El Salvador & Our Future

 A right-wing authoritarian has won re-election in El Salvador.  A takeover of the judiciary was required to allow him to run for a consecutive term but his majority appears to be based on genuine election results.

As Rauda’s reporting shows, Bukele is expected to sweep the February 4 presidential election. With sky-high approval ratings since he declared a state of emergency in March 2022, Bukele’s lock ’em up approach to gangs has resonated with Salvadorans exhausted from relentless violence over the last half century. From the civil war to gang domination of many communities, collective trauma has become a political commodity in elections.

Reelection videos posted on the president’s social media platforms and making the rounds in traditional media provide emotional testimonies as to why average Salvadorans affected by gang violence stand with Bukele to say Nunca más — “never again.” Coming on the heels of his state of exception tactic to break gang control by suspending constitutional rights, the media campaign appears to have been effective. Sixty-six out of every hundred Salvadorans have strong faith in the president, according to a December 2023 poll by the Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública.

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Bukele’s ability to carry out his promise rests on maintaining public safety — contingent on keeping gangs unable to govern, and curbing the police, military, and narco violence. But multiple people pointed out to me that the main gang leaders were able to leave the country, in some cases aided by Bukele’s government. The increased security many people in El Salvador are experiencing under the state of exception is predicated on a false promise that the gangs, weakened at the moment, won’t come back. It also doesn’t account for the increase in violence from state actors, including police, military personnel, the judiciary, and penal system staff. But since such violence is not evenly distributed across the population, it hasn’t yet undercut Bukele’s popularity.

This is what we all have to look forward to.  Neoliberal economic policies impoverish the majority and make crime one of the few alternatives to a life of hopeless, grinding poverty.  But the more people who turn to crime, the more criminals have to fight with each other to control access to the criminal economy.  This means more violence in society.  Which makes ordinary citizens cry out for relief.  Which means the state imposes harsher penalties for criminals as well as giving the police more leeway to impose violence and abuse civil rights.

People don't care that they're slitting their own throats by empowering the police state.  Many people are only capable of judging what is immediately before their eyes (such as crime) and of calling for "solutions" that are suggested to them from the hegemonic culture (getting "tough on crime" for instance).  Social conservative morality steers them into self-destructive belief systems.  (Besides getting "tough on crime" this also means demanding that teenage mothers be condemned to poverty instead of receiving suppport for themselves and their children.  People who despise pregnant teenagers don't care about a weak welfare state because they'd rather proudly refuse welfare until the point where the neoliberal nightmare has brought them to the point of desperation.  At which point they're too broken to be capable of anything but shameful gratitude.)

Meanwhile, local versions of Jeffrey Epstein live far away from the violence except when they send their subordinates out to negotiate with gangsters for some teenaged prostitutes.