Catching up

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 El Salvador, Cristosal is still releasing important reports. In its most recent report titled Corruption Regime The Hidden Business of El Salvador’s Prison System, the group describes widespread corruption within the country's prison system where authorities take advantage of the vulnerability of prisoners and their families to solicit bribes for a family visit or to just to provide information about a prisoner's condition. Meanwhile, more than 100 days has passed since Cristosal advocate Ruth Lopez was arrested by the government and continues to be held in a Salvadoran prison.
The Education Ministry is now led by a military officer. Nayib Bukele appointed Karla Trigueros, a military doctor, to be the new Minister of Education. She immediately issued pronouncements requiring that school principals enforce uniform dress codes and student conduct rules. Haircuts need to conform to new guidelines, and students entering schools must give a courteous greeting to school staff at the entrance. Trigueros, who has no training or background in education, also instituted a system of demerits to be applied through "school courtesy" codes.
The State of Exception continues in force in El Salvador. It is no longer news each month when the Legislative Assembly votes again and again to extend the State of Exception which has been in place since March 2022. At this point, no one should expect the government to go back to providing due process to individuals they arrest. In addition, the Legislative Assembly voted in August to allow prosecutors an extra two years before they must bring persons accused of gang affiliation to trial. This means tens of thousands of those arrested during the State of Exception could languish in Salvadoran prisons for five years without even being convicted, or given a meaningful chance at pretrial release.
From exile, independent journalists at El Faro have published a new monthly edition for September which leads with detailed profiles of all 27 leaders of MS-13 who have been subject to indictments by the US in federal court in the US. What happens to them, and what they could testify to if they ever went to trial in the US, is the subject of geo-politics and deal-making between Trump and Bukele.
Republican US Senator Ted Cruz came to El Salvador, toured the CECOT prison, and lavished praise on Nayib Bukele, calling his actions in citizen security "truly extraordinary" and "amazing." The right-wing Republican indicated that Bukele remains a close ally of the US and Trump and the Salvadoran president's draconian policies should be a model for combatting crime and gangs. Cruz' press briefing
Fr. José María Tojeira, S.J. died suddenly last week. See my post here about this important Jesuit voice from the UCA who brought a human rights focus to current events in El Salvador.

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Author's note: El Salvador Perspectives has been on a short hiatus as I figure out its role at the start of the third decade of writing about El Salvador. Much has changed from the time when blogs were new and only a few of us were writing about El Salvador. Technology has changed, assumptions about freedom of expression have changed, and alternative quality sources of information in English about El Salvador have emerged, in addition to the availability of accurate automatic translators of what is disseminated online in Spanish.

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