El Salvador’s Exceptional Prison State

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1. Gisela Salim-Peyer: “The people of El Salvador lived in fear of gangs for decades. Then President Nayib Bukele decided enough was enough. What happened next was a miracle, and all it took was *la mano dura*: an iron fist. The gangs disappeared—there one week and gone the next.

   “I heard this story again and again when I visited El Zonte, a surfing town on El Salvador’s Pacific coast, in March 2023. A particularly gruesome display of gang violence the previous year had led Bukele to declare a ‘state of exception,’ empowering police to arrest anyone suspected of gang affiliation without telling them why, informing them of their rights, or allowing them access to a lawyer. El Salvador is now the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. It has also gone from being one of the world’s most dangerous places to having the same homicide rate as Canada.

   “Bukele has kept the state of exception in place for more than three years, even though the constitution caps it at 60 days—and even though the murder rate plummeted within those first two months but has flattened since. By Bukele’s own admission, some of the 100,000 Salvadorans who have ended up in prison are innocent; his government writes them off as ‘collateral damage’ or a ‘margin of error.’ Meanwhile, hundreds have died in custody, per Amnesty International, some as a result of ‘beatings, torture, and lack of proper medical care.’

   “Critics of the state of exception argue that security without justice is a Faustian bargain. Bukele is just fine with that, and he has reason to think that the rest of the country is, too. Every year since 2022, Central American University has polled Salvadorans, asking if they support the state of exception. More than 80 percent consistently say they do. But when the question spells out what a state of exception entails—that it allows the government to arrest people without judicial orders—only about 30 percent of respondents approve, suggesting that many of those who back the policy are not thinking about it too carefully.

   “Still, polls have ranked Bukele as Latin America’s most popular leader; politicians in Colombia and Honduras have promised to emulate his crackdown; and U.S. President Donald Trump was so impressed that he deported hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, using Bukele-like emergency powers under the Alien Enemies Act to do so. That innocent people are disappearing into El Salvador’s prisons is no secret—making the embrace of Bukele a disturbing signal of just how far a strongman can go without losing political ground.”

   Read more: [https://theatln.tc/AG7ro1rK](https://theatln.tc/AG7ro1rK) 

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