El Salvador Perspectives

Nayib Bukele has just had another of his critics arrested.  The government of El Salvador Saturday detained prominent attorney Enrique Anaya.  The constitutional lawyer frequently spoke in public and wrote on social media, about the constitution and the rule of law in El Salvador.  He has been an outspoken critic of Nayib Bukele's capture of the judicial system in El Salvador and violations of the constitution. Anaya is purportedly being charged with money laundering, and his detention follows closely on the heels of the imprisonment of another prominent legal critic of Bukele, Ruth López . In the week before his arrest, Anaya had been vocal critic of Bukele.  On June 3 Anaya was on  Frente a Frente , a television interview show  in El Salvador, saying Bukele was a dictator who had removed "the mask," adding "he is what he is." "Here, whoever speaks, whoever criticizes, whoever does not kneel before the idol, gets imprisoned. Of course, I am afrai...

One common assertion by proponents of the current State of Exception in El Salvador is that the justice system will correct errors and only guilty persons will be locked up for any significant period of time. In fact, changes in the law, and a court system which does not act independently of the Bukele regime, mean the reality is quite different for the 70,000 persons arrested since March 2022. 1. Arbitrary arrests with little or no proof. The failures of the criminal justice system in El Salvador under the State of Exception begin with the arrests and detention of persons, usually in marginalized communities, without sufficient proof of any criminal activity. The State of Exception, which continues to be extended every month, permits an arrest to be made on mere suspicion, without police seeing a crime being permitted and without an order for arrest.  The online periodical El Faro documented hundreds of cases of arrests with flimsy evidence in an article titled  State of E...

El Salvador has lived for a year and a half under the State of Exception. The State of Exception suspends the constitutional due process protections against arbitrary capture and detention, and allows people to be thrown into prison for months on the slimmest of allegations.  An anonymous phone tip can be sufficient to have someone captured. The "exceptional measures," which are touted by the Bukele regime for their impact in reducing gang-related crime in the country, have been used in some cases, say advocates, to silence and threaten activists and community leaders who protest development projects of friends of the Bukele regime.     Carolina Amaya is a journalist who focuses on environmental issues in El Salvador.  She has published important articles about challenges to the environment at her site MalaYerba .  Two days ago she wrote a much more personal column in El Faro about the arrest of her father, Benjamin Amaya, a veteran of the Salvadoran armed...

March 27 marks one year since El Salvador's Legislative Assembly passed an emergency State of Exception at the behest of president Nayib Bukele. As this one year anniversary is reached, much is being published about the State of Exception:  War on Gangs Forges New El Salvador. But the Price is Steep , Megan Janetsky and Fernanda Pesce, writing for the Associated Press offer a detailed look at the reality on the streets of El Salvador today, and the harsh measures implemented over the past year.  Their reporting and the photos which accompany the story illustrate the opening up happening in communities formerly controlled by gangs, but also describe the price paid, and continuing to be paid under the current regime. Countering El Salvador’s Democratic Backsliding . Tamara Taraciuk Broner of Human Rights Watch and Noah Bullock of Cristosal, writing in Americas Quarterly, call on regional leaders to counteract the decline of the rule of law in El Salvador.  They ...

Where does the war crimes trial for the 1981 massacre of children and others in El Mozote and surrounding communities stand at the beginning of 2023? It has been more than 41 years since the massacre -- is justice for approximately 1000 victims and their families any closer?  Over the five years after the El Mozote massacre case was reopened in 2016, Judge Jorge Guzman heard not only from the the humble campesinos who are witnesses and victims in his courtroom in San Francisco Gotera, but also from witnesses from the Salvadoran military and from experts who drew the lines of responsibility to the colonels and generals who gave the command for the massacre. Defense lawyers are no longer arguing about the fact that a massacre occurred.  Now, the defense argues to eliminate individual responsibility of particular military officers, but the fundamental fact is now acknowledged that the Salvadoran armed forces committed this atrocity. A hard blow against the process for justice t...

As El Salvador enters 2023, the exceptional is the new normal.   El Salvador has lived under an emergency State of Exception, adopted by its Legislative Assembly at the behest of president Nayib Bukele, since March 28, 2022.   That day came in the midst of a bloody weekend in which gangs murdered at least 87 people around the country.   Under the State of Exception, security forces of the police and military can arrest anyone without a warrant or observing them commit a crime, can hold them for 15 days before appearing before a judge and without telling them the charges, and can freely intercept communications without a judicial order. Those detained receive initial hearings, before judges with their identities masked, in groups that often number in the hundreds where the charges are simply gang affiliation. Judges routinely order defendants into El Salvador's hellishly overcrowded prisons without bail, to await for their next hearing which could come in si...

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...

 El Salvador is currently in the midst of an ongoing conflict which will determine if the judicial branch in the country has any remaining ability to check abuses of power by the executive or legislative branches. On August 31, the Legislative Assembly adopted a measure from President Bukele to purge a significant part of the country's judges from their posts.  The changes require judges and prosecutors to retire once they turn 60 or have 30 years of service, which would remove more than 200 judges (one-third of all judges) and dozens of prosecutors.   Then the Supreme Judicial Court and the National Council of the Judiciary, filled with Nuevas Ideas appointees and allies, will be able to replace the judges with ones whom they approve.  The law also allows for re-assigning judges across the country. That law could go into effect today, September 25.  A court in San Miguel, however, has issued an order staying the law for now.  The order requires the ...

This week may go down in Salvadoran history as the week in which Nayib Bukele completed his consolidation of one man / one party rule in El Salvador. By eliminating one third of the country's judges and procuring a ruling from the Constitutional Chamber which allows him to run for an additional five years in office, the 40-year-old head-of-state has reduced the independence of any part of government which could act as a check on his actions. The first event happened on August 31 as the Legislative Assembly suspended normal procedure and adopted a previously undisclosed plan to remove hundreds of judges and prosecutors.   From El Faro English : On Tuesday, August 31, four days after President Bukele announced via Twitter that it’s time to “purge the judicial branch and remove the corrupt,” El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly approved previously unannounced changes to the Law of Judicial Careers and the Organic Law of the Attorney General’s Office, upending term-limits and placem...