Before Nayib Bukele assumed his unconstitutional second term as president on June 1, thousands of Salvadorans were already suffering under the weight of an authoritarian regime, with no institutions left to turn to. The machinery of power, with the state of exception as its main weapon, has lashed out against anyone arrested —with or without evidence— for being “gang members” or “terrorists.” That weight is also borne by the mothers who search for their disappeared children, with no help from the state; by those displaced from their lands by megaprojects that are still an abstraction, such as the Pacific Airport promised by the president; by the students at the only public university, which the state owes a debt totaling $51 million; by water defenders arrested under the state of exception; by the mothers and wives of the detained, wandering from prison to prison for any information; by street vendors evicted from the capital’s downtown, running from the municipal police; by exiles fleeing the country.
Since January 2022, every time Eneida Abarca leaves home she takes a bundle of photographs with her, each marked with the phrase “Where is Carlos?” Her son Carlos Santos disappeared on Jan. 1, 2022. He was last seen leaving home in the Monserrat neighborhood of San Salvador, heading toward Lito Barrientos Park, located near a National Civil Police station. Eneida launched into a search that has taken her around most of the country. In February 2022, she and other family members of the disappeared founded the Missing Persons Search Bloc in response to a lack of help from the Attorney General’s Office and Police. Months later, Salvadoran authorities declared all information related to criminal activity and the victims of crime a state secret for a period of seven years. Since 2022, the Attorney General’s Office, for its part, has also declared all information on missing persons as non-existent. In a country promoted as the safest place on the continent, Eneida says she has exhausted every recourse: “We asked the police to check the security cameras that monitor the park and they refused. They said my son will come back, that he went to the beach or went out with his girlfriend. The Attorney General’s Office won’t listen to me anymore. The government is doing nothing for the victims. In 2019, I voted for Bukele, but not in the last elections.” This May 19, Eneida organized the first citizen search brigade with support from individuals and the Salvadoran search-and-rescue groups Comandos de Salvamento and Cruz Azul. They combed the streets and alleys of Colonia Dina and the Arenal Monserrat canal. Without the support of the state, Eneida continues to search for her son. Photo by Carlos Barrera.
The construction of the Pacific Airport was one of Nayib Bukele’s key promises during the 2019 presidential elections. Since April 2022, despite the lack of any progress in the construction, inhabitants of the communities of Condadillo, Flor de Mangle, El Embarcadero, and Loma Larga, in the department of La Unión, have been forced to sell their land. During the last two years, the Indigenous Movement for the Integration of the Struggle of El Salvador’s Ancestral Peoples has denounced incursions by state employees and private companies into land parcels they have not yet purchased. In recent weeks, residents of El Icacal Beach have denounced threats of eviction and the hewing of more than 100 trees in the surrounding mangrove forest, affecting some 75 families in the area. The image above shows a house in the Condadillo community whose residents were evicted after the family of Carlos Reyes was forced to sell their land for the construction of the airport. Authorities prohibited the family from continuing to remove the roof and materials from the house. Photo by Víctor Peña.
María Maradiaga, 45, lives in the canton of El Botoncillal, miles west of San Salvador in the municipality of Colón. On Apr. 18, 2022, María was at home with her children when a patrol car pulled up and several police officers ordered all the men to come outside. Her two sons were taken away. The younger, Christian, was released hours later after the police recognized his intellectual disability. The other son, Manuel, was sent to Mariona Prison, where he spent 20 days and was released after the authorities determined that he had no criminal record and was not a gang member. A year later, on Apr. 5, 2023, following the murder of a bus service owner in El Botoncillal, the police rearrested several people who had been previously detained by the regime, including Manuel. After 13 months, Manuel is still in Mariona. His family no longer eats meat; María takes care of two elderly women Monday through Friday, earning five dollars a day to buy beans, rice and sometimes eggs. In 2019, she and Manuel, who was 25 years old at the time, voted for Nayib Bukele. “In the last elections, I didn’t vote for him again. He left us without the person who put food on our table. We stopped buying food so we could pay for the $80 package we have to assemble every two months to deliver to my son. Bukele plunged us into poverty,” Maria says. Since 2019, more than 210,000 Salvadorans have fallen into extreme poverty and almost one million are on the brink of starvation. Photo by Carlos Barrera.
In November 2018, Nayib Bukele promised to turn the public University of El Salvador (UES) into the best college in Central America. More than five years later, a culture of intimidation has been instilled on campus. “Fear has taken hold of everyone here,” says one of the demonstrators in a small march held on May 27 to protest the use of university facilities for non-academic purposes, speaking in a quiet voice. Amid a deepening financial crisis resulting from accumulated government debt, which now totals $51.3 million, even the rector of the UES admits that “there is fear of expressing oneself.” In February 2024, the UES hosted militants of the ruling Nuevas Ideas party to work on the final ballot count for the presidential and legislative elections. In June, the government again used the facilities to host “journalists” covering Bukele’s unconstitutional inauguration. Photo by Carlos Barrera.
In January 2022, residents of Hacienda La Labor, in Ahuachapán, protested against Fénix, a real estate company that was beginning construction on a 1,764-unit housing project called Eco Terra Hacienda. The company drilled a well to supply water for the project, despite not having the necessary environmental permits. Drilling threatened the community’s access to water, affecting more than 500 families. Residents tried to stop the construction of the well, but three leaders were arrested for trespassing. They were the first people to be jailed by the Bukele administration for defending their water. Two years later, construction has advanced and no one is protesting the well. Although the community members were acquitted, Fénix continues to pursue litigation. Photo by Víctor Peña.
On June 30, 2022, Claudia Tejada and her husband, Dionisio Ramírez, were cleaning a swimming pool in the Jaltepeque estuary in the department of La Paz when six police officers entered the ranch that Dionisio’s parents were caretaking. They had no prior record for Dionisio, but told him not to resist, that they were only taking him in for questioning. They charged Dionisio with “illicit associations” and sent him to Mariona Prison. Claudia was 20 weeks pregnant. Three days later, due to an obstetric emergency, she lost her twin pregnancy. On August 25, Claudia’s in-laws received a call from social services at Zacamil hospital, asking them to come to the morgue to identify the body of their son. The Medical Examiner reported that Dionisio had died of pulmonary edema, a finding disputed by his family, who point to a photograph showing a penny-sized hole between his collarbone and neck. Claudia and her in-laws believe that Dionisio was murdered. A year and ten months after her husband’s death, Claudia says: “My husband voted for Bukele in 2019 and we received death in return. Last February, my in-laws and I annulled our presidential votes in protest. The damage they did to us is irreparable. To this day, my six-year-old daughter asks when her dad is coming back. The state of exception took away part of my life. How can that be replaced?” Photo by Carlos Barrera.
On May 4, 2024, various social media accounts denounced the destruction of the National Palace’s historic tile floor and its disposal in Las Cañas River. The destruction of the tiles, which are more than 113 years old, was done in secret, violating laws meant to protect national patrimony. Weeks before Bukele would occupy the Palace to celebrate his second inauguration, employees of the Ministry of Public Works set about redecorating the building’s main corridors. Photo by Víctor Peña.
On the night of Sunday, July 3, 2023, five soldiers arrived at the home of Silvia Carolina Martinez, on the island of Espíritu Santo, off the coast of Usulután. Cristian Doneli Ruiz, her husband, went out to greet them. They promptly arrested him, accusing him of belonging to criminal groups. Hours later, he was transferred to Puerto El Triunfo, the nearest urban area. Cristian was a day laborer for the El Jobal cooperative, a coconut oil processor and source of income for some 350 families on the island, where there have never been any gangs. After his arrest, the family’s eldest daughter quit school to look for a job to help with family expenses and to cover the cost of the package they deliver to prison every two weeks. On May 29, Silvia was returning home after delivering a package to Mariona Prison in San Salvador. Once again, prison authorities had no new information about her husband’s condition and only told her that he is still in cell 8, sector 6. She has not seen or heard from him since the night he was taken. Photo by Víctor Peña.
Three agents with the CAM, San Salvador’s metropolitan police department, surround Mario René Castro, a street vendor, in Plaza Libertad, in the city’s Historic Center. The agents tore up his bags and injured his left hand, strewing his candy on the ground. “These men are traitors,” said Castro, a 40-year-old native of the capital’s San Jacinto neighborhood, who has been street vending since he lost his job a year ago. On Sunday, February 14, Castro went downtown, where the city’s main blocks have become a flagship tourist destination promoted by the Bukele administration. “They [the police] came up on me by surprise and stole my $50 in sales,” he said. Castro is one of hundreds of vendors evicted from the city center. Many still attempt to sell their wares itinerantly, using carts or carrying the items and dodging CAM officers who chase them off to maintain the image of an orderly, clean, and vendor-free Historic Center. Photo by Víctor Peña.
At two in the morning on Nov. 29, 2023, Blanca was awakened by a noise outside her house. She opened the door and saw policemen in the dark. They entered her living room and forced her to wake up her three children and one grandchild. She went outside to shush the barking dogs and when she returned less than a minute later found the four young men —three of them minors— face down and handcuffed. “They had an arrest warrant. They showed it to me, but I can’t read. I never knew what it said,” she recounts. Blanca’s family had been victims of extortion from 18th Street, the gang that once controlled the canton of Las Marías, nestled on the slopes of the Izalco volcano in Sonsonate. “There were always operations here and we never had any problems with the police,” says Francisco Arévalo, the father of the detained and the sole breadwinner for a family of six, all of whom survive on the $140 a month he earns as a day laborer. “We were victims of the gang and now we are victims of the authorities.” Arévalo’s income also goes to cover the cost of food and hygiene products for his imprisoned sons, which they deliver every four days to the prison in Sonsonate. Photo by Víctor Peña.
On Sep. 18, 2021, Ivette’s two children, Karen and Eduardo Guerrero, were kidnapped in the Quezaltepec neighborhood of Santa Tecla. She searched for 98 days until their bodies were found on December 23 in a clandestine cemetery in the neighboring municipality of Nuevo Cuscatlán. The case was widely covered by the media. “Officials do not consider the harm they cause,” Ivette says. “For many, my children died because they were gang members and drug traffickers, because that’s the message from the government and from [Security Minister] Gustavo Villatoro.” She says the government politicized her case, which is why she decided not to pursue it with a defense lawyer. She only knows what the prosecutors tell her, because the Attorney General’s Office has declared the case confidential. Ivette, pictured here gazing at an altar in her children’s bedroom, fled El Salvador a few months ago and prefers not to name the country that granted her asylum, where she works in a public hospital kitchen. “After I found my children, the government backed me into a corner. I was not safe anywhere,” she says. “I felt something might happen to me, and not from the gang members who controlled my neighborhood, but because of the attacks from the government to tarnish their image. At least I’m not living in fear anymore. But coming here doesn’t fix my life. It’s hard to survive here too.” Photo by Víctor Peña.
*Translated by Max Granger
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