El Salvador Perspectives

Over the last month, Nayib Bukele has been attributing public security in El Salvador to either mass incarceration or a miracle from God for those who pray. Presidential Visit to Costa Rica Bukele traveled to Alajuela, Costa Rica, on January 14 to join President Rodrigo Chaves for the groundbreaking for a new prison.  The month before, in December 2025, Chaves had visited the CECOT prison in El Salvador to see Bukele's most famous incarceration site. Bukele laid the first stone in the groundbreaking ceremony for Costa Rica's new "Centro de Alta Contención del Crimen Organizado" (CACCO), a maximum-security prison. Bukele has said that El Salvador sent the CECOT  architectural plans to Chaves so the new prison could use them as a model. In remarks at the groundbreaking for CACCO, Bukele told those assembled that the only way to resolve a nation's crime problem was through the use of force.   The trip came three weeks before presidential elections in Costa Rica....

On the morning of February 25, Fidel Zavala  was outside of the office of El Salvador's human rights public advocate (PDDH) to denounce the arbitrary arrests four days earlier of two community activists  from Hacienda La Floresta.  Zavala is spokesperson for a group calling itself the Unit of Defense of Human and Community Rights (UNIDEHC for its initials in Spanish).  UNIDEHC is leading a fight against the expulsion of approximately 250 families from their dwellings at La Floresta.   Later that same afternoon, Zavala found himself arrested at the offices of UNIDEHC.  And around the same time, twenty other La Floresta community members were also detained.   Many observers are calling their arrests potential reprisals and intimidation by the government for their actions in defense of human rights.     Zavala worked as a young businessman before being arrested the first time in February 2022 and accused of financial crimes. ...

Recent articles in English about El Salvador that are worth perusing: The spring of Nayib Bukele’s relationship with Donald Trump  -- El Pais .   A look at the cozy relationship between Bukele and the Trump administration as illustrated by Marco Rubio's recent visit to El Salvador. “Bukelismo,” A Deceptive, Illiberal Model of Peace Spreading from El Salvador to the United States -- ReVista .  Could Musk and Bukele really team up to administer this form of illiberal governance—known colloquially as “the Bukele Model” or “Bukelismo”—in the United States itself? How El Salvador became a model for the global far right  -- Financial Times .   In depth article looks at Bukele's time in office.  Do other nations want to embrace his methods of security which have made him a highly popular leader, or are they enabling the country's slide towards autocracy? Behind El Salvador's prison system that may handle U.S. deported migrants  -- CBS News ....

Last week on successive days, the US government and the Salvadoran government both issued media releases about gang members being jailed in the two countries.  A newly unsealed federal criminal indictment also describes how MS-13 gang leaders negotiated with El Salvador's top jailer, Osiris Luna Meza, who now oversees Nayib Bukele's new mega-prison. Osiris Luna Meza On Thursday, February 23, the US Justice Department announced that, with the cooperation of the government of Mexico, it had taken into custody three high ranking leaders of MS-13.  Those gang leaders are three of the 13 defendants named in a multi-count indictment for racketeering and terrorism extending from El Salvador through Mexico to the United States.  Of the remaining 10 defendants, four are at large and six are in custody in El Salvador, which refuses to honor the extradition request from the US. The indictment  describes the involvement of MS-13 in a multinational plague of criminality from mur...

The current State of Exception in El Salvador with its war on the country's maras has resulted in the arrests of some 63,000 persons since March 27, 2022.  That wholesale imprisonment of anyone suspected of a connection with a gang, which has also swept up thousands of innocent persons according to rights groups, may now have broken the chokehold which gangs have long had on El Salvador.     For months statistics have shown a sustained and significant drop in the homicide rate in El Salvador.  As journalist Roberto Valencia  enumerates , the average daily homicide rate has dropped below 1.  In January 2023 there were 13 homicides in the country, compared to 750 in January 2016. Various journalists who are independent of the Bukele government have now gone into formerly gang-controlled areas across the country, have spoken with sources formerly connected with the gangs, and are writing that homicides are down not because gangs are simply not killing,...

El Salvador has now lived for more than 6 months under the emergency “State of Exception” which suspends various constitutional guarantees of due process for those detained by authorities, limits the right of association, and authorizes warrantless phone taps under the guise of fighting a war against the gangs. Where does the State of Exception stand today? The Bukele regime proclaims that it has now arrested more than 54,000 persons alleged to have ties to the gangs since March 27.   And daily it continues to announce additional arrests of persons that security forces say are tied to one of the country's street gangs.    Starting Saturday, October 1, police and military  set up a cordon  around the town of Comasagua, searching all who entered or left as security forces searched for gang members allegedly linked to a recent killing. By Monday, police said they had captured  more than 50  linked to the Witmer Locos Salvatruchos cell of MS-13 in ...

This post originally appeared May 16 on the website of InsightCrime with the title  Will Soaring Arrests in El Salvador Overwhelm its Prisons? ******** As part of his sweeping gang crackdown, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has overseen the mass imprisonment of tens of thousands of people, potentially jeopardizing recent efforts to mitigate overcrowding and gang control in the country’s jails. El Salvador authorities claim to have made over 30,000 arrests since roundups began March 27, the day El Salvador’s legislature approved emergency powers that loosened rules on arrests and curtailed civil liberties. The state of emergency came after a three-day killing spree in March that left 87 people dead, including 62 in a single day. Congress extended the emergency powers for another 30 days on April 24. The government has claimed that nearly all of the people detained under the emergency decree have been gang members. But reports of arbitrary detentions are widespread, and polic...

There is a wealth of coverage of El Salvador available in English this week on a potpourri of topics: Why is this Chicago cop training police in El Salvador? (Chicago Reader) --  "ITTA is a small police training company founded in Chicago that has trained more than 600 officers in El Salvador. That's problematic given the behavior of some of the U.S. officers running the program." El Salvador president gains most from prosecution of rivals  (InsightCrime) -- "The evidence used to indict several high-ranking politicians in El Salvador for negotiating with gangs has been around for years, raising questions about why prosecutors are bringing the cases now, and what President Nayib Bukele stands to gain." Challenges after an Attempted Self-coup in El Salvador  (El Faro English) -- "Bukele sees himself above the norms of his job, as well as free of legal formalities. He was set on demonstrating that his political experiment isn’t tied down to any rules. H...

There have been many stories on this blog about the horrendous overcrowding and deplorable conditions in El Salvador's prisons.    (Just choose the "prisons" tag in the column at the right to see those posts).   But sometimes a set of pictures can make the point more forcefully.   This is the case for a set of photos taken by photographer Giles Clark which appeared in the August issue of Vice magazine .  The photos show the conditions of prisoners housed in "cages" behind an unidentified police station.   Many had been there for more than a year.   The photo essay was quickly picked up by many other online sites, showing the power of the images.  There are more of Giles Clark's photos of the prison conditions  here . The images are jarring, and yet not that much different from many which have been shown before.   If anything, the images document the fact that little is improving in El Salvador's jails.

One scandal in El Salvador is the horrendous overcrowding of its prisons.  Not only are the conditions inhumane, but the overcrowding increases violence within the prisons and makes any chance of rehabilitation remote.  There are more than 26,000 inmates in 19 prisons designed to hold a total of 8000 prisoners. From an article at InfoSurHoy : “Overcrowding has reached critical levels,” Hernández said. “If we take into account the design of these buildings, many of these prisons do not allow for effective control of the prison population. As a result, we have stressful spaces where daily life is a struggle. Stress levels in penitentiaries are very high.”  Silvia de Bonilla, a criminal attorney and candidate for Public Attorney for the Defense of Human Rights, is concerned by what she’s seen during her visits to prisons and the National Civil Police’s (PNC) holding cells.  “In the prisons and holding cells, the environment is harmful to inmates,” she said. “I’...

My friend Danielle Mackey has long written passionately and with great insight about El Salvador.   She recently shared a new essay on her blog Grit and Grace , titled  Sam in Sector Three , in which she takes us inside the El Salvador's prison for minors for a very personal encounter with tough, young gang members.  Here is an excerpt: Sam is seated at a table, making long strokes with his paintbrush. Bright flowers slowly crop up on his Mother’s Day card.  "You really have to enjoy a mother's love while you have it. Nothing in this world is like a mother's love, and once it's gone, it's gone," he murmurs, concentrating. "I regret not memorizing her advice while she was living." He turns his tattooed face toward me, "Is your mother still alive?" I feel a bit guilty admitting that she is. At six, his mother was killed. They murdered his father in front of him a few months later. Now fifteen, Sam will gift the card to his older siste...

Women in Ilopango prison -- photo by Jesus Flores A friend of mine left for El Salvador today on a medical and holistic healing trip to El Salvador.  As part of this trip, her team has been invited to provide medical screening within a women's prison in El Salvador.  She asked me to write a post about the conditions of incarceration for women imprisoned in El Salvador. According to the most recent  statistics , this month there are 2648 women prisoners who make up 9.8% of the total prison population in El Salvador.   Children under age 5 can stay with their mothers in the prison. When you research prison conditions for these women, you get two different pictures.   The official picture from the government's prison administration shows women inmates participating in a variety of activities in attractive surroundings. There is the: Celebration of elderly women prisoners  event Christmas  Pageant  in the Ilopango prison. Graduat...

The US State Department issued its report on Human Rights Practices in El Salvador for 2011 this week. This is the Executive Summary: El Salvador is a constitutional multiparty republic. In March 2009 voters elected Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) as president for a five-year term in generally free and fair elections. Security forces reported to civilian authorities.  The principal human rights problems were widespread corruption, particularly in the judicial system; weaknesses in the judiciary and the security forces that led to a high level of impunity; and violence and discrimination against women.  Other human rights problems included isolated unlawful killings by security forces; lengthy pretrial detention; harsh, overcrowded, and dangerously substandard prison conditions; child abuse and child prostitution; trafficking in persons; violence and discrimination against sexual minorities; child labor; and inadeq...