El Salvador Perspectives

Nayib Bukele is an unapologetic proponent of Bitcoin, who has made the crypto-currency legal tender in El Salvador, proposes to build a tax haven city named for Bitcoin, and has invested more than $85 million of the country's tax dollars in Bitcoin purchases.  He promotes Bitcoin in English from his Twitter account, predicting a rosy crypto-future for El Salvador.  Today we look at how some of Bukele's predictions are faring. Adoption of Bitcoin by Salvadorans -- not so much . Bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador on September 6, 2021 and in December, the Salvadoran president tweeted: The "mass adoption" of Bitcoin referred to by Bukele in this tweet has not happened in El Salvador despite the president's immense popularity.  Outside of crypto-tourists who arrive in search of Bitcoin Beach and someone who will sell them coffee and a pupusa paid for with Bitcoin, El Salvador remains overwhelmingly a country with a cash economy operating with US dollars.   Ther

Tonight, with little discussion of whether conditions still merited an emergency decree and whether mistakes or abuses had taken place, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly passed an extension of the "State of Exception" for another period of thirty days.   According to the PNC, more than 16,000 persons alleged to be gang members have been detained during the first four weeks of the State of Exception. Here is a set of articles in the English language press about the past four weeks in El Salvador under the State of Exception.    As El Salvador arrests thousands, families search for the missing  -- Washington Post -- "The other women in line at El Penalito told stories of how their sons were arrested — in raids on their homes, while selling fruit in downtown San Salvador or working on construction sites, while walking home from the bus.  In a country where thousands disappeared during the civil war of the 1980s, and thousands more vanished during a surge in gang viol

Let me start this post by saying that gangs have been a terrible scourge in El Salvador.  I have known too many men and boys gunned down by their obscene violence over the past two decades.  I have heard the stories of too many individuals and families who have fled their homes for fear of being the next victim.   They don't always succeed.  El Salvador will never have peace until the root causes of gang violence are addressed.   At the same time, I also know the stories of police abuses of people living in the marginalized communities throughout El Salvador, including those who spent days. months or years in prison before charges were found to be unsubstantiated.  We have seen  cases of the army disappearing youth from marginalized communities.  Nayib Bukele has tweeted orders to send suspects to solitary confinement in maximum security prisons, only to have them exonerated.       So confronting gang violence in El Salvador is important and necessary.   Those who murder and rape

Originally published with the title  El Salvador Shifts Mano Dura Security Policies into Overdrive on April 12, 2022 at the website of InsightCrime. With a near unprecedented wave of arrests, the El Salvador government is doubling down and expanding on heavy-handed security policies, known as mano dura, that have consistently failed to yield long-term results. On April 12, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele claimed his government had arrested more than 10,000 gang members in 17 days as part of a nationwide crackdown on street gangs, following an unprecedented killing spree linked to the MS13 and Barrio 18 gangs in late March. The mass detentions come after the El Salvador legislative assembly enacted a month-long state of exception on March 27 in response to the killings, loosening rules on making arrests. Under the measures, the country's security forces have reportedly encircled neighborhoods , conducted house-by-house searches and mounted military roadblocks in an attempt t

This is Semana Santa (Holy Week) in El Salvador, a week of vacations leading up to the Christian holidays of Good Friday and Easter.  After a complete pandemic lockdown in 2020 and a partial restoration in 2021, Semana Santa 2022 will feel much closer to normal in the country.   El Salvador's tourism authorities say they  expect 170 thousand visitors during the week, including 35,000 who will arrive by air through the country's international airport. Visitors to tourist sites are likely to see a heavy presence of security forces as the country moves into a third week under the State of Exception.   The National Civilian Police have reported that more than 9100 persons have been arrested and accused of being gang members.   Human rights advocates and the international community continue to express their concerns about arbitrary detentions of those who are not in the gangs and conditions rising to the level of torture within the country's prisons, as I have detailed previo

One central feature of the presidency of Nayib Bukele is an attempt to set and control the narrative regarding the performance of his government.  This has taken the form of limiting transparency and access to public information, and it has also taken the form of attempting to stifle independent voices in the press who present information which puts the government in a bad light.  In other words, Bukele and his allies have sought to "chill" the exercise of freedom of the press in the country.      The most recent example is a newly passed law which threatens prison sentences of up to 15 years for persons disseminating messages emanating from the gangs. One provision of the law criminalizes gang tagging walls and buildings with gang symbols.   But journalists are pointing to a second section  in the law which places a muzzle on reporting on the gangs: The new measure states that any “radio, television, written or digital media” that “reproduce or transmit messages or communic

Because I agree with the Bukele government that tourism offers real growth potential in El Salvador, we'll be following it more closely this year in El Salvador Perspectives.  Over the past two weeks, here are some tangible and intangible developments in tourism to the country.    Traditional   The Norwegian Jewel cruise ship pulled into the Port of Acajutla for 10 hours on Sunday, April 3 as part of a 10 day cruise from Panama City to San Diego.   The ship carried more than 800 passengers, and according to the Ministry of Tourism, 467 of them disembarked for tours of El Salvador.   This was the largest group of cruise ship passengers ever to disembark in El Salvador according to the government.   Cruise ships making stops in El Salvador are not a regular occurrence and the government is certainly hoping to convince more cruise lines to stop in the country. Cientos de pasajeros del crucero Norwegian Jewel, la embarcación más grande que ha llegado al puerto de Acajutla, exploraro

Too often lost in the news cycle are the victims.   They should be at the center. Sixty-two people were murdered on Saturday, March 26, in the deadliest day in El Salvador since the end of the country's civil war.   According to  El Faro , 57 of the victims were men and 5 were women.   They ranged in age from 18 to 66, with an average age of 38.   They were fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, sisters and brothers.   They had names like Oscar, Carlos, Maria, Nestor, Maritza and Jose.   They worked as laborers, street vendors, farm workers, and builders.  According to initial police reports, only 13 of the victims were linked to gangs. El Faro published a list of the names of the victims who had been identified: ➡️Esta es una cronología del sábado 26 de marzo, recreada a partir del informe policial al que este periódico tuvo acceso, que reconstruye cinco de los 62 crímenes cometidos ese día. https://t.co/ezt7MCaAg7 — El Faro (@_elfaro_) April 4, 2022 La Prensa Grafica published t

One week has passed since the bloody weekend which saw almost 80 Salvadorans murdered across the country and the government of El Salvador responding with a "State of Exception" and a massive crackdown in gang areas.   Here is a summary of some of the major themes of the week. Mass arrests of alleged gang members under the State of Exception On Saturday, April 2, president Nayib Bukele tweeted that, since last weekend, security forces had captured   more than 5000 persons alleged to be gang members. Government social media feeds spilled over with the usual images of handcuffed individuals, often focusing on shirtless figures emblazoned with gang tattoos.    Local Salvadoran media also shared  numerous stories  of family members seeking any information about  where those arrested had been conveyed  and what their status was.  Similarly there were stories of families claiming that there son or daughter who was arrested had never been involved with the gangs but had simply been