El Salvador Perspectives

Sunday, November 16, marked the 36th anniversary of the Jesuit massacre at the University of Central America José Simeón Cañas  in El Salvador (the "UCA").   On that date in 1989 during El Salvador's bloody civil war, soldiers from an elite Salvadoran army battalion assassinated six Jesuit priests and a female co-worker and her daughter on the campus of the UCA.  It was a murderous attack on voices which had consistently denounced human rights abuses and and sought peace and justice for the oppressed millions of El Salvador.  This year's anniversary comes in the midst of the 4th year of the State of Exception in El Salvador in which tens of thousands have been imprisoned for years in hellish prisons without trial and without guarantees of due process.  Allegations of torture, which echo back to the bloody decades of the 70s and 80s, are being made again by victims and their families. The military roams anew the streets of the country.   Although ...

On November 2, Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele broadcast an address to the nation to announce that his administration was inaugurating 70 remodeled schools that day. The upgrades to the schools were part of Bukele's "Two Schools Per Day Plan" in which the government says it is commencing the upgrades of two new schools each day, 70 of which have now been finished. Inauguration of 70 schools Inauguración de 70 escuelas pic.twitter.com/Lj5sfrUn4C — Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) November 3, 2025 The announcement came with the usual production values of a hallmark Bukele presentation -- the delivery of some new infrastructure project or building, and the Salvadoran president receiving a tour and the adulation of the citizens gathered for the event. [Fact checkers at VozPublica highlighted several misrepresentations in Bukele's presentation regarding the number of schools built by his administration (overstated), the number of schools built by prior governments (u...