El Salvador Perspectives

The former bishop of the Salvadoran Lutheran Church, Medardo Ernesto Gomez Soto died on Thursday, March 27 at the age of 79. He was the first bishop of the Lutheran church in El Salvador, after being consecrated in 1986 during the midst of El Salvador's civil war, and served as bishop until two months ago. Bishop Gomez died after a prolonged period of illness. I had the privilege to know Bishop Gomez for almost 24 years. He was a steadfast voice for social justice in El Salvador. His church serves the poorest communities in the country, and his work was rooted in Latin American liberation theology which he expanded and adapted as a "theology of life." During the civil war, he was abducted and tortured by death squads, and on the same day the Jesuits were massacred in 1989, Bishop Gomez narrowly escaped when troops arrived at his church with orders to capture him. For his work during this time, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The following quotes give a small t...

  March 27 is the three year anniversary of the State of Exception in El Salvador. This suspension of constitutional due process protections as part of a war on gangs was adopted by the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly in the midst of a bloody weekend in March 2022 in which gangs murdered at least 87 people around the country. Under the State of Exception, security forces of the police and military can arrest anyone without a warrant or observing them commit a crime, can hold them for 15 days before appearing before a judge and without telling them the charges, and can freely intercept communications without a judicial order. Those detained receive initial hearings, before judges with their identities masked, in groups that often number in the hundreds where the charges are simply gang affiliation. Judges routinely order defendants into El Salvador's hellishly overcrowded prisons without bail, to await for their next preliminary hearing which could come in six months.  Even f...

There are many developments regarding the US removal of 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador where they were imprisoned in Nayib Bukele's CECOT mega-prison.  Here is a summary with links to news articles: The US government admits that many of them had no criminal records. ( ABC ) A US photo journalist was at the airport and later at the prison to see the arrival of the Venezuelan prisoners and published photos of how they were handled. ( Time ) CBS News obtained a leaked copy of a list of the names of all the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador and imprisoned there.  ( CBS ) Venezuelan families shared the stories of their loved ones who had actually fled from Venezuela and Tre de Aragua, rebutting any suggestion they were part of a criminal gang. ( Beyond the Border ) ( NPR ) ( BBC ). At least two of them were refugees who arrived in the US after extensive vetting by the government and refugee organizations. ( Miami Herald ) Eight women on the flight were not allowed to disembark an...

In 2019, when he was campaigning for the presidency, Nayib Bukele unveiled plans for a modern international airport in the department of La Union at the eastern edges of El Salvador.  He called it the "Airport of the Pacific," and claimed it would become an international airline bub.  Three years later, in 2022, the government said that Nayib Bukele  would lay the first stone  for the new airport that year.  Nothing happened that year. After three more years have passed, there has finally been a ceremony to lay the first stone.  On February 26, the government broadcast Bukele's speech as he celebrated the beginning of construction of the airport and extolled the benefits it would bring: pic.twitter.com/BlzsMcMGfq — Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 26, 2025 According to Bukele, the airport's first phase is going to have a 2.4 kilometers long runway with two boarding gates and a futuristic looking terminal.  Investment in the first phase of t...

The weekend of March 15-16 saw the first implementation of Nayib Bukele's offer to the United States to act as the offshore jailers of persons Donald Trump wants to expel from the country. During the visit of Secretary of State Marco Rubio to El Salvador in February, Bukele offered to not only to take back Salvadorans from the US, but also to accept deportees from other nations, and even to imprison US citizen criminals for a fee. From the State Department press statement  at the time: Multiple agreements were struck to fight the waves of illegal mass migration currently destabilizing the entire region. President Bukele agreed to take back all Salvadoran MS-13 gang members who are in the United States unlawfully. He also promised to accept and incarcerate violent illegal immigrants, including members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, but also criminal illegal migrants from any country. And in an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offe...

On the morning of February 25, Fidel Zavala  was outside of the office of El Salvador's human rights public advocate (PDDH) to denounce the arbitrary arrests four days earlier of two community activists  from Hacienda La Floresta.  Zavala is spokesperson for a group calling itself the Unit of Defense of Human and Community Rights (UNIDEHC for its initials in Spanish).  UNIDEHC is leading a fight against the expulsion of approximately 250 families from their dwellings at La Floresta.   Later that same afternoon, Zavala found himself arrested at the offices of UNIDEHC.  And around the same time, twenty other La Floresta community members were also detained.   Many observers are calling their arrests potential reprisals and intimidation by the government for their actions in defense of human rights.     Zavala worked as a young businessman before being arrested the first time in February 2022 and accused of financial crimes. ...

A select group of people is getting very rich in today's El Salvador ruled by Nayib Bukele.  Using tourism development funds and tax policy measures, the Bukele government is allowing an assortment of real estate developers, crypto-investors, and the Bukele family to acquire significant real estate holdings and wealth.   Such policy measures were on display again on February 20 when El Salvador's Legislative Assembly convened without proposals on its agenda.  Then the Nuevas Ideas-controlled body voted to suspend the rules to vote on a new development loan .  Without prior sharing of the underlying documentation, the Assembly voted to approve borrowing $114 million dollars for highway and infrastructure projects for Surf City 1.  "Surf City" is the branding for tourism development along El Salvador's Pacific coast, with phase 1 rolled out from Puerto La Libertad to El Zonte, also known as "Bitcoin Beach." The area which will be benefitted by this new loa...