not yet been made official.

Although his campaign has not been launched, Bukele and his Nuevas Ideas party are already mobilizing their publicity machine, in the face of an opposition that is keeping its head down.

Most lawyers agree that the Salvadoran constitution prohibits immediate reelection.

In May 2021, a new Legislative Assembly, controlled by Nuevas Ideas, dismissed the five judges of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court without the proper procedures and appointed five of their allies, who endorsed the right to reelection.

“I do not believe the legal action in New York will damage Bukele’s reelection prospects,” said Villacorta, a critic of the president.

This is due to the high levels of popularity that the president has among the public and the widespread acceptance of the state of emergency, which suspends some constitutional guarantees and has made it possible to capture 65,000 gang members.

Some 2,000 imprisoned gang members were transferred at the end of February to the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison that the government built on the outskirts of the municipality of Tecoluca in central El Salvador to hold some 40,000 prisoners.

Villacorta added: “What is perceived in the country and abroad is that Bukele, like some kind of superhero, in a few months has squashed the gangs.”

However, despite abundant evidence of abuses and arbitrary arrests, ordinary Salvadorans are overlooking this because their main problem, gang violence, has been successfully reduced.

“People will tend to forgive his past deeds, due to the fact that now they (gang members) are all imprisoned. This narrative is the one that moves people, and these are the emotions that count when it comes to voting,” commented Pastor Vega, also an opponent of Bukele.

Of the 65,000 incarcerated gang members, 58,000 have had an initial hearing before a judge, Justice and Public Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro said on Mar. 8 in a television interview.

The case brought in New York does not affect Bukele; “on the contrary, it makes Salvadorans mad, because they say ‘do they want us to keep suffering (from the gangs)?’. They are not going to say, ‘Ok they’re right, (the government) has brainwashed us’,” criminologist Misael Rivas told IPS.

Negotiations today and always

But Bukele’s war against the “maras” is now more in doubt than ever, with the investigation and accusation initiated by the US justice system against the 13 leaders of the MS-13.

In the criminal indictment, the US Attorney’s Office states that since 2012 the gangs, including Barrio 18, the other major mara, engaged in secret negotiations with the government and political parties.

In that year, the country was governed by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), the guerrilla group that became a political party in 1992, after the end of the 12-year Salvadoran civil war.

The pact or “truce” fell apart in 2015.

Negotiations with the gangs continued in 2019 “in connection with the 2019 elections,” the document continues. That year, in February, Nayib Bukele won the presidency with a large majority of votes.

It adds that several leaders of the MS-13 secretly met “numerous times” with the two officials – Luna and Marroquín, although it does not mention their names, only their posts.

These meetings took place in the Zacatecoluca and Izalco prisons, in the center and west of the country, it adds, which had already been reported by El Faro.

Batman in trouble?

Even when the alleged pact with the Bukele administration fell apart in March 2022, in one of the voice recordings published two months later by the newspaper, Marroquín is heard saying that “Batman” (a pseudonym for the president) was fully aware of the situation.

The MS-13 also agreed to support Nuevas Ideas in the 2021 parliamentary elections, which that party won by a large majority

Of the 13 indicted MS-13 leaders, three were arrested on Feb. 22 in Mexico “by the authorities of that country and extradited to the United States,” the Attorney General’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said a day later, in an official statement.

Those captured are: Vladimir Antonio Arévalo Chávez (nicknamed “Vampiro de Monserrat Criminales”), Walter Yovani Hernández Rivera (“Baxter from Park View”) and Marlon Antonio Menjívar Portillo (“Red from Park View”).

Criminologist Rivas said the outcome of the trial, once it begins, is far from certain.

If prosecutors press for the details of the negotiations with the Bukele government, defense attorneys would have to work hard to undermine the gang members’ credibility when it came to implicating the two Salvadoran officials, he said.

“Thinking as a defense attorney, suppose they gave me the case, I would insist on why they are bringing the case up now, when there is a frontal attack against the gangs and the Salvadoran people are finally happy?” said Rivas, who is also a lawyer and who supports the state of emergency.

María del Carmen Aguirre, 52, stands outside her home and pizza business in El Zonte, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador. Her daughters send her remittances from the United States, but they use traditional systems and not the bitcoin electronic wallet, after this country became the first to make bitcoins legal tender on Sept. 7, 2021. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Sep 7 2022 (IPS)

A year after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele decided to make El Salvador the first country where bitcoin is legal tender, the experiment has so far failed, as few of the original plan’s objectives have been achieved.

This result was foreseeable since Sept. 7, 2021, when Bukele’s government decided, out of the blue and without any precedent, to make bitcoin legal tender through a law approved by the legislature, controlled by members of the ruling party, Nuevas Ideas.

The aims of that decision were never explained in detail in an official plan, but were basically set out by Bukele, in power since 2019, through his tweets, as well as by officials who merely repeated what the president, given to governing with an authoritarian style, in which he is the only authorized voice for almost everything, has said."In the end, the majority of the population is not using either the government e-wallet or bitcoins in general.” -- Tatiana Marroquín

“Unfortunately there is no formal document or official information from the government in which the specific objectives of the measure have been laid out,” economist Tatiana Marroquín told IPS.

But judging by the president’s announcements, and by communications between the government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which requested in January 2022 that the measure be annulled, several aims can be highlighted, such as boosting financial inclusion and tourism and improving the country’s “brand”, said Marroquín.

Disenchantment with the Chivo Wallet

The government claimed that bitcoin as legal tender would reduce the gap of unbanked people, which is around 70 percent of the population.

That segment would begin to carry out digital financial transactions with several clicks from their cell phones, according to the government.

However, because much of the information on bitcoin transactions has been classified by the authorities, it is unknown, for example, what percentage of the population is still actively using the Chivo Wallet, the digital wallet created by the government, and in what amounts.

Chivo is basically slang for “cool” in El Salvador.

It is known that at the beginning of the cryptocurrency’s implementation, around four million people downloaded the application, but basically they did so in order to collect a 30 dollar bonus granted by the government to promote the use of bitcoins.

But by this point it is clear that very few people are still using the application, judging by what you hear and see in the towns and cities of this Central American country of 6.7 million people.

“In the end, the majority of the population is not using either the government e-wallet or bitcoins in general,” Marroquin said.

Some businesses use them to receive payments, but there are very few transactions, analyst Ricardo Chavarría, director of Renta Asset Management, a company that manages investment funds in the international market, told IPS.

Nor has the government managed to convince Salvadorans living abroad to use the app to send family remittances to El Salvador, one of its main aims when it dove headfirst into bitcoins.

Each year, the country receives around seven billion dollars in remittances, representing 26 percent of GDP.

In August 2021, a month before the approval of the so-called Bitcoin Law, Bukele said in a tweet that Salvadorans pay around 400 million dollars in commissions to send money to their families in El Salvador.

That amount of money would be saved by sending it through the Chivo Wallet.

One of the Chivo ATMs scattered throughout El Salvador, in an attempt by the government to make it easier for the public to make transactions in bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that is legal tender in El Salvador, but which very few are using a year after its implementation. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Not even the diaspora trusts the cryptocurrency

However, according to official figures, only 1.5 percent of remittances were sent through e-wallets in the first quarter of 2022, a percentage far below what the government expected.

This was probably influenced by the high volatility of cryptoassets such as bitcoin, which is currently going through a crisis in its value, dubbed as a crypto winter.

Bitcoin’s price plunged to 19,813 dollars at the close on Sept. 5, well below last year’s peak, when it surpassed the 60,000 dollar mark.

And the Salvadoran population abroad, especially in the United States, where more than three million live, is reluctant to bet on something so volatile and, therefore, risky.

“People are extremely careful, despite the political capital of the president (Bukele), the same people over there (Salvadorans in the United States) do not risk their money,” said Chavarría.

That is the case of María del Carmen Aguirre, a 52-year-old entrepreneur who runs a small pizza business in El Zonte, a coastal community on El Salvador’s Pacific coast, some 50 kilometers southeast of San Salvador, part of the municipality of Chiltiupán, in the central department of La Libertad.

Aguirre told IPS that she regularly receives remittances from her two daughters who live in the United States, in San Francisco, California, but neither of them send the money through Chivo Wallet or any other similar platform.

“They send it only through the bank. It seems that they are quite afraid. ‘What happens if we send 200 dollars and at that moment the price of bitcoin goes down?’ they say to me,” said Aguirre, in her pizzeria.

El Zonte is a beach area known for its surfing and because an unusual community effort to use the cryptocurrency was launched there, about two years before the government decided to try bitcoins.

This initiative was promoted thanks to a donor, who remains anonymous, who gave money to carry out works in the town, but on the condition that those who worked on them would be paid in bitcoins and not in dollars, the legal tender in El Salvador since 2001.

That still raises suspicions: why would anyone be interested in promoting the crypto-asset in a poor coastal town, with dirt roads and modest shacks, although there are also some luxury hotels, hostels and restaurants.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, families in El Zonte received, on several occasions, 30-dollar vouchers from the mystery donor to use for bitcoin transactions.

“They gave us the bonus three or four times so we could go to the stores that already handled bitcoin,” Aguirre said.

Chavarría said the cryptocurrency is probably at the end of the so-called crypto winter, and he expects it to rise again in the future.

“For me, in a medium to long term horizon it is going to recover and it is going to win out,” he argued.

A street corner in the town of El Zonte, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador, which became the place where a project to promote the use of bitcoins in the country started, before the government of Nayib Bukele gave the cryptocurrency legal status in September 2021. Most businesses in this town accept them as a form of payment, but in the rest of the country the use of bitcoins is marginal. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Not just gangs

One thing that Marroquín the economist and financial analyst Chavarría agreed on is that, with the passage of the Bitcoin Law, El Salvador made the global headlines about something other than the recurring issue of gang violence, which used to be the only issue of interest to the international press.

In this sense, it could be argued that the country’s image improved somewhat on the world news agenda.

“The fact that El Salvador is on the news map and that it appears in Bloomberg, in The New York Times, in Spain’s El País, when the only topic before was the gangs, is good news for me as a Salvadoran,” said Chavarría.

Marroquín concurred that “El Salvador is undoubtedly no longer known as it used to be solely for violence.”

She added that the adoption of the bitcoin has also bolstered tourism in the country by attracting a segment of visitors interested in the cryptocurrency, although it remains to be seen whether this improvement will have an impact on poor communities near tourist spots.

The bitcoin symbol can be seen everywhere in El Zonte, a coastal community in southern El Salvador, such as on this 1970s Volkswagen van or ‘furgoneta’, called the Bitcoineta. The implementation of the cryptocurrency in this country has not gone well and so far has been a setback for President Nayib Bukele, although the outlook could change if the price of the cryptoasset rallies. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

A cloak of secrecy

The government has been harshly criticized for the secrecy with which it has handled not only the adoption of the bitcoin but also other important issues about which the public has demanded information, since they have involved the use of public funds for which the Bukele administration has not been held accountable.

When it has been made available, Information has arrived in dribs and drabs.

It is known that the government has purchased 2,381 bitcoins, on which it has spent 106.04 million dollars. But when related investments are factored in, such as the ATMs placed at various points around the country, the total investment exceeds 300 million dollars.

“There is a big black cloak surrounding the government’s use of public funds,” Marroquín said.

A group of alleged gang members is presented to the media by police authorities in El Salvador on Jul. 20 as a demonstration of the effectiveness of the war against gangs waged in this Central American country under a state of emergency. But families of detainees and human rights organizations warn that in many cases they have no links to criminal organizations. CREDIT: National Civil Police

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 5 2022 (IPS)

The body of Walter Sandoval shows a number of dark bruises on his arms and knees, as well as lacerations on his left eye and on his head – signs that he suffered some kind of violence before dying in a Salvadoran prison, accused of being a gang member.

The evidence of the beating is clear in photographs that Walter’s father, Saúl Sandoval, showed to IPS.

Walter, 32, was one of those who died in Salvadoran prisons after being detained by the authorities in the massive raids that the government of Nayib Bukele launched at the end of March, under the protection of the decreed state of emergency and the administration’s fight against organized crime and gangs.

The young man, a farmer, died on Apr. 3, in the parking lot of the hospital in Sonsonate, a city in the west of the country where he was transferred, already dying according to the family, from the police station in Ahuachapán, a city in the department of the same name in western El Salvador.

He had been transferred to the police station after his Mar. 30 arrest in the Jardines neighborhood of the municipality of El Refugio, also in the department of Ahuachapán.

“They tortured him in the dungeons of the Ahuachapán police station,” his father told IPS.

He added that his son had been hanging out with friends, getting drunk. A few minutes later, a police patrol picked him up on charges of being a gang member, which the family vehemently told IPS was not true.

“He never received medical assistance, he died in the hospital parking lot,” the father added."They tortured him in the dungeons of the Ahuachapán police station. He didn't receive medical assistance, he died in the hospital parking lot." -- Saúl Sandoval

He says the only explanation he has for why the police detained Walter is because “they wanted to get the day’s quota.” What he meant is that police officers are apparently supposed to arrest a specific number of gang members in exchange for benefits in their assigned workload.

Deaths like Walter’s, if the participation of police is confirmed, are the most violent and arbitrary expression of the human rights violations committed since the government began its plan of massive raids, in what it describes as an all-out war on gangs.

Since late March, the Salvadoran government has maintained a state of emergency that suspended several constitutional guarantees, in response to a sharp rise in homicides committed by gang members between Mar. 25 and 27.

In those three days, at least 87 people were killed by gang members, in a kind of revenge against the government for allegedly breaking an obscure under-the-table agreement with the gangs to keep homicide rates low.

The state of emergency has been in place since Mar. 27, extended each month by the legislature, which is largely dominated by the ruling New Ideas party. Since then, violent deaths have dropped to an average of three a day.

Among the constitutional rights suspended are the rights of association and assembly, although the government said it only applies to criminal groups that are meeting to organize crimes. It also restricts the right to defense and extends the period in which a person may be detained and brought before the courts, which is currently three days.

The government can also wiretap the communications of “terrorist groups”, meaning gangs, although it could already do so under ordinary laws.

After the state of emergency was declared, homicides dropped again to around two or three a day, and there are even days when none are reported.

But some 48,000 people have been arrested and remanded in custody, accused by the authorities of belonging to criminal gangs. And the number is growing day by day.

However, the families of detainees and human rights organizations complain that among those captured are people who had no links to the gangs, known as “maras” in El Salvador, which make up an army of a combined total of around 70,000 members.

On Jun. 2, rights watchdog Amnesty International stated in an official communiqué that “Under the current state of emergency, the Salvadoran authorities have committed massive human rights violations, including thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process, as well as torture and ill-treatment, and at least 18 people have died in state custody.”

But President Bukele, far from being receptive to criticism, dismisses and stigmatizes the work of human rights groups, referring to their representatives as “criminals” and “freeloaders” who are more interested in defending the rights of gang members than those of their victims.

Walter Sandoval is one of the young men who have died with signs of torture in El Salvador’s prisons under the state of emergency in force in the country since the end of March. The police captured him without any evidence linking him to gangs, said the young man’s family – part of a pattern that has been documented by human rights organizations. CREDIT: Courtesy of the Sandoval family

Silent deaths and torture

The local human rights organization Cristosal has documented nearly 2,500 cases of arrests which, according to the families, have been arbitrary, with no basis for their loved ones to have been detained under the state of emergency.

The organization has also monitored press reports and social networks and has carried out its own research to establish that, as of Jul. 28, some 65 people had died while detained in the country’s prisons or in police cells as part of the massive police raids.

Some of the deceased showed obvious signs of beatings and physical violence, as was the case with Walter and other cases that have been widely reported in the media.

The official reports of these deaths received by family members are vague and confusing, such as that of Julio César Mendoza Ramírez, 25, who died in a hospital in San Salvador, the country’s capital, on Jul. 15.

The official report stated that he had died of pulmonary edema, i.e., his lungs filled with fluid, but also stated that the case was “being studied.”

Suspicions that the deceased were victims of beatings and torture during their imprisonment are not ruled out by their relatives or by human rights organizations.

“The cause of death given to the relatives in the hospital sometimes differs from the legal medical examination, and that leads one to think that something is going on,” lawyer Zaira Navas, of Cristosal, told IPS.

She added: “There are also families who say they were told it was cardiac arrest, but the victims have bruises on their bodies, which is not compatible (with the official version).”

And in the face of doubts and accusations that beatings and torture are taking place under the watchful eye of the State, the authorities simply remain silent and do not carry out autopsies, for example, which would reveal what really happened.

Navas remarked that, even within the state of emergency, “the detentions are arbitrary” because the procedure followed is not legally justified and many people are detained simply because of telephone complaints from neighbors – with which other human rights defenders coincide.

Another problem is that among these 2,500 complaints by families, about 30 percent involve detainees who have chronic diseases or disabilities or were receiving medical or surgical treatment, according to Cristosal’s reports.

The prison staff do not allow family members of the sick detainees to bring their medication, although in a few rare cases they have authorized it.

“We have seen deaths because it is presumed that they have been tortured, beaten, etc., but there have also been deaths of people who have not been given the medication they need to take,” Henri Fino, executive director of the Foundation for Studies on the Application of Law (FESPAD), told IPS.

Regarding the dubious role played by the government’s Institute of Legal Medicine (IML), in charge of conducting the forensic examinations to inform families about the cause of deaths, Fino said that in his opinion it has no credibility.

Especially, he added, now that members of the so-called Military Health Battalion have been stationed since Jul. 4 at several IML offices, presumably to assist in various tasks, including forensic exams, given the shortage of staff.

“What collaboration can they (the military) provide, if they are not experts, and the only reason they are in the IML is to exercise oversight?” Fino said.

Media war

Some of the people who have died in jails or prisons, who were arrested under the state of emergency, were described by the local media as victims of arbitrary, illegal detentions, in contrast with Bukele’s propaganda war claiming that all the detainees are, in fact, gang members.

The press has highlighted the case of Elvin Josué Sánchez, 21, who died on Apr. 18 at the Izalco Prison located near the town of the same name in the department of Sonsonate in western El Salvador.

The media have referred to him as the “young musician”, because he had been learning to play the saxophone, and they have described him as a decent person who was a member of an evangelical church in the area.

But according to neighbors, Sánchez was well-known as an active gang member in his native El Carrizal, in the municipality of Santa Maria Ostuma, in the central department of La Paz.

“They saw him well-armed on farms in the area, along with other gang members, and he told the owners not to show up there anymore, or they would kill them,” a resident of that municipality, who asked not to be identified, told IPS.

Contradictions like this have strengthened local support for Bukele’s insinuations that the independent media are in favor of gang members and against the government’s actions to eradicate violence in the country.

In fact, opinion polls show that a majority of the population of 6.7 million support the president’s measures to crack down on the maras.

But even though Sánchez was recognized by neighbors as a gang member, his arrest should have been carried out following proper procedures and protocols, based on reliable information proving his affiliation to a criminal organization.

This is something the police do not usually do in these massive raids where it is impossible for them to have the evidence needed on each of the nearly 48,000 detainees.

Nor did the fact that he had been a gang member merit him being beaten to death, since his human rights should have been respected, said those interviewed by IPS.

"Resistance and Popular Rebellion" reads a banner held by demonstrators in San Salvador in a Wednesday, Sept. 15 protest against measures they consider authoritarian adopted by the government of President Nayib Bukele. The latest was the replacement of the constitutional court judges by the ruling party, which paves the way for Bukele to seek immediate reelection, banned up to now in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Sep 17 2021 (IPS)

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has been widely criticised for his authoritarian tendencies, but has said that the changes he plans will be long-term – which to his critics means a further undercutting of the weak democratic institutions that he has already begun to dismantle.

The president gave the commemoration of the bicentennial of Central America’s independence on Wednesday, Sept. 15, a symbolic touch and pledged that his government would not reverse the changes put into motion.

“This country has suffered so much that it cannot be transformed overnight; important changes, real and worthwhile changes, take time, they are not immediate, they are made step by step”, said Bukele, in a nationwide address broadcast on radio and television on Wednesday night.

The opposition, however, sees the changes as an attack on democracy in this Central American nation of 6.7 million people.

Bukele for president in 2024?

Perhaps the most abrupt change pushed through by the Bukele administration since it took office in June 2019 was the removal of the five judges in the Supreme Court’s constitutional chamber.

They were removed on May 1 when the new legislature, controlled by the lawmakers of Nuevas Ideas, Bukele’s party – who now hold 56 of the 84 seats – was installed.

The governing party’s majority allowed the president to appoint like-minded judges to the constitutional chamber, whose first move was to strike down the legal obstacle to consecutive presidential reelection."Apparently we are in democracy, but the president's actions run counter to democracy, he is dismantling the state's institutionality, and is thus attacking the rights of the entire population." -- Loyda Robles

That opened the door for the president to run again at the end of his current five-year term, in 2024, which was prohibited by the constitution until just two weeks ago.

Bukele, a 40-year-old of Palestinian descent from a wealthy business family, first emerged in politics as a popular mayor of San Salvador from 2015 to 2018. He is described by observers as a millennial populist who uses social media to communicate with the public, often announcing his decisions via Twitter.

The constitutional chamber ruled that the country’s president can serve two consecutive terms in office, whereas according to a 2014 ruling by the same court a president could only run for office again after two terms served by other leaders, based on an interpretation of article 152 of the constitution.

But the new constitutional court judges named by the legislature on May 1 reinterpreted this controversial and confusing article of the constitution and ruled on Sept. 3 that presidents can stand for a consecutive term if they step down six months before the election.

The legal ruling, which drew fire from the opposition and global rights watchdogs, thus makes it possible for Bukele to seek a second term in 2024.

President Nayib Bukele gave a carefully staged speech to the country on the night of Sept. 15, addressing public authorities, as well as civilian and military representatives. CREDIT: Presidency of El Salvador

Manual for Latin American authoritarianism

The Salvadoran president is apparently following, virtually letter by letter, the manual used by other Latin American populist presidents with an authoritarian bent, whether on the right or the left, who, by means of rulings handed down by judges under their control, have overturned laws and perpetuated themselves in power.

“If the people grant power, and the people demand these changes, it would be no less than a betrayal not to make them,” the president said in his speech before civilian and military leaders.

The president now controls the three branches of government, with no checks against his style of government where everything revolves around him, a millennial who usually wears a backwards baseball cap and is intolerant of criticism, whether from the media, international organisations, the U.S. government or other countries.

On the morning of Wednesday Sept. 15, thousands of people marched through the streets of the Salvadoran capital to protest the president’s increasing authoritarianism, in the most massive demonstration against Bukele since he came to power.

“I’m marching to defend our rights and to protest against President Bukele’s abuses,” a trans woman who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS.

Bukele won a landslide victory in February 2019 as an anti-establishment candidate riding the wave of voter frustration and disappointment with the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), in power from 1989 to 2009, and the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which governed from 2009 to 2019.

Holding a sign reading “This government turned out to be more fake than my eyelashes,” a young trans woman participates in the march called by social organisations on Sept. 15 to protest against President Nayib Bukele and his style of government that, since June 2019, has been dismantling democratic institutions in this Central American nation. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

His party then swept the legislative elections in May 2021 and now, having replaced the members of the constitutional court, Bukele pulls the strings of an important segment of the country’s justice system.

He also controls the Attorney General’s Office, after the governing party’s legislative majority removed then Attorney General Raúl Melara on May 1, replacing him with the pro-Bukele Rodolfo Delgado.

“Apparently we are in democracy, but the president’s actions run counter to democracy, he is dismantling the state’s institutionality, and is thus attacking the rights of the entire population,” lawyer Loyda Robles, of the Foundation for Studies for the Application of Law (FESPAD), told IPS.

She added that there were warning signs that El Salvador could be heading towards an even more authoritarian, dictatorial, Nicaragua-style regime.

The president of that country, Daniel Ortega, has already served three consecutive terms since his return to power in 2007, and is heading for a fourth term in 2022. To this end, the judiciary, under his control, has imprisoned almost a dozen opposition candidates who could challenge him at the polls.

Slippery slope of anti-democratic measures

Emboldened by his overwhelming triumph in the 2019 presidential elections, Bukele has taken a series of steps that have angered opposition sectors, because they believe that he intends to undermine all checks and balances and govern at will.

In addition to the removal of the constitutional court judges and the attorney general, the legislature passed a decree on Aug. 31 that forced some 200 judges to retire.

The government claims it is purging corrupt judges, who do exist. However, the process has not been based on investigations but on an across-the-board decision to make retirement mandatory for all judges over the age of 60 or who have worked for 30 years.

Some analysts have interpreted the move as a purge within the judicial system in order to later fill the vacuum with judges aligned with Bukelismo.

The government denies this charge and says the aim is to make way for young lawyers, arguing that judges in El Salvador do not hold lifetime positions.

But all of these moves have set off alarm bells both inside and outside El Salvador.

Demonstrators in Francisco Morazán square, in the historic center of San Salvador, who came out to protest on Sept. 15 against the increasingly authoritarian moves by Nayib Bukele’s government, in the most massive demonstration against the president since he came to power, called by social organisations on the country’s Independence Day. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

However, analyst Dagoberto Gutiérrez told IPS that the struggle between Bukele and his opponents is rooted in a silent struggle between two economic groups: the traditional oligarchy that has pulled the strings of the country’s politics, and new small, medium and even large businesspeople aligned with the president.

Gutiérrez, a former guerrilla commander now close to the president, said the opposition is demanding independence of powers that has actually never existed in the country, since the oligarchy always put in place officials who would maintain the status quo.

That “democracy” touted by the oligarchy, with its fallacies and abuses, is being taken up by another political project, that of Bukele, who stressed that the extent of the transformations he has planned “is yet to be seen.”

For the time being, according to the constitutional court’s recent ruling, Bukele can, if he wishes, seek reelection at the end of his current term. But he would not be able to run for a third consecutive term.

However, lawyer Tahnya Pastor remarked to IPS: “Who can assure us that in the future, by means of another legal precedent, they won’t pull another reelection out of their sleeve? This doubt remains, obviously.”

She added that when all the warning signs are analysed, “we can conclude that we are heading towards the ultimate concentration of power, and history has shown that no concentration of power is good.”

But like Gutiérrez, Pastor criticised the opposition because in the past they have also manipulated, for their own political interests, the same institutions over which they are now crying foul.

“The constitution has indeed been reformed in the past depending on the makeup of the constitutional court, and the jurisprudence has responded to partisan political interests,” she said.

Bukele seems to be confident that, despite the criticism, his policies and vision are welcomed by the majority of Salvadorans, who continue to support him.

According to a survey by the José Simeón Caña Central American University carried out in June, during Bukele’s second year in office, nine out of 10 respondents said the president represented a positive change for the country.

He obtained an overall high score of 8.1, and those surveyed identified the government’s good management of the Covid-19 pandemic as its main achievement.

Not everyone shares this enthusiasm for Bukele, obviously, nor does all the criticism come from academic, political or activist circles.

“It’s not good for someone to govern as he pleases, that’s how things were done when there were kings, but we are no longer in those times,” Hernán Campos, a farmer from the Cangrejera canton in the municipality and department of La Libertad, in the central part of the country, told IPS.

María Santos Hernández, 66, poses outside her home in the village of Huisisilapa, municipality of San Pablo Tacachico, in central El Salvador, on Aug. 17, a day before leaving for the United States, in her case with a visa and by plane, to reunite with three sons who live in the town of Stephenson, in the state of Virginia. A fourth son is on his way through Mexico to try to enter the country as an undocumented immigrant and join his family. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN PABLO TACACHICO, El Salvador , Aug 23 2021 (IPS)

The Joe Biden administration’s call for undocumented Central American migrants not to go to the United States, as requested by Vice President Kamala Harris during a June visit to Guatemala, appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

In towns in countries such as El Salvador, people continue to set out every day on their way to the U.S. in search of a better future. But there are no hard numbers to indicate whether the flow is larger or smaller than in previous years.

It remains to be seen whether the number of undocumented Salvadoran migrants has significantly decreased as a result of the public policies implemented since June 2019 by the government of Nayib Bukele, as his administration claims, said experts interviewed by IPS.

What is clear is that people continue to undertake the journey that could offer them an opportunity for a better future, given the poverty and social exclusion they face in this country of 6.7 million inhabitants, as well as in the rest of Central America, especially Guatemala and Honduras.

Oscar left on Aug. 14 for Stephenson, a small town in Virginia, a state on the east coast of the United States, from his native Huisisilapa, a village in San Pablo Tacachico municipality in the central Salvadoran department of La Libertad.

“I don’t know where in Mexico I am right now, I’m going with the guide,” Oscar told IPS in a WhatsApp conversation on Tuesday, Aug. 17, asking to be identified only by his first name.

A photo of Oscar and his son Andrés, when they lived together in Huisisilapa, a village in central El Salvador. Five years ago the boy left with his mother for the small town of Stephenson, Virginia, and now Oscar is making his way across Mexico as an undocumented migrant, with the aim of living in the U.S. with his son, who is now eight years old. CREDIT: Courtesy of the family

The 27-year-old peasant farmer who used to mainly grow corn undertook the journey with the aim of being reunited with his son Andres, who is now eight and has been living in that town since his undocumented mother took him with her to the United States five years ago.

“It’s dangerous, but my desire to be with him outweighs my fears of the trip,” Oscar added.

Irregular migration of Salvadorans to the United States skyrocketed in the 1980s with the outbreak of the civil war, which left some 70,000 people dead between 1980 and 1992.

An estimated three million Salvadorans live in the U.S., many of them undocumented, contributing enormously to the economy of this Central American nation, sending home some six billion dollars in remittances.

The decades that followed the 1992 peace agreement saw a rise in crime, especially gang activity, which spurred another surge in migration to the United States.

El Salvador became one of the most violent countries in the world, with rates sometimes exceeding 100 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

A picture of the main street in the village of Huisisilapa, San Pablo Tacachico municipality in the central El Salvador department of La Paz. Many undocumented migrants set out from farming towns like this one, where there are few possibilities of finding work, heading to the United States in search of the “American dream”. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Has “Bukelismo” reduced undocumented migration?

Bukele became president in June 2019 at the age of 39, after a landslide victory in the February elections when he wrested power from the former Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas, who were in power since 2009.

Just two years into his term, Bukele, described as a millennial populist who governs through tweets, has achieved a significant decrease in crime rates.

Since he took office, the homicide rate has plunged from 50 per 100,000 population to 19 per 100,000 – a drop that the president attributes to his Territorial Control Plan to crack down on crime.

According to the government, the programme has also reduced the numbers of Salvadorans heading to the United States.

“Don’t ask me if the territorial control plan is really a success, or if the government’s plan to generate jobs has worked, because most likely neither has been that good,” analyst Oscar Chacón, of Alianza América, told IPS in a telephone interview from Chicago, Illinois.

He added, however: “But a good percentage of people want to believe that there is hope that things are going to get better in El Salvador; that is what I call the hope factor.”

Bukele achieved his overwhelming victory by arguing that the parties that preceded him, the leftist FMLN and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which governed from 1989 to 2009, plunged the country into crisis during three decades of corruption and failed policies.

Lito Miranda, a relative of María Santos, husks ears of tender corn in the Salvadoran village of Huisisilapa to prepare the tamales that the mother of three young Salvadorans living in the United States insists on bringing them to enjoy at their family reunion. Some three million Salvadorans live in the United States, many of them undocumented. The flow of migrants from the country continues, despite the administration of Joe Biden’s plea urging them not to come. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

But more and more information is coming out that some of his officials may be involved in embezzlement, and the president’s style of governing, always at loggerheads with the opposition and social movements, has not created a climate of stability.

In any case, the hope factor should make Salvadoran families less likely to leave the country than families from Guatemala and Honduras, Chacón said.

In April, El Salvador’s ambassador in Washington, Milena Mayorga, said in a tweet that, thanks to the government’s policies, there has been an “unprecedented” reduction in migratory flows to the United States, since only 5.11 percent of the total number of migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border are Salvadorans.

However, the diplomat did not offer more data, nor did she mention the source of her information.

In March, Mayorga reported in another tweet that, in the case of unaccompanied minors, the number of Salvadorans reaching the southern border was lower than the numbers of Guatemalans, Hondurans and Mexicans so far in fiscal year 2021 (which began in October 2020).

But other data indicates that the influx may actually be growing.

Local media reports, citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures, have indicated that 12,643 Salvadorans were apprehended at the southern border in July. That represented a 9.2 percent increase over the 11,575 apprehensions reported in June.

Pieces of chicken that formed part of the filling of the tamales cooked in the home of María Santos Hernández, on Aug. 17, in the village of Huisisilapa in the central Salvadoran municipality of San Pablo Tacachico. She flew out the next day to join her sons in the small town of Stephenson, Virginia, carrying with her 60 tamales: 30 filled with chicken and 30 stuffed with corn, to remind them of the land they left behind in search of a better future in the United States. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“It seems so simplistic to me to say that the government is doing things right and that’s why fewer people are supposedly leaving,” migration expert Karla Castillo told IPS.

Irregular migration is a complex phenomenon with many different facet, she said, and has to do with structural causes that cannot be solved in one or two years.

Chacón said that overall, U.S. authorities have reported 1.24 million people apprehended at the southern border from October to date, but he stressed that the figure was not entirely reliable.

That is because the number counts “events” rather than people, since the same person may be arrested and deported several times.

“Unfortunately, I couldn’t say that there is an accurate measurement method, because we only have partial measurement units,” Chacón said, adding that “we have no way of counting the people who make it in undetected. It’s as simple as that, we just don’t know.”

Some of the 60 tamales made in the home of María Santos Hernández, which she successfully brought with her to the United States, where she traveled by plane with a visa on Aug. 18 to visit three of her sons who live in a small town in the eastern state of Virginia. A fourth son, Oscar, is currently making his way up through Mexico as an undocumented migrant, to try to join his mother and brothers. CREDIT: Courtesy of the family

Taking tamales to Virginia

Oscar is hopeful that he will make it. While he was crossing Mexico, his mother, Maria Santos Hernández, was packing her bags at her home in Huisisilapa to also travel to Stephenson, Virginia, on Wednesday, Aug. 18.

But she travelled by plane with a temporary visa, planning to return home after spending some time there. Her son Walter, who emigrated 13 years ago and “already has papers,” arranged her visa a few years ago.

Maria Santos also has two other sons living in Stephenson, but without documents: Moises and Jonathan.

“We are praying that Oscar will make it through so we can all be reunited there,” the 66-year-old told IPS, adding, “I have a mixture of feelings: the joy of seeing my three sons who live there, and concern for Oscar, who is making his way through Mexico right now.”

Maria, her husband Felipe, and their children lived in Huisisilapa after they were relocated to their land there at the end of the war. And they were able to build their home thanks to the remittances sent back by their sons.

In her suitcase she was carrying 60 tamales that she made on Tuesday the 17th, to celebrate the family reunion in Stephenson with Walter, Moises and Jonathan, and later with Oscar, who is still en route.

“They love tamales, that’s why I’m bringing them,” María told IPS, who was with her on her last day at her home, as she stirred with a large wooden paddle the liquid that bubbled inside a huge pot on the stove.

Tamales are a kind of corn cake with savory or sweet fillings, which are wrapped in banana leaves or corn husks. María was making two different kinds of fillings: chicken and fresh corn.

And as IPS learned, the tamales made it through customs and her family in the United States is enjoying them – though they have saved some for Oscar, who everyone is waiting for.