El Salvador Perspectives

The healthcare delivery system in El Salvador has three tiers, depending on how care is paid for.   At the bottom of the tier is the public hospital system.  This system, administered by the Ministry of Health provides free or very low cost healthcare to Salvadorans of limited means who do not have employment in the formal economy. The next system is the social security hospital system (ISSS) which is a system of care for persons who work in the formal economy and who pay into the system along with their employers to receive healthcare and pension benefits from the government. The third tier is the private healthcare system. This is healthcare provided by private hospitals or doctors in private clinics whose charges are paid by the wealthy who can afford private health insurance. The country’s national healthcare plan is deemed a national secret and is not available to the public.   So we can only look at where the government is operating openly.  ...

Some of the leading stories from El Salvador over the last month.                  The Foreign Agents Law is now in effect.  This law requires organizations or individuals to register as "foreign agents" if they receive funds from abroad to finance activities in Salvadoran society.  Organizations like human rights groups Cristosal and FESPAD and transparency and good governance group Citizen Action have confirmed receiving the "foreign agent" label.  Absent being granted an exemption, all foreign agents must pay a 30% tax on funds received from abroad and must refrain from activities which the government believes disturb the social order.   Cristosal has left the country, FESPAD is closing , and Citizen Action says it will attempt to continue operating despite the 30% tax. Cristosal releases new report on corruption in prison system.  Despite being labelled a foreign agent and moving its operations outside of E...

Sad news from El Salvador with the sudden  death  yesterday of Jesuit Father Jose Maria ("Chema") Tojeira. He died while on a trip in Guatemala City.   Born in Spain, as a young Jesuit Tojeira came to Central America in 1969, first in Honduras, before coming to El Salvador during the civil war.  He was a fellow Jesuit of those massacred at the UCA in 1989, and continued in El Salvador until the time of his death as an outspoken voice for social justice and human rights.  Among other positions he served as rector of the UCA and later headed the University's human rights office. “Fr. Chema witnessed to the courageous love illuminated through the Gospel—standing with the vulnerable, searching tirelessly for truth after the murders of the UCA martyrs, and cultivating communities rooted in the love of Christ and the inherent dignity of all,” said Christopher Kerr, executive director of the Ignatian Solidarity Network .  Here is a 2015 video profile of his ...

Family remittances sent to El Salvador set a monthly record in May of almost $900 million. The flow of dollars into El Salvador from those living abroad during the first five months of the year was 16% higher than the same five month period in 2024, a very significant increase according to El Salvador's Central Reserve Bank . Remittances are already one fourth of El Salvador's economy.  The dollars earned abroad, overwhelmingly in the US, have lifted families out of poverty and are one of the chief engines of any economic growth in the country.   Economists interviewed in La Prensa Grafica pointed to Donald Trump's deportation policies as a main driver of the surge in remittances.  Families are sending money out of the US into bank accounts in El Salvador out of fear of being deported and losing access to their assets in the US. "If we look at the behavior of deposits in the financial system, they have grown enormously. The acceleration in remittance sending has oc...

Today we have a collection of links from the international press, covering topics from US deportations to E Salvador, to the hotel industry, to the State of Exception and MS-13. Man wrongfully deported to El Salvador must be returned to US, court rules (The Guardian, June 24, 2025) -- An appeals court has ordered the Trump administration to return a man wrongfully deported to El Salvador to the US and to explain how it is complying in a ruling apparently designed to break a pattern of apparent government defiance of judicial orders. Trump administration says ICE could deport Abrego Garcia to country other than El Salvador if he's released from jail (CBS News, June 26, 2025) -- At a hearing in Maryland federal court on Thursday, Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn said that once Abrego Garcia is released from detention, Immigration and Customs Enforcement intends to begin removal proceedings to send him to a "third country," rather than El Salvador. Kidnapped ...

Two opinion polls released in June show president Nayib Bukele continuing to receive high approval ratings from large swaths of the Salvadoran public.  A poll released by La Prensa Grafica , one of the country's major newspapers, reported that 85.2% of the public approve of Bukele's performance in office after six years in the presidency.  A second poll released by the Institute of Public Opinion at the UCA reported that respondents gave  him an average grade of 8.15 on a 0-10 scale for his presidency. Bukele's ratings have ranged between 8.7 and 8.15 in the last 5 years of polls by the UCA. These  latest polls are consistent, and not surprising, in finding that respondents praise the improved public security situation as Bukele's greatest achievement, and point to economic issues as his biggest challenge. The Legislative Assembly and local municipal governments, however, had approval ratings quite a bit below the ratings of Bukele, despite being controlled almost e...

Donald Trump has put in place his campaign promise of massive deportation of undocumented persons in the US.  Those expulsions included 1600 Salvadorans in the month of May, and that number is on an upward trajectory.  The number of Salvadorans living in the US is estimated at 1.4 million.  Of these, 741,000 lack legal immigration status in the US according to data from the Migration Policy Institute . Contrary to narratives coming out of Washington which paint the deportees as gangsters and criminals, several stories of Salvadorans sent back to the country of their birth provide a different reality. This week Yessenia Ruano and her twin daughters arrived in El Salvador. Yessenia had found herself forced to self deport after living the last 14 years in the US. Her options for relief from the immigration court system had ended. Her young girls are both US citizens. Yessenia had made a life for herself as a teacher's aide in a public school in the Milwaukee area. She ...