The Sunday night was hot with revelry. From the high balcony of the National palace Nayib Bukele smiled as he greeted his supporters.
On that day, February 4, he had secured his re-election in a landslide victory in the El Salvador presidential election.
He celebrated his achievement on the social media platform ‘X,’ even though the final vote tallies were yet to be counted.
“God bless El Salvador,” he wrote.
However, the election – and much of Bukele’s term as President – has been coloured by a rollback of civil rights, mass incarceration and police brutality under the ‘State of Exception’ that provides the government with extraordinary powers. Last week marked two uninterrupted years that the State of Exception has been enforced.
Bukele’s vision
El Salvador, a Central American country with a population of 6.5 million people, had at one time attained infamy as the country with the highest homicide rate in the world.
The violence stemmed from rampant gang crime, itself a result of a large-scale exodus of the population to the United States during the 1979-1992 Salvadoran Civil War. Salvadoran refugees who joined gangs in order to survive in America were routinely forcefully deported to El Salvador by the US authorities, where they went on to terrorise the local population.
“Communities, mostly the poor and the marginalised, were basically under the control of criminal groups,” said Irene Cuellar, Amnesty International researcher for Central America, who was born in El Salvador.
“For Salvadoreans, gang violence was the main concern.” According to Ms Cuellar, every government in El Salvador had to reckon with gang crime, typically through police repression.
Naiyb Bukele, however, went against this trend in his presidential campaign.
Then-mayor of the capital city of San Salvador, Bukele ran for president on a robust crime reduction platform.
According to Ms Cuellar, his strategy included elements of rehabilitation, re-integration for ex-gang members, as well as crime prevention programs and initiatives addressing gender violence
“It wasn’t all about repression, or about imprisoning people. That was his promise.”
Once Bukele was elected, however, the promises failed to materialise.
“We didn’t have a chance to see this plan implemented,” she said.
“We only saw it on paper.”
State of Exception
On March 26 2022 an upswell of gang violence resulted in the death of over 60 people in El Salvador.
The following day the Salvadoran legislative assembly enacted a ‘State of Exception,’ a 30-day period where rights such as freedom of association are suspended.
The State of Exception was deemed necessary, “due to the serious disturbances to public order by criminal groups that threaten the life, peace, and security of the Salvadoran population,” according to a government statement.
Human rights organisations criticised the decision on the grounds that it may lead to abuses of power on behalf of Bukele’s government.
“Instead of protecting Salvadorans, this broad state of emergency is a recipe for disaster that puts their rights at risk,” said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, acting Americas director at Human Rights Watch, in an official statement.
In the months that followed tens of thousands of people were arbitrarily detained and later imprisoned for gang affiliations.
According to a report by Amnesty International, one year after the State of Exception was enacted, the number of arbitrary detainees exceeded 66,000 people. “The latest number I have,” Ms Cuellar said, “is 76,000.” She said that the Amnesty International team was able to verify instances of prison torture, as well as inhuman housing conditions stemming from overcrowding and neglect.
132 people have died in state custody as of March 2023. The real number is likely higher, but government has stopped providing official data on the number of incarcerated inmates, according to Ms Cuellar.
“It has made out work more difficult,” she said.
Owing to ongoing gang violence, prisons in El Salvador have exceeded their capacity as far back as 2020, according to Amnesty International.
As of 2023, the country has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with over 100,000 people, or over 1.5% of the population, behind bars.
Student Independent News reached out to President Bukele’s office for comment but did not receive a response.
The human cost
Arbitrary detentions under the State of Exception have not affected all layers of the population equally.
“People being detained are mainly from marginalised communities, who are already struggling economically,” she said.
According to Ms Cuellar, having relatives in prison puts an additional burden on families.
Monthly packages of food and medicine for inmates can cost upward of $150, a significant sum, given the average wage is around $400.
A report by Amnesty International found that those targeted by police are likeliest to be under-educated, or those with precarious work and residence.
Mass arrests under the State of Exception have also resulted in the proliferation of child labour in affected families, as well as increased forced displacement and an increase in cases of family fragmentation, according to the report.
Fear state
Despite the ongoing State of Exception, Amnesty International continues to operate in El Salvador.
“The situation has forced us to intensify our efforts in order to address mass human rights violations,” Ms Cuellar said.
However, she said that their work has become harder due to how fearful the population has become of being targeted by the government.
“In 2022, I didn’t sense this environment of fear that I see in the country now. People are more afraid to talk to us. Not only affected people, like relatives of the imprisoned, but also people from local NGOs and journalists.”
Vicki Gass, Executive Director of the Latin America Working Group NPO, agrees with Ms Cuellar’s assessment.
“People are fearful of speaking out,” she said. “This is not to undervalue that people feel safer in El Salvador, but replacing gangs with an abusive security force is hardly the answer.”
The Bukele model
Despite arbitrary arrests and mounting human rights violations, Bukele remains relatively popular in El Salvador.
The State of Exception has succeeded in curbing the number of homicides, according to Human Rights Watch.
However, the organisation noted that “government restrictions on accessing homicide and other data… make it harder to estimate the true extent of the reduction,” and went on to call for the ‘State of Exception’ to be lifted in favour of preventative measures.
Largely seen as effective, the model that Bukele’s government implemented to tackle gang crime is poised to be copied by neighbouring countries who also contend with local criminal organisations.
Honduras President Xiomara Castro initiated a similar State of Exception in December 2022 to combat crime.
It authorised use of military forces on the streets, and has likewise not been lifted to this day.
However, its effectiveness—and the viability of Bukele’s model in other countries—has been called into question.
“It has been deemed a failure,” Ms Gass said, referring to Honduras’s efforts to replicate Bukele’s scheme.
“The question is whether it is sustainable economically or socially, and it is not. The government is broke, food and energy costs are high,” she said.
“It is unclear whether the IMF will bail it out with another loan.”
According to Ms Cuellar, the difficulty of the model’s regionalisation is exacerbated by national differences between Central American countries.
“Violence in Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica is not gang violence: its Narcos, with more money and resources than the government,” she said. “This repressive approach wouldn’t be that effective there.”
Uncertain future
President Bukele’s re-election likewise required special measures from the government.
El Salvador’s constitution states that “The presidential term will be five years and will begin and end on June 1, without the person who has held the presidency being able to continue in their functions even one more day,” thus prohibiting re-election.
To circumvent this, the Supreme Court voted in 2021 to permit Bukele’s participation in the 2024 campaign.
The Organization of American States (AOS) which oversaw the February elections in El Salvador stated that, “President Bukele’s immediate re-election was questioned by internal and external voices, and was the result of a politically controversial court ruling.”
“The unconstitutional re-election of Bukele has dire implications for our partners in the region who work on human rights,” Ms Gass said.
Meanwhile, Ms Cuellar said that the State of Emergency has likely negatively affected Bukele’s popularity.
“Which is why a large campaign was launched to promote voting outside of the country,” she said.
Salvadorans abroad were able to cast their vote both in person and remotely through the Internet, according to the AOS.
According to The Supreme Electoral Tribunal, 240,339 votes were cast via internet and 86,427 were cast in person, constituting a record level of participation.
Ms Cuellar is apprehensive of Bukele’s second term due to a lack of checks and balances on his executive power. “The human right crisis could deepen,” she said.
“He likes to talk about results a lot, but not about the methods. The results are popular among the citizens—you can see how people are more free to walk around the communities, but at the same time more afraid of being arbitrarily detained.
“Two years ago, they were afraid of the gangs. Now they’re afraid of the police.”
