Name a lovely Latin American country that’s smaller than Massachusetts. It’s dotted with charming mountain villages, produces fine coffee, and has great beaches. Can’t guess? Hint: It’s home to the biggest prison in the Western Hemisphere, and more than 1 percent of its citizens are behind bars. The government says none will ever be released.
Until a few months ago, few Americans gave much thought to El Salvador. Some old folks remembered the civil war of the 1980s, which set off a wave of solidarity actions in the United States. Otherwise, El Salvador didn’t appear on our radar any more than neighboring Honduras or Guatemala.
That has suddenly changed. This month, El Salvador’s authoritarian leader, Nayib Bukele, self-styled “world’s coolest dictator,” appeared at the Oval Office for a lovefest with President Trump. They discussed America’s newest export to El Salvador: human beings.
Trump has sent hundreds of prisoners, whom he describes as criminal aliens, to the sprawling El Salvador prison known as CECOT: Terrorism Confinement Center. One of them, Kilmar Abrego García, was sent there mistakenly but has been unable to win release, setting off a mini-scandal in Washington. Trump has said he would like to begin sending “home-grown criminals” to the CECOT prison. That could turn it into a Guantanamo for Americans — a warehouse into which detainees can be thrown with no access to American law.
This prospect pulls the United States into one of the most remarkable stories to unfold in the Western Hemisphere during this century. Bukele has liquidated democracy while transforming El Salvador from the most murderous country in the world to one of the safest.
When Bukele assumed the presidency in 2019, his country was in the grip of terror gangs. Machete murders and dismemberments were common, businesses could not operate without paying protection, buses and taxis were regularly burned, boys were pressed into the gangs, and girls became their slaves. Many Salvadorans survived by barricading themselves inside their homes.
In 2022 Bukele suddenly declared a state of emergency. He sent the army to capture every Salvadoran with what looked like a gang tattoo and everyone who was said by neighbors to be a gang member. Thousands are packed into the CECOT prison, which has a capacity of 40,000 and may soon be doubled in size. Inmates have no contact with lawyers, relatives, or anyone else in the outside world. Trials are desultory, with a hundred or more defendants lined up and sentenced by an anonymous judge, denied the chance to prove their innocence. Human rights advocates estimate that as many as one-third of CECOT inmates may be innocent.
Bukele has abolished due process. Any suspect may be jailed indefinitely without appeal. This is by any standard a monstrous violation of basic human rights. Yet it has produced an astonishingly felicitous result. Gang violence has disappeared. Salvadorans freely enjoy life. A country oppressed by terror is now a tourist destination. It is an eerie tradeoff: At least 1 percent of the population is imprisoned, perhaps for life, so the rest can live in peace.
“We accomplished the unthinkable and cleaned up our society,” Bukele has said. “They were worried about the human rights of the killers. Of course they have human rights, I don’t say they don’t, they’re humans. But if you have to prioritize, what would you prioritize?
Trump seemed to agree. “I just want to just say hello to the people of El Salvador and say they have one hell of a president,” he said at their White House meeting. “He’s very tough on crime.”
Bukele’s version of “tough on crime” doesn’t only mean locking up huge numbers of people without trial. He has also forced Supreme Court justices to retire, crushed the press, intimidated opposition parties, and run for reelection despite a constitutional ban. That wouldn’t work in the United States — at least not yet. The idea of sending American inmates into the Salvadoran gulag, however, is a step toward outsourcing our criminal justice system to a country where the rule of law is nonexistent.
Salvadoran and American history have been intertwined for a century. The United States supported a succession of Salvadoran dictators, but the period of dictatorship set off an armed rebellion in 1980. Because the rebels were led by Marxist supporters of Fidel Castro, the Reagan administration poured hundreds of millions of dollars into defeating them. It tolerated horrific atrocities committed by the Salvadoran military.
The savagery of combat and death squads drove hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans to flee. Many ended up in Los Angeles, where Salvadoran boys and young men were absorbed into the culture of street gangs. Beginning in the 1990s, after the civil war ended, they were deported back home. They brought the gang culture with them. The terror that these gangs imposed on their homeland has its roots in an exile experience that was set off indirectly by American military intervention there.
Bukele’s radical solution to criminal violence is immensely popular. Polls give him an approval rating of at least 75 percent. Leaders around the hemisphere dream of emulating him. Trump may be among them.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
