El Salvador Perspectives

Nayib Bukele spent the second half of September on foreign travel.  He sought to portray himself as having something important to say to the rest of world.      For Bukele, these travels were all about showing to the Salvadoran public that he is a leader of world stature. Three different national broadcasts in El Salvador highlighted the travels of the president. There he was meeting with the world's richest man, speaking at the UN General Assembly and lecturing the wealthy countries of the world, and being given all the honors of a state visit in Argentina with fellow populist leader Javier Milei. Were there any tangible benefits to El Salvador out of this trip? No, not really. But for the self-proclaimed "world's coolest dictator" and "philosopher king" it was a chance to further enhance his image to his adoring public in El Salvador, around Latin America, and in the circles of Bitcoin true-believers. Bukele started his travels with a meeting with billi

I wrote a few weeks ago about the arrest and death in prison of Nayib Bukele's National Security Adviser, Alejandro Muyshondt.  New journalistic investigations have revealed secret recordings of conversations Muyshondt made on his phone of meetings with high officials in the Bukele government. Among the officials are the current president of the Legislative Assembly Ernesto Castro, who was Bukele's private secretary and close adviser at the time the recordings were made, and Xavier Zablah, the president's cousin and head of the Nuevas Ideas party.   The recordings show that president Nayib Bukele's closest advisors instigated illicit spying on journalists and were aware of corrupt actors in the government and did nothing.  Investigative journalist Héctor Silva Ávalos disclosed the existence of the recordings in new publications this week. Among the disclosures in the recordings -- Castro and Muyshondt put in place a plan to spy on journalists and politicians and to hi

  In countries like El Salvador, where values of an  authoritarian culture still prevail, these campaigns  that praise the virtues of the military,  making them look like heroes and saviors  capable of solving the problems that civilians cannot solve, further foster an authoritarian culture. -- Jeannette Aguilar Sunday, September 15, was Independence Day in El Salvador.   On Sunday, school students filled streets across the country marching in civic parades, the national anthem was sung, and San Salvador saw the large annual parade which during Nayib Bukele’s presidency has been a celebration of the police and military security forces. On Sunday night, the president gave his Independence Day discourse to the nation in the form of an address to the 18,000 soldiers on the military parade grounds before him.   All the imagery of the broadcast speech revolved around the Salvadoran military and police and their president, their Commander General. The troops stood motionless at attention fo

El Salvador's police and security forces were burying eight of their own this week. The director of the National Civilian Police, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, and seven other members of the police and armed forces were killed last Sunday night when the helicopter they were flying in crashed in eastern El Salvador. They died along with a fugitive banker wanted in a corruption case who was being returned to face justice in El Salvador. From the Associated Press report  of the event: El Salvador’s military says the national police director, other high-ranking police officials and a fugitive banker were among nine people killed in a military helicopter crash in a rural part of the country. The cause of the crash on Sunday night is under investigation. It occurred after the banker, Manuel Coto, was captured in Honduras over the weekend and handed over to Salvadoran authorities at the border. Coto, the former manager of the COSAVI savings and loan cooperative, had been the subject of an Int

The government of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador does not like public scrutiny.  Since Bukele took office in 2019, access to government and public information has been sharply curtailed , and the dictates of the country's open records law largely ignored.  In particular, information about public spending is frequently hidden from public view.   Bukele also likes to tout the country as a technological innovator. It is clear, however, that the government has not always implemented sufficient cyber-security safeguards to prevent hackers from accessing data on government servers, and as a result the data that the government tries to hide is getting released anyways. Most recently, the "hacktivist" group calling itself " CiberInteligenciaSV " released payroll data leaked from the Salvadoran social security institute for 970,000 Salvadorans including government officials and virtually everyone else who has a job in the formal economy.  The data includes names, salaries,

Alejandro Muyshondt Days after publicly denouncing a Nuevas Ideas legislator for corruption, Nayib Bukele's national security advisor, Alejandro Muyshondt, was arrested in August 2023 and accused of being a spy for former president in exile Mauricio Funes. Muyshondt disappeared into the incarceration system of the State of Exception, and six months later he was dead. His case is one that leaves more questions than answers, and the government of Bukele is remaining silent on the matter. Alejandro Muyshondt served as a national security advisor to Bukele starting at the beginning of Bukele's presidency in June 2019. Muyshondt had previously served as an advisor to Bukele from 2017 to 2019 while Bukele was mayor of San Salvador, and they were reportedly childhood friends. According to Muyshondt's  curriculum vitae on the Transparency Portal of the Salvadoran government, he graduated from the University of Angers in France with a degree in criminology in 2003, and in 2008 foun

  Today the InterAmerican Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) issued a 354 page report titled The State of Exception and Human Rights in El Salvador . The press release which accompanied the report highlights the major recommendations of the report: In the report, the IACHR underscores that inter-American standards stipulate that a state of emergency is an exceptional measure that must be necessary, appropriate, and proportionate to the emergency context. It also warns that certain judicial guarantees cannot be suspended under any circumstances and stresses that the duration of the state of emergency should be strictly limited to the period of the emergency. The IACHR calls on the Salvadoran State to make crosscutting efforts to prevent violence, mitigate the risks and damages to vulnerable groups, and restore the social fabric. It has also noted the statistics provided by the State on improvements to citizen security. These appear to demonstrate that the country has moved beyond the s