Opinion: El Salvador is the far-right’s dream crypto-carceral state – and it’s failing
Last February, confetti rained over me as I witnessed the death of my country’s young democracy. It had been a scorching election day in San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital. Even close to midnight, my hair was dripping with sweat.
My newsroom had put me on “Bukele duty”: I got to chase him around town as he cast his own vote in a sea of screaming supporters, illegally campaigned during a press conference at a hotel and finally, gave a late-night victory speech from the balcony of the National Palace before even 5% of the ballots had been counted.
I felt both desolate and ridiculous, covered in tears and multicolored pieces of paper, as Nayib Bukele celebrated his victory before a roaring crowd. He had not only been reelected as President of El Salvador, but had won the vote by a landslide.
Bukele remains popular over a year later, but the facade put up by the self-appointed “world’s coolest dictator” is crumbling both at home and internationally. The pay-offs of his most celebrated and controversial measures are proving to be unsustainable, as the harsh realities of life in the Central American country break through the propaganda.
El Salvador is more than an ally for the current [US] administration: it serves as a blueprint for the fascist, crypto-carceral forces behind the Trump presidency.
Today, the first 238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, arrived in our country. They were immediately transferred to CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center, for a period of one year (renewable).
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) March 16, 2025
The United States will pay a very low fee for them,… pic.twitter.com/tfsi8cgpD6
Kristi Noem is in El Salvador today. pic.twitter.com/V8jYzb4Q6K
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 27, 2025
On March 15th, President Bukele posted a video on social media showing several men being dragged from three planes by policemen in riot gear, escorted by soldiers and tanks. The officers pushed the men around, bent them over and showed their faces to the camera. The text accompanying the highly stylized video alleged that these men were members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua en route from the US to Bukele’s infamous mega-prison, the “Terrorism Confinement Center” (CECOT).
US President Donald Trump invoked an obscure wartime law to allow for the transfer of 261 detainees to El Salvador and rushed to do so before a court order could stop it. 238 of them are Venezuelan. According to a review by CBS, the vast majority have no previous criminal convictictions or charges, but the government insists many are suspected of having gang ties. None of them have been convicted of any crime. They have been denied due process and shipped off to a country in a state of exception, infamous for its inhumane prison system. Since then, many Venezuelan families have openly denounced the kidnappings and extraordinary renditions of their loved ones.
The United States and El Salvador are partnering up for the transnationalization of the carceral state. The US will pay the small Central American nation US$20,000 a year per inmate. In return, the Trump administration gets an extension of its own prison system and a void akin to Guantanamo to use as a tangible threat to immigrants. Do not come; if you do, you will disappear into a crowded Salvadoran cage.
But El Salvador is more than an ally for the current administration: it serves as a blueprint for the fascist, crypto-carceral forces behind the Trump presidency. Nayib Bukele has systematically dismantled the country’s democratic institutions. Like Donald Trump, he is shadowed—at times puppeteered—by tech entrepreneurs convinced that they can make government more efficient by tearing it to pieces. He too attacks the free press and civil society viciously, and has turned big swaths of the population against us, and thus against their own self-interest.
Trading freedom for security
The state of exception was meant to last for 30 days, but has been extended 36 times over three years.
The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges. No one is above the law, including judges.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2025
That is what it took to fix El Salvador. Same applies to America. https://t.co/HtPINo6ngU
The last weekend of March 2022 was the most violent of the century in El Salvador. After a breakdown in negotiations with the government, gangs brutally murdered at least 87 people in just three days.
As a response, Bukele commanded Congress to declare a state of exception, reserved under the Salvadoran constitution for war, natural disasters and major disruptions to public order. The measure suspended the right to freedom of assembly as well as key rights for detainees. Days later, lawmakers voted to harden already draconian punishments for gang members. For example, children over the age of twelve can now face up to ten years in prison for gang-related crimes.
This put Bukele in the spotlight of the global far-right as the iron-fisted hero who saved one of the most homicidal countries in the world. And though it is undeniable that the state of exception drastically reduced El Salvador’s homicide rate, the statistics do not paint a complete picture. The state of exception was meant to last for 30 days, but has been extended 36 times over three years.
According to official numbers, government forces have arrested 87,000 people during this time, making El Salvador the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world—far above the United States’.
At least 374 people have died in the overcrowded prisons, many without ever appearing before a judge. There are numerous reports of arbitrary detentions, some confirmed by the government itself. The authorities systematically withhold information from families of detainees, sometimes refusing to even recognize the arrests of their loved ones, which could amount to forced disappearances, according to a report by a coalition of human rights organizations.
NGOs regularly denounce abuse, torture and sexual violence by soldiers and police officers inside and outside prisons. The US State Department, pre-Trump, denounced torture and abuse in prisons and called conditions there “harsh and life-threatening”, even prior to the state of emergency. And yet, the detention of innocent people was deemed “collateral damage” by Vice President Félix Ulloa in July 2022.
These extreme security policies require absolute power. Bukele won his first presidential election by exploiting the country’s deep resentment with the two traditional parties, who had been unable to solve the problem of structural violence. His party, Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas), and allies achieved an absolute majority in Congress in the subsequent election.
Within an hour of the first session of a Bukele-controlled Congress, in May 2021, his party carried out a self-coup by unconstitutionally dismissing the Attorney General and all five Constitutional Court judges, and replaced them with loyalists. The co-opted judiciary has allowed him to block any possibility of dissent in his government. Elon Musk recently praised how El Salvador had supposedly “impeached” judges on X and hinted at plans to emulate the Salvadoran takeover of the judiciary in the US: “That is what it took to fix El Salvador. Same applies to America.”
A toy country for crypto bros
Mid-celebration, a frenzied Bukele let out a brief burst of honesty: "There are many things I don’t know,” he confessed.
That control has enabled Bukele to make other controversial decisions without pushback. The first and perhaps strangest one came only a month after taking over the judicial system. On the 5th of June 2021 Bukele announced—not to the Salvadoran people, but in English to an audience of crypto bros in Miami—that we were to become the first nation in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. It took his Congress only three days to hastily draft a two-page-long bill officially changing the currency and forcing businesses to accept digital payments, and a mere five hours to pretend to debate and vote on it minutes past midnight. They did not even realize that two articles in the bill contradicted each other.
As this took place, President Bukele manically explained the details of the new legislation in a Twitter space organized by his new entourage of crypto-entrepreneurs from Europe and the US—once again, in English. They congratulated each other as a supermajority passed the bill and clapped like bratty children who had just been given a small country as a new toy.
Mid-celebration, a frenzied Bukele let out a brief burst of honesty: “There are many things I don’t know,” he confessed. His admission summed up the erratic gamble he had just forced the country into, and his general style of government: “We are living by the day, learning by the minute. I really don’t know what it means or what the limits of this are. I just know it’s gonna be great.”
Four years later, Bitcoin is no longer legal tender. Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, Bukele’s Congress modified the law and even removed mentions of Bitcoin as “tender” (Spanish: “moneda”) in the 2021 law, rendering the text nonsensical.
Crypto was never widely adopted in El Salvador, nor did it bring economic prosperity. By all measures, the experiment failed and cost us money we did not have. And yet, the illusion persists. Bukele continues to buy Bitcoin with the “state wallet” without accountability, and crypto-fans remain hopeful that the small tropical nation will once turn into the libertarian utopia they dreamed up in that Twitter space.
We journalists and human rights activists face the near-impossible task of defending the institutions that half of a country seems to reject.
Defending democracy against the people’s will
In spite of the human right violations, the attacks on democratic institutions and the failed monetary policy enacted by his government, Bukele was reelected on February 4th, 2024. The Salvadoran Constitution does not allow for two consecutive presidential terms, but legality is a minor inconvenience when you hold absolute power.
His second landslide victory turned El Salvador into “the first democratic country with a one-party-system”, Bukele proclaimed during his late-night celebration before thousands of cheering fans. He dedicated the end of his speech to what he perceives as his enemies: us. As he attacked journalists, he pointed directly at the fenced press tribune behind the crowd. Many of his supporters turned to look at us, sneering, whistling—I even saw a man spit in our direction.
I know that Bukele’s vitriol against independent journalism has taken hold in the general population. But to see it, to hear it, to experience that hatred directly from my own people was heartbreaking. The rest of his speech was muffled in my ears; I could only focus on their rage. And my rage: I am here for you, I do this work for you, why can’t you all see that?
My trance was interrupted by a jarring drum roll. Bukele closed his dystopian speech with It’s the End of the World as We Know It (But I Feel Fine). Confetti cannons planted inside the press area went off, startling us. We watched in stunned silence as he waved from his balcony to the beat of R.E.M. and had to wait until most of the crowd had dissipated.
That night, the fight felt over for us. As it might have felt for many in the US after Trump’s second victory. But the popularity of caudillos like Bukele—like Trump—will not hold forever. Bukele is already facing fierce opposition, especially after his decision to overturn a popular anti-mining law. The embarrassing failure of the Bitcoin adoption is still a thorn on his side. The prison deal with Trump is finally putting international pressure on the fantasy of Bukele’s security policy.
We journalists and human rights activists face the near impossible task of defending the institutions that half of a country seems to reject. But as with Trump, people who were once swayed by his populist rhetoric are waking up as the consequences of his policies become tangible in their everyday lives. This reinforces our conviction that our frail democracy can be rebuilt and transformed into something stronger, more egalitarian. Every changed mind drives us to keep going.
About the Author
Lya Cuéllar is a Salvadoran journalist based in Berlin and co-founder of the feminist media organisation Alharaca. Her work focuses on democracy and human rights both back home and in Germany.
