El Salvador Perspectives

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...

Recent articles in English about El Salvador that are worth perusing: The spring of Nayib Bukele’s relationship with Donald Trump  -- El Pais .   A look at the cozy relationship between Bukele and the Trump administration as illustrated by Marco Rubio's recent visit to El Salvador. “Bukelismo,” A Deceptive, Illiberal Model of Peace Spreading from El Salvador to the United States -- ReVista .  Could Musk and Bukele really team up to administer this form of illiberal governance—known colloquially as “the Bukele Model” or “Bukelismo”—in the United States itself? How El Salvador became a model for the global far right  -- Financial Times .   In depth article looks at Bukele's time in office.  Do other nations want to embrace his methods of security which have made him a highly popular leader, or are they enabling the country's slide towards autocracy? Behind El Salvador's prison system that may handle U.S. deported migrants  -- CBS News ....

On January 29, 2025, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly passed a resolution extending for the 35th time the State of Exception under which the country's residents have lived since March 27, 2022.  There was no debate.   There was no evidence presented of the emergency circumstances required by the Salvadoran constitution to justify the suspension of rights to due process in the criminal justice system and warrantless interception of communications.   Where would such evidence come from today in the country that Nayib Bukele proclaims the safest in the western hemisphere?    In the almost three years of the State of Exception, the government says it has arrested more than 85,000 persons and put them in the country's prison system, imprisoning 1.8% of the country's population. As of the fall 2024,  12,900 of the country's prison population are women. The online periodical Focos notes that the high level of incarceration does not bother Bukele: Fo...

Source: FlightAware.com After Nayib Bukele offered to receive not just citizens of El Salvador, but persons from other nations expelled from the US by the Donald Trump deportation machine, Salvadorans have wondered what this offer, coupled with Trump's promise of "massive" removals, portends for their country.    A government spokesperson told reporters yesterday that so far El Salvador has yet to see a large increase in deportation flights, and that levels of returnees since Trump took office have been typical of recent time periods. Today another deportation flight arrived at El Salvador's international airport shortly after 10 in the morning.   The flight had left a US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) air removal  staging facility in Alexandria, Louisiana  a few hours earlier. Friday's arriving flight from Louisiana, like those from a similar facility in Harlingen, Texas, was not an anomaly.  There were eight deportation flights to ...

Donald Trump's advisor Stephen Miller said a short time ago that president Nayib Bukele was offering the US "tremendous levels of cooperation" on immigration, and now we know what he meant.  During the visit of Secretary of State Marco Rubio to El Salvador this week, Bukele offered to sign an agreement 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 : 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, Pres...

Measures the Legislative Assembly passed for Nayib Bukele On January 29, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly gave the second vote to adopt  a constitutional amendment to allow the Constitution to be amended in the future by a single supermajority vote by the legislature.  Up until now, amendments had to be approved by two successive legislatures with a national election in between. That requirement gave the public the chance to vote out of office legislators who supported an amendment before they had a chance to give it final approval in the next term.  Since Bukele's Nuevas Ideas party today possesses such a supermajority in the congress, he can now amend the Constitution anytime he wants by submitting it to a single vote in his rubber stamp legislature. For example, those pesky provisions that limit how long a president can serve in office, can be eliminated with a quick vote and no debate. The constitutional amendment passed with no prior announcement that it would be o...