The Christmas Village of the Historic Center of San Salvador is a colorful village of small houses that simulates a town in perpetual Christmas, with a two-floor building known as “Santa's house” as its crown jewel. Everything was built in the two main squares of the Historic Center, near an ice skating rink installed for the season. These are the main tourist attractions for those visiting the gentrified downtown of San Salvador, complete with new gourmet cafés, restaurants, and luxury hotels, which the government boasts in official propaganda as evidence of a “revitalization”. This includes the La Doña Steakhouse, set up in a building that President Nayib Bukele’s brothers bought for $1.3 million dollars, taking advantage of a tax exemption approved by the Bukele-controlled legislature.
The Christmas Village is the stage of the officially approved narrative about El Salvador: a happy place, full of decorative lights and prosperity, reminiscent of the plazas and parks of more developed countries. It is a synthesis of the official propaganda: a country that is making leaps and bounds toward the first world. However, not everyone fits here. But unwelcome are those who have lived and worked in the Historic Center for decades: vegetable and popsicle vendors, beggars, inhabitants of ruined inns looking for coins along the sidewalks, elderly hairdressers, aging women who survive on meager baskets of sweets. They have all been scattered, erased from the official photograph of the Historic Center and the country. As of the 2015 municipal census, there were more than 22,000 informal vendors here, from those with stalls made of tin to those who wandered around with their products in hand. Some of them are still there; they live there.
These are the inhabitants of the Historic Center, those who gave it life when the place was the scene of gang warfare, when it only appeared in official speeches as a headache without remedy, a blip in the country of Bukele’s tale.
José picks up coins in front of the National Library. He walks along the edges of the streets of the Historic Center to detect coins trapped under the tiles that cover the drains. He is 70 years old and is a do-it-all, “a day laborer with a sickle and a paintbrush,” as he calls himself. When he finds no work for the day, he collects coins with the help of two iron rods, with bent blades at the ends, which penetrate into the slots where his hands cannot fit. In about half an hour, José found coins totalling $0.52. “It was better when all those [informal vendor] shacks were here. There was more money lying around,” he recounts as he battles for 20 minutes to salvage a $1 coin in front of the National Library of El Salvador. “I don’t always find lots of the ones I want. But I'm poor, and that's why I do this,” he says amid the hustle and bustle of the installation of the ice rink and Christmas Village. Photo Víctor Peña
“I'm afraid of those men,” says Vilma, ”those policemen.” “Why are you afraid of them?” ”Because they always scold me and want to hit me and throw me out of here.” Vilma, 48, wanders around Plaza Libertad to collect plastic bottles with which she makes a living. Almost every afternoon she sits in front of the ruined house of former president Alfonso Quiñónez Molina, a member of the Meléndez Quiñónez dynasty, who also governed between 1913 and 1927. That space, less than a hundred meters from the Christmas Village of Plaza Libertad, today is a smelly corner where some homeless people tend to relieve themselves. Photo Víctor Peña
A family of vendors walks toward Plaza Zurita, on Eighth Street East, in downtown San Salvador. In the same area converge other vendors who are also fleeing from the metropolitan police (CAM), who maintain permanent operations to displace and confiscate products from informal traders who approach the revitalized blocks of the Historic Center. Among many conversations with vendors, a few phrases stand out: “Those government people have gone crazy with money.” “All of them will have a bad end.” “They don’t go hungry, they have all they need.” “Either they get tired or we get tired.” Photo Víctor Peña
Mari Santos, 55, is a street vendor of vegetables in the Historic Center. Like many others, Mari is an inhabitant of the dozens of inns that surround the renovated district. To make a living she scurries around every day, hiding from CAM agents who confiscate the sales of those who dare to approach the main plazas of the Center. “Right now I'm killing time in the lottery to go up later tonight and run from the CAM. I prefer not to sell than have the product go to waste in the municipal warehouses; that's why I wait for the night because it's easier to flee,” she says. Photo Carlos Barrera
Elva Martínez, 65 years old, spends her days prostrate in a chair in front of the place where she rents a room for $70 a month. She is diabetic and a month ago suffered a fainting spell that caused a serious blow to her hip and right shoulder. Her swollen feet prevent her from going out to look for cans to sell to a junkyard. She survives by selling candy, which barely covers the cost of her room. Two months ago the manager of the inn where she lives announced that he would increase her rent by $15. Elva did not accept; it is impossible for her to pay, so she has been waiting for them to maintain the standing price or evict her. Photo Carlos Barrera
“Street vendors are left out of this circus they have set up,” says a used appliance vendor who prefers not to identify himself. On the other side of the street, two homeless people sleep on the sidewalks that cross Eighth Street East and Sixth Avenue South, where many have gone to make a living, in one of the loneliest spaces in the Historic Center. “Three blocks from here, a coffee is four dollars. That's what I sometimes make in a day,” says the vendor. Photo Víctor Peña
It has been four years since Fabián González was the last hairdresser working in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Historic Center. Fabián, now 86, has worked permanently and lived intermittently downtown since 1985. He now lives in the room that belonged to his son, who committed suicide due to depression. The inn, of which Fabián is the sole tenant, is one block from Plaza Libertad. He pays $65 for the room, which during the pandemic cost $45. “Everything has gone up in price; the Center is now a beauty that we can’t afford,” he says, sitting in the dark room near the lights and bustle of Plaza Libertad’s Christmas Village. Photo Carlos Barrera
On December 3, inmates worked on the construction of the Christmas Village in the Historic Center while prison custodians strolled between Plaza Morazán and Plaza Gerardo Barrios. The Christmas Village was inaugurated on Saturday, December 7. Photo Víctor Peña
The monument in Plaza Libertad is surrounded by a villa with a house standing in the center. In front of the big red house the sign “La Casa de Santa Claus” (Santa’s House) welcomes visitors. At the base of the house, digital signs advertise bitcoin. Dozens of people attracted by the lights and food crowd the square. This public space is off-limits to street vendors who make a living offering products in the Historic Center. Photo Carlos Barrera
Thousands of lights adorn the now pedestrian walkway on Second Street East in the Historic Center. On one side of the walkway is the building purchased by the brothers of President Nayib Bukele for $1.3 million. On its rooftop operates a luxury restaurant. Photo Carlos Barrera
Dozens of videos circulate on social media of CAM agents seizing carts of ice cream and baskets of vegetables, or videos of sherbet vendors fleeing while a CAM truck chases them. These scenes play out up and down the blocks of the Historic Center, which at times looks like a shopping mall with seductive fast food, dessert, and clothing stores. Photo Carlos Barrera
In the shadows of Sixth Avenue South, one block from Plaza Libertad and two blocks from the National Library, Margarita Rosales looks for the last pieces of scrap metal to sell. She has been working there for more than 15 years, selling pieces to people who then take them to the street and hawk them in improvised stalls. These street businesses have already been displaced one block. Before, they used to sell between El Rosario Church and the old Libertad movie theater, which is now under construction. They crowd the entire block of the avenue near the Republic of Costa Rica Schoolhouse. Photo Carlos Barrera
Saúl and Rigoberto catch their breath after evading CAM agents, a block and a half from the National Library, barely illuminated by passing vehicles on Eighth Street West. They do not live in the Historic Downtown area but pay $50 a month for a warehouse to store the product they sell. “The lighted area is nice, but it's getting more and more difficult for us to get closer to try to sell,” says Rigoberto. “Maybe one day we won't even be able to sell here,” adds Saúl. Photo Carlos Barrera
In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Fabián was paying $115 a month for the premises of a hairdresser's shop. A year later the fee was bumped to $200, on top of $65 for his room and $20 for electricity and water. He says that thanks to his clientele he manages to eke out his monthly payments, but a few months ago people from the mayor's office came to the barbershop to tell him that they might close his business in the next few months. “They didn't give me any further explanation. I think it is because they see that this is a humble business. They are going to want to close it, and I can't invest in remodeling it,” he said. Photo Carlos Barrera
In the late afternoon, informal vendors converge on Sixth Avenue South. It is, for a moment, a safe area for bartering, far from the constant persecution of municipal agents and only three blocks from the Christmas Village. A pedestrian peers into the group of vendors and shows his backpack, a pair of shoes, a pair of pants, a shirt with Spiderman's mask and three old books. “How much for that?” a vendor asks. “Whatever you want, chief,” he replies. “I’ll give you three dollars.” “Fine by me.” Photo Víctor Peña
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