El Salvador Perspectives

Throughout his presidency, Nayib Bukele has craved the media spotlight and has wanted to be portrayed as one of the world's visionary leaders.  He has found that images of cruelty to persons alleged to be gang members get him publicity around the world, and lots of it. In April 2020 , the global media shared images of half-naked prisoners stacked together like sardines in the very early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Bukele vowed revenge for a surge in homicides. The media spotlight would turn back to El Salvador in 2022 to report on the State of Exception and squadrons of heavily armed police and military seizing tens of thousands of persons of the streets with little regard to the innocent persons among them. In 2023 to much fanfare, Bukele announced that he was opening the largest prison in the world. The Center for Confinement of Terrorists or "CECOT" would hold the worst of the worst so they could never terrorize El Salvador again he told his country, and the glo...

The government in El Salvador is trying to address years of lackluster macroeconomic performance.  Despite all the publicity surrounding tourism growth and Bitcoin initiatives, figures released by El Salvador's Central Reserve Bank show that annual  economic growth in El Salvador for 2024  was a very modest 2.6%. Recently Salvador president Nayib Bukele posted on X a plan to infuse liquidity into the Salvadoran economy by advancing payments to medium, small and micro businesses and by paying down government debt held by Salvadoran banks. The funds come from the recently approved loan facility of the International Monetary Fund.   It is hoped that this will kickstart economic activity at the local level. Fitch Ratings described the level to which public debt has climbed during the Bukele administration: El Salvador’s public debt, which we estimate at 87.6% of GDP in 2024, is well above the ratings peer median (2024: 50.3%) and is a key sovereign rating weakness...

Izalco prison Last month human rights groups released important reports documenting human rights abuses suffered under the State of Exception and within the country's prisons.  El Salvador is now in its fourth year under the "emergency" measures which define the new normal in the county. Six Salvadoran human rights organizations released a report titled   3 Years of the State of Exception: Systematic Torture in the Prisons of El Salvador .  The report comprehensively gathers data about the 85,000 persons captured during the State of Exception.  Their study makes the important point that more than 100,000 persons are held in old prisons in a system designed to hold 28,000 persons, while the CECOT mega-prison purportedly has a capacity of 40,000 but only holds 14,000 (including 255 delivered into the prison by the United States).  The report gathers descriptions of the poor conditions and abuses inside those overcrowded prisons from more than 30 persons who w...