El Salvador
El Salvador exhibits mid-range performance in Representation and Participation and low-range performance in Rights and Rule of Law. It falls among the bottom 25 per cent of countries in the world with regard to multiple factors related to all four categories of democracy in the Global State of Democracy framework. Over the last five years, it has declined in several factors across all categories of democracy. El Salvador is the most densely populated country in Central America and is highly vulnerable to natural hazards and the effects of climate change. Remittances are a major source of the country’s income, comprising over a quarter of its GDP in 2021.
Most of the Salvadoran population are Mestizo (86.3 per cent), followed by white Salvadorans (12.7 per cent) and a small Indigenous (0.2 per cent) minority. However, Indigenous-led organizations have questioned census data, as persisting discrimination has discouraged self-identification of Salvadorans as Indigenous. Poverty and exclusion have contributed to the displacement of Indigenous persons within El Salvador and driven migration.
Politics in El Salvador today are driven largely by concerns over the country’s high rate of crime and violence, which is directly linked to the Salvadoran Civil War (1979-1992). The rise of gang activity in El Salvador coincided with the return of Salvadoran migrants from the U.S. following the conflict. After a period of historic lows in violence (post-2016), renewed violence in March 2022 sparked a state of emergency, leading to the arrest of over 60,000 people for alleged gang affiliations. Under the state of emergency, Salvadorans have been vulnerable to widespread human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrest, due process violations, torture, death in custody, and lack of access to justice. Violence in the country remains a core driver of politics as it disproportionately affects women and LGBTQIA+ people and threatens social development and economic growth. Provisions for gender equality are established in law, and a third of seats in Congress are held by women, yet the rate of femicide and significant intimate partner violence, as well as the absolute prohibition of abortion, remain as particular challenges to their development.
Deprivation is also a concern. While the poverty rate in El Salvador has declined significantly overall, the country still struggles to secure basic necessities, such as access to education, particularly in rural areas. In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, but concerns remain around the currency’s lack of transparency, volatility, and accessibility in areas with limited internet penetration and digital literacy.
Contemporary politics in El Salvador is also marked by the concentration of executive power. Some of the most notable recent examples include the president’s 2020 order for the armed forces and police to occupy the legislative assembly to coerce support on an equipment bill, a movement to fire the attorney general and replace five judges of the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber, declining judicial independence, and weakened media integrity. Journalists, alongside civil society groups, have been subject to harassment and increasing hostility by government supporters.
Looking ahead, it will be important to watch how institutions deal with the president’s move to circumvent the Constitution in order to run for re-election in 2024. The consequences of this could impact Rule of Law. Also, it will be important to watch how the introduction of Bitcoin impacts corruption. Finally, the government’s crackdown on gang activity could affect a range of Civil Liberties, especially in light of evidence of phenomena like deaths in police custody.
Monthly Event Reports
February 2024 | Nayib Bukele is reelected as El Salvador’s president
On 4 February Nayib Bukele was re-elected as president. Preliminary results, based on 70.25 per cent of polling stations, indicate that Bukele garnered more than ten times the number of votes won by the second-place candidate. Exit polls and Bukele’s own team predict his victory, with above 80 per cent of all votes. The Tribunal Supremo Electoral announced a recount of 30 per cent of presidential ballots and all legislative votes, due to significant glitches in its results reporting software and website. Official participation figures are not yet available. Bukele ran for a second term thanks to a 2021 Supreme Court decision that bypassed a constitutional prohibition on consecutive re-election. Pending completion of legislative vote tallying, Bukele has asserted that his party, Nuevas Ideas, will obtain almost total control of the National Assembly (58 out of 60 congress members). Polls also predict overwhelming support for Nuevas Ideas. OAS observers highlighted that elections took place in peaceful conditions, although in the context of a nearly two year old “state of exception” that was said to have impacted free speech and competition. Also noted were technological, logistical and training shortcomings which contributed to a significant delay in the transmission of results. Compared to the last legislative elections, the number of women candidates increased from 36 to 39 per cent.
August 2023 | Entire administrative region of Cabañas is sieged by the military
President Nayib Bukele’s government has imposed a military siege on the department of Cabañas, one of El Salvador’s 14 administrative regions. According to Bukele’s statements on social media, the objective of the operation, which involves 7,000 military and 1,000 police officers, is to prevent gang members from fleeing and to cut their supply lines. Even though the government has carried out similar operations in towns and cities since it first declared a state of emergency in March 2022, it is the first time this kind of operation is implemented in an entire administrative region, which has a population of around 150,000 people.
July 2023 | Organized Crime Law reform and decree harshen prosecution of organized crime
The Legislative Assembly approved reforms to the Organized Crime Law that will increase sentences for gang leaders and will temporarily enable mass trials of up to 900 defendants as part of the structure of a criminal enterprise, instead of being processed individually. Mass hearings and arraignments had already taken place and been criticised by UN and human rights experts as infringing due process rights, including presumption of innocence. El Salvador now has the world’s highest incarceration rate, and mass incarceration during the country’s state of emergency has led to a significant backlog in cases, which is how the government justifies the measure. To this day, nearly 72,000 people have been detained, accused of collaborating or participating in gangs.
May 2023 | CSO report details widespread use of torture in strategy against gangs
Local CSO Cristosal issued a report this month on the first year of El Salvador’s state of emergency to address violence from gangs. The report details the widespread use of torture against persons deprived of their liberty and documents the deaths of 153 people in custody, all of whom were held in pretrial detention. Numerous cases of suspicious deaths from immersive asphyxiation and strangulation are also detailed. The report documents physical evidence and interviews with detainees, and echoes previous criticism leveled by international non-governmental organizations such as Human Rights Watch against president Bukele’s strategy to counter gang violence.
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