Trump Administration’s Affinity For Salvadoran Dictator Shows Authoritarian Nature
El Salvador is a human rights nightmare. So why is alternative left media silent about it?
Trump shaking hands with Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele. [Source: bbc.com]
In late March, the Trump administration made headlines for dusting off an 18th century wartime act to justify deporting 200 Venezuelan immigrants who were sent to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT).
The Venezuelan deportees were accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang, which was on the U.S. terrorist list. None of the deportees, however, have faced trial and relatives say that at least some of them were not gang members but simply had tattoos.
On March 19, Yahoo News ran an article about the horrific conditions in CECOT, where over 60 inmates are caged in single cells and confined 23.5 hours of the day without having any opportunity to ever go outside.
The only furniture is “tiered metal bunks, with no sheets, pillows or mattresses, an open toilet, a cement basin and plastic bucket for washing and a large jug for drinking water,” CNN senior correspondent David Culver said of what he saw at the prison, adding that the inmates “do not work. They are not allowed books or a deck of cards or letters from home. Plates of food are stacked outside the cells at mealtimes and pulled through the bars. No meat is ever served. The 30-minute daily respite is merely to leave the cell for the central hallway for group exercise or Bible readings.”
[Source: digitaljournal.com]
El Salvador is ruled by Nayib Bukele, 43, a bitcoin enthusiast known for his leather jackets and backward baseball caps who jokingly refers to himself as “the world’s coolest dictator.”
Human Rights Watch wrote seriously that “widespread human rights violations were enabled by President Bukele’s swift dismantling of democratic institutions since taking office in 2019, which has left virtually no independent government bodies that can serve as a check on the executive branch or ensure redress for victims of abuse.”
In 2020, Bukele ordered the country’s military to occupy its parliament and intimidate the legislature to pass new funding for the country’s security forces so that they could carry out a draconian war on crime.
“The world’s coolest dictator” speaking at the 2024 Conservative Political Action conference. [source: bbc.com]
Since declaring emergency rule in 2022, Bukele has locked up at least 85,000 people, giving El Salvador one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.
Most of those accused of gang ties have not been tried in court and have no right to an attorney.
More than 370 people have died in overcrowded prisons with insufficient water and hygiene, according to investigations by Cristosal, a human rights group.
Bukele is in many ways a Central American version of Rodrigo Duterte, the former Philippines President who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for presiding over massacres in waging an overzealous war on drugs and crime.
[Source: edition.cnn.com]
Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern (D) said that there was no equivalent in Latin America to the levels of abuses taking place under Bukele’s war on crime, “not even during the worst years of military dictatorship.”
The latter is a reference to the 1980s when the Reagan administration and CIA supported death squad operations that set the groundwork for the continued violence gripping El Salvador today.
Ronald Reagan’s support for Salvadoran death squads under the guise of anticommunism left a legacy of violence in El Salvador that has been hard to overcome. [Source: peacehistory-usfp.org]
This violence has been compounded by neoliberal economic policies.
Signed in 2005, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) decimated local industry by favoring foreign multinational corporations and took away job prospects for Salvadoran youth who became easy prey for gangs.
Bukele started his career as a member of the left wing Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN), which had waged guerrilla warfare against the military dictatorship in the 1980s after the assassination of the Archbishop Oscar Romero and then became a leading political party.
However, after becoming mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlan in 2015, Bukele was ousted from the FMLN and formed his own political party (Nuevas Ideas) that adopted a right-wing and fascistic platform.
The latter did not bother the Biden administration, which expanded foreign assistance and provided police aid and military equipment to Bukele’s government whom human-rights groups accused of carrying out arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances, and torture.
Reflecting its own authoritarian bent, the Trump administration has grown even closer to Bukele.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised Bukele for supposedly bringing “freedom to El Salvador” and security that could allow in his view for greater foreign investment.
Marco Rubio and Nayib Bukele. [Source: diario.elmundo.sv]
Bukele courted Trump’s support, inviting Trump’s children and key allies, including disgraced former Florida representative Matt Gaetz and former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, to attend his inauguration for a constitutionally dubious second term in San Salvador and making a primetime address to the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference.[1]
Donald Trump Jr. takes a selfie with the world’s “coolest dictator.” [Source: diario.elmundo.sv]
Gaetz posted on X: “Nayib Bukele locks up the gangs, throws out the corrupt judges, unapologetically embraces God, and rebukes globalism with facts and results. He is beloved by his people, and an inspiration to the Western World.”
If this is an inspiration, we certainly are in trouble.
Distorted Priorities of “Left” Media when it Comes to Central America
One thing that is curious is the relative silence in the alternative/left media universe about Bukele and El Salvador.
The flagship “lefty” program Democracy Now, for example, has not run any segments on them recently.
By contrast, in early February it ran a heavily biased segment on Nicaragua that warned of a new dictatorship there.
The segment featured Reed Brody, who during the 1980s published a report on Contra [counter-revolutionary] violence backed by the CIA. Now Brody is on the side of the CIA, claiming that Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega heads a bloody dictatorship reminiscent of the Somoza’s the Sandinistas had overthrown.
Reed Brody [Source: democracynow.org]
But Brody is out of touch with political realities in Nicaragua and repeats State Department/CIA disinformation that is part of a regime change propaganda.
Brody, for example, impugns Ortega—who has genuine popular support—for violently cracking down in 2018 on protesters that actually mounted a violent coup against his legally elected government.
Many of the protesters received funding from the National Endowment for Demcracy (NED), which finances civil society groups and media in foreign countries the U.S. targets for regime change.
Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega speaks to large crowd of supporters. [Source: owp.com]
Brody further neglects that many of those labeled as political prisoners by human rihgts organizations—functioning as adjuncts of the U.S. State Department—are extreme right-wingers with violent proclivities. Many also have ties to U.S. political leaders.
Brody additionally neglects to mention the significant social gains in Nicaragua under Sandinista rule, resulting from its socialistic philosophy.[2]
The contrast between the political situation in Nicaragua and El Salvador is generally night and day. So why is a supposedly progressive media outlet warning us about an impending dictatorship there, while ignoring the human rights horror show in El Salvador?
[1] Not to be outdone, the Biden administration also sent a delegation to Bukele’s inauguration to indicate its support for Bukele.
[2] For an antidote to Democracy Now’s biased coverage of Nicaragua, see John Perry, “The ‘Human Rights Industry’ and Nicaragua,” CovertAction Magazine, February 6, 2024; and John Perry, “Is USAID a ‘Criminal Organization?’—In Nicaragua, the Evidence Suggests It Is,” CoverAction Magazine, February 25, 2025.
I remember when Democracy Now first started, it called itself “The Exception to the Rulers”. Not anymore. Now it is “The war and Peace Report”. When it comes to foreign policy, they are good on Palestinian, but that is about it, in my opinion.