On the last couple of days of my trip to Alsavador, I finally got to take some time off reporting and just relax with my family. One of the first things we did was take a tour of the house that my parents built in their hometown, San Miguel.
It's Okira, yeah there from fourteen.
The plot of land that this house is built on was bought by my great grandmother almost one hundred years ago. It's the land where my grandmother was born, then my mom and my sisters too, Where there was once only a wooden shack on dirt. My parents built a five bedroom house with concrete walls and ceramic tile floors.
Yeah, it's nicetyle.
It's not the taj Mahal, but it's nice, comfortable and homie, and it's nice to see my mom so happy and excited. And while my mom is really happy to be retired, my dad's happy too, but for very different reasons. So here I am in the finest famous Langer, my mom and dad's restaurant that they opened uh next to their house in San Miguel.
Uh.
It's hard to describe. Behind the house, my dad has constructed a giant, and I mean giant dance hall slash restaurant. He named it e Langer the Hangar and made the whole place airplane themed for reasons unknown. And on top of this restaurant is a life sized single seater metal plane that my dad welded out of scrap metal. And my dad will probably tell everyone that you can see it from space, which is not true, but you can
see it on Google Maps. For Google Maps, you you can look down and see the plane that was on top of my dad's restaurant, Elangarre. The plane is painted bright yellow with a red racing stripe down the sides, and when I asked him how he got it on the roof, he told me he paid a crane to come and lift it onto the building. On the side of the plane is a sticker with the cover art for the last show that I made, Princess of South Beach, which if you need a palate cleanser from this show,
that's a good bet. I have to say I never thought this day would come my whole life. My parents told us that when they we retired, they wanted to go live in El Salvador, that they wanted to live out their old age in the place that they still thought of as home. My dad has dreamed of opening this restaurant and getting to MC karaoke nights here his entire life, but that just never really seemed like a possibility.
It was dangerous to open a business here. You didn't know how much trouble the gangs were going to give you if they let you do it at all. But in twenty twenty one, after spending their whole lives working in the US, my parents finally felt confident enough to do it. And there's one person who my mom credits with making that happens book.
So Lueirasier was penctralive.
General.
Yes, I guess a really.
President naib Bukele. My dad loves to tease my mom about how much she loves him. In twenty nineteen, naib Bukele became president of El Salvador and the sole focus of his administration was getting rid of the gangs to make El Salvador a safe place to live, and in large part he has done that. There is finally peace in El Salvador, but the price for that piece has been very, very steep. I'm Jasmine Romero and this is
sacred Scandal. Nation of Saints episode ten the Future. On a hot summer morning in twenty nineteen, a then thirty seven year old Naive Bugle walks across the steps of the National Palace in San Salvador. It's across the plaza from La Catrel, the cathedral where Oscar Romero's funeral was held, and just like that day almost forty years ago, the plaza is filled with Salvadorans, but this time they're not crying tears of mourning. They're openly weeping with tears of joy.
Bukele has a thick black beard and slicked back hair. He stands smiling before his adoring crowd, and he's wrapped in a blue and white sash that's emblazoned with the crest of the Salvadoran flag. This young man has just become the first person to win the Salvadoran presidency as part of a new party, No Lessivas, No Ideas, and this party it's important for a lot of reasons, but mainly because it's considered an alternative to the two parties that have been in power since the end of the war.
The FMLN and ARENA have taken turns running the government since nineteen ninety two, and both sides have been charged with corruption. Presidents from both parties have been convicted of embezzling millions of dollars, all while the country plunged further and further into gang controlled violence. And so, in many ways, Bouken's rise is seen as a rejection of the politics of the war embrace of a newer, more relevant kind
of politics. So on this sunny day, Bucele steps up to the mic like a preacher on the pulpit to address the nation.
Nostro pays is common inia fermo No sto cara toos puiarlo no stock calorratos tom marga, No sto caloratoos so freedom pocomermandos.
Familia.
And he tells the crowd, our country is like a sick child and it's up to all of us to take care of it, even if that means drinking medicina a marga, bitter medicine. But the crowd doesn't flinch. They love him, and it's clear to see why. He's a young man with an excellent smile and a ton of charisma.
Nod.
When coming into office, Bugle's big promise to the people of El Salvador was to get rid of the gangs MS thirteen and Barrio gangs that had terrorized the population for decades and given the country the title of murder capital of the world. But to get rid of those gangs, Bugle needed money, lots of it. Within six months of taking office, Bugle asked the Legislative Assembly the salvador In Congress to pass a two hundred million dollars spending bill.
To pay for.
Oral his plan to combat the gangs. But there was a lot of questions about exactly how that money would
be used. Buchen's administration claimed that he couldn't reveal that information because the plans were all top secret, and when he couldn't provide answers for how he would spend the money, the Legislative Assembly signaled that they wouldn't pass the bill, which really pissed off Bugle claimed that this was all a game of dirty politics, that the members of the Assembly were just working against him because he wasn't part of their political parties at AA and the f MLN.
He told the legislatives, sent you have until this weekend to get me the money or else, And by the weekend the world got a taste of the bitter medicine that Bugle had promised.
The country's soldiers entered the building while President Naib was about to address lawmakers. The soldiers were armed with automatic weapons. The reason for such action was to step up the pressure on lawmakers to force them to back a proposed plan to fight crime.
On February ninth, twenty twenty, Bucele stormed the Assembly building with forty armed soldiers behind him to preside over the voting and ensure that his bill passed. It was a move straight out of an authoritarian textbook, and it made headlines around the world, condemning this action as anti democratic.
COSEI miiuel vivanco victoria hum and RAI watch par las America's opin to Kenixsimi soon for urgent organization The americanos.
Cordo a military military age user algo vierno.
Is tamos protestando ericamente tito.
Singressol latio.
But in El Salvador it drew cheering crowds. It was seen as a power move by someone who was finally willing to do whatever it takes to get rid of the gangs. Bukele even leaned into the international fame changing his Twitter bio to quote the world's coolest dictator. In the end, buccell got the money that he needed and he got to work executing his grand vision for Al Salvador,
one that included a lot of big, flashy projects. He invested in the now famous Surf City, an entire beach town sponsored by the government to promote El Salvador as a global surf destination, And in perhaps the flashiest and most confusing move, Bugle made bitcoin one of the official legal currencies in El Salvador.
De Bitcoin lawmakers in El Salvador broke into applause after voting to approve bitcoin as legal tender on Wednesday, making the Central American country the first in the world to fully adopt the cryptocurrency.
And while these things might sound a little outlandish for Salvadorans, it was really a breath of fresh air. For once the world was hearing a story about us that wasn't about gangs or death and destruction. It was something good, or at least it was something different. Plus, Bucele might be a little eccentric, but his plans seemed to be working. Within the first two years of his presidency, the murder
rate dropped by fifty two percent. To be fair, the murder rate had already been on the decline since it's high in twenty fifteen, but still, even for people living in the US, people like my parents, the progress Bugele was making was clear.
El siempre siempre quiso di questuviera el pa mejor peroo pora.
Yes, my parents had always wanted to come back to Alsavor, and while my dad was a little more cavalier about the threat of gang violence, my mom was more fearful. She worried about being extorted or threatened. But with the progress that Bugele was making, my mom finally felt confident enough to sell their home in the United States, and in twenty twenty one they moved to San Miguel permanently, to the house that they had spent a lifetime building.
Twenty twenty one is also the year that Bugele's party Novasiveas overwhelmingly won seats in the Legislative Assembly, and that Legislative Assembly promptly voted to oust five sitting Supreme Court justices and basically got the entire judicial branch of the government. In doing so, cases across the country were dropped in an instant, including one seeking justice for the victims of Elmosote.
But again this move drew cheers from many, as Bugle insisted that these were necessary steps to weed out corruption and fight the gangs. With the murder rate under control and the country rapidly drawing more bitcoin and surf tourists, it seems like Bugel could do no wrong. That is until the weekend of March twenty seventh of twenty twenty two.
Tonight about that is under state of emergency after a deadly weekend of gang violence, the National Civil Police reporting fourteen people murdered on Friday and sixty two the following day, making Saturday one of the deadliest days in thirty years.
Over two thousand arrests made in just four days in response to one of the bloodiest weekends in the country in thirty years, the National Civil Police reporting sixty two homicides on Saturday alone.
All over the country, there were reports of murders and not gang shootouts, seemingly random murders. In the span of a weekend, eighty seven people were killed in El Salvador. One body was even hauntingly laid out on the road to Bucelees, surf city, after the break the message behind these.
Murders Tonight, El Salvador is under state of emergency after a deadly weekend of gang violence.
After all the progress made, it really felt like a slap in the face for Salvadorans to have the deadliest weekend on record in more than a century. These murders were of seemingly innocent civilians, and all the reports signaled that they were carried out by gang members, gangs that President Bugle claimed to have under control. The murders seemed to be a direct message aimed at the president himself, news that he did not take lightly.
Las amb Salvador solicitude the president and najib rehimen deception an alpais queda palo el projecto treto ke containing rejimeng de escepsion.
In an emergency session of the Legislative Assembly, Bukele called for unestallo de excepcion, a state of exception. What Bukele was asking for was an immediate suspension of civil liberties once guaranteed in the constitution, so that he could declare all out war on the gangs, and with his party controlling judicial and legislative branches, the state of exception easily passed. Within that state of exception, the government could now arrest
anyone for any reason. There would be no presumption of innocence, no need for warrants, and no guarantee for when you'd be released. Agents of the state could come and pick you up on the mere suspicion that you were a gang member. Bukelet also approved the use of deadly force for officers of the state. Overnight, billboards went up across the country showing the number for tip lines, where you could anonymously report anyone who you thought might be in
a gang or affiliated with one. I even saw a couple on my trip on the highway there was a sign listed or I guess like a billboard over the highway that's said, with your tax dollars, we keep fighting the gangs. And there was a phone number and it said declare your rent, meaning the rent that people paid monthly to the gangs to keep them from bothering them. But it wasn't just gang members that they were after. It was anyone who could be affiliated with the gangs.
You could be arrested for being a collaborator, someone suspected of giving the gangs information or money, or of hiding a gang member. Within days of the state of exception being declared, the Bukee administration sent the police and military out to conduct massive raids. Thousands of people were rounded up and sent to processing centers. Children as young as twelve were sent into overcrowded prison cells to await processing
in the now backlogged judicialsts. Between March and December of twenty twenty two, over sixty thousand people were detained by Bugeli's administration, and to hold all of these arrested people, Bugele approved the building of a megaprison with a capacity for forty thousand people, one of the largest in the world.
The Terrorism Confinement Center can fit up to forty thousand inmates and is considered to be the largest jail in the Americas.
The president announced that he was moving thousands of high ranking gang members to the country's new so called mega jail.
It looks like a sea of skin and tattoos. These images released by El Salvador's government shows the transfer of about two thousand inmates.
Human rights groups around the globe criticized these actions, saying that the roundups were accept that many of those detained and arrested had no verifiable connection with the gangs. Tebukele and his government were using the state of exception to arrest and threaten those who opposed his regime, including environmental activists, journalists, and academics in opposition to the administration, and that abuses
and death were happening within the prison system. But still the Salvadoran people supported the president all over social media, Salvadorans snapped back at the president's critics.
How can you be worried about criminals human rights?
They didn't care about our human rights when they killed us.
Anyone who criticizes the government is for the gangs and should be arrested.
If some innocent people have to suffer to get rid of the gangs, it's worth it.
It feels weird to say this, but on a certain level I get it. Looking across the last forty years at how much the Salvadoran people have suffered. What price wouldn't they be willing to pay for peace, for a chance that their children could grow up in safety. And anyway, it was the gangs who provoked him, right, They're the ones who killed almost one hundred people in a weekend. Well as it turns out.
For the mostly Confianza.
But miyao, mi mono.
What you're hearing is a conversation between a senior member of the Bugle administration and a leader of MS thirteen. Remember in twenty twenty one when the murder rate dropped by fifty percent. Well, as it turns out, that's because Bugle had a pact with the gangs basedummer reporting by the Salvador news outlet El Faro. In exchange for lowering the murdery, the Bukele administration agreed to give preferential treatment to high ranking gang members in prison. That's what this
conversation we're listening to is about, Antossente Royer. In the recording, a Bugle official is talking to a gang leader and telling them how much their administration has done to show them its loyalty and good faith, and he even admits to personally escorting a gang leader named Elgruk from his prison cell in El Salvador across the border to freedom in Guatemala. It was the breakdown of these negotiations that led to the spike in murders during that deadly weekend
in March of twenty twenty two. The reactions to this news from the public have varied. Some of Bukeli's supporters say that the news is fake, that Ilfaro is simply against the president and working in service of the gangs. Others say that the president was justified in doing whatever he needed to do to get rid of the gangs, even if that includes these kinds of negotiations. Either way, the reports of these negotiations didn't affect the president's approval ratings,
which are currently around ninety two percent. In September of twenty twenty two, as Bugel was nearing the end of his term as president, he decided to address the country for a special announcement. The venue stood in stark contrast to the sunny morning when he took office. Instead of the open steps of the National Palace, the announcement took place in a darkened conference room well into the night.
In place of the adoring crowds, a small group of well dressed officials and foreign dignitaries stood clapping, welcoming Bugle to take his place at the dais. Behind the president is a towering portrait of a man dressed in white robes with a cross necklace draped across his chest. It's a portrait of a man with some seriously enviable eyebrows, whose face carries the weight of the entire salvadorn people. The man, of course, is Oscar Romero, who was named
saint in twenty eighteen. President Bucele steps in front of the portrait of Oscar Romero and proceeds to tell the audience that he plans to run for president once again.
Esporeso quefamilia ano esi correcom candiato a preci.
The audience collaps. No one is surprised, despite the fact that this move goes directly against the constitution of El Salvador. According to that constitution, no president is allowed to remain in office for two consecutive terms. To run again is the equivalent of an American president running for a third time. But Bugele doesn't care. With the support of so much of the Salvadoran population behind him, he knows that this
rule doesn't apply to him, and he's right. The unconstitutionality won't matter, and in February of twenty twenty four, Bugele easily wins his second term. With his win, he controls all three branches of government, such all the power in El Salvador outside a full military guard stands at attention. Since implementing the state of exception, almost ninety thousand people
have been arrested in Al Salvador. At least two hundred and forty people have died in police custody, and while the murder rate is now one of the lowest in the world, reports of disappearances are up, and it's hard to get a solid number on exactly how many because Bugeli's administration has changed the way it counts disappearances, but human rights organizations say that there are over twenty eight
thousand cases of disappearances currently open in El Salvador. After making this series and seeing how much death and destruction came from the hands of the government, Bugeles rise is really scary to me. Salvador in history is full of governments using order as a justification for horrendous acts of violence. There are always innocent people who are collateral damage, whether they're peasants or priests, or student activists or my Dia Margarita.
I went on this journey to understand my family and our history, and over the course of the last two years, I've realized that our story isn't just ours. It's the story of a country and a history that's too easy to repeat. Seeing the military on our streets, searching people at bus stops, arresting people with impunity, it all just looks like the start of the same cycle over again. But my mom, she sees it differently.
With Mirida Tingos Struta Viatopor Nadi Nipo, al kal Nipur presidentes Piro alfink Pusami Esperanza, sen Al yinqus Promtiplin though he is naibuke.
My mom had never voted in a savador In election before twenty nineteen. Since she left the country as a teenager, she's watched a government after government come in and failed to protect its own people, first the death squads and the war, and then the gangs. After spending a lifetime waiting for Al Savador to be safe, the fact that Bukela has made the country livable for her is enough to win her love and support.
Ike boys.
In a world where you have to choose between freedom and safety, safety wins every time. Al Savor now holds the title for the country with the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world, and bus approval rating has never been higher. My mom is part of the ninety two percent of Salvadorans who say they approve of the president's actions. On one of my last days in al Savador, my parents decided that we should take a trip to a nearby beach, Elkuco. It's about a thirty minute drive
away from my parents' house. My mom called up Mitiavilma to see if she wanted to come too, and she said yes, but only if she could bring along my little cousin, Anguel Jokin. He's seven and he rarely gets a chance to go to the beach. Angueil Jokin's mother, my cousin Carmen, is in prison for being in a gang. His father is too. Back when Mitia Margarrita died, Mitiavilma took in her kids and now she's raising a new
generation of kids left behind, including Angheljokin. We all pile into my dad's pickup truck and head off to Alkugo. I remember trips like this when I was a kid. Every time we came to visit. We had to go to Alkugo and need some fresh fish and play in the warm ocean water. The beach is different now there are more resorts and the streets are better paved, but it's still full of old men coming in with the catch of the day and little brown children playing in the sand.
It's one nineteen in the afternoon and I'm at Elcucouco. She's the closest beach to my family's house in San Miguel, is about a thirty forty minute drive, and I'm here with my aunts and my cousin. The beach is beautiful. The water is like backwater. You keep walking and walking and it doesn't pass your knees. It's amazing.
As we walk down the beach, I noticed a pickup truck that's driving down along the water. The truck parks and four men hop out of the back.
Well.
This is surprising. Four guys and for four soldiers and full fatigues and rifles, just just scrolling down the beach. The soldiers are wearing helmets, boots, and carrying what looked like M sixteen rifles. As they walk past us, I can see that they're inspecting us. They linger for a moment, but then they continue to walk down the beach. Their boots leave heavy footprints in the sand. As of this recording, the state of Exception in El Salvador has been renewed
twenty six times. There is no timeline for when civil liberties will be re established, and until the state of exception is dropped, El Salvador will in essence be a police state, one where there is safety but not freedom. After a good meal of biscalo and some time laying in the hammock, it's time to go. As the sun starts to set, we start packing up to make the
drive back to San Miguel. But before we go, I decide to take one last step in the water, and I ask my little cousin, ang uell Joaquin if he wants to come to He smiles a big, gap toothed grin and takes off running for the water. I catch up to him and hold his hand. As we run towards the water. I watch his little feet pound the sand as he dives headfirst into the waves. In another lifetime, this boy might have been conscripted into the army or
into the Geria. He might have left his family to travel north and cross a river, or stayed home and become a marero, a foot soldier in a street gang. These pathways are still possible, but for now he can be what he is, a little boy enjoying a day in the sun with his cousin from the States. I don't know what the future will bring for Al Salvador, how long Bugel will be in office. I don't know what Anguel Joaquin's future will be. But at least for now,
there is a future to dream of. There is hope for what this boy might become, for what this place might become.
And Anghel Hacquin is having a good time. Raby there Ahala.
If you're interested in learning more about Bukele and the current state of El Salvador, I highly recommend you check out the podcast buke fromos and Umo Murder and Silence in El Salvador from Sonoro. If you've enjoyed our show, please leave us a rating and review in the podcast listening app of your choice and send the show to
someone you think would enjoy it. We'll be back next week in a special conversation with one of the people who sent me on this journey, Salvador in American comedian Marcelo. Sacred Scandal. Nation of Saints is a production of a HA podcast in partnership with Iheart's Mikultura podcast network and is hosted and written by me Jasmine Romero. Produced by Jasmine Romero with help from Alvaro Sespelez. Research and reporting
by Jasmine Romero, edited by sare Kevelo. Nation of Saints was recorded in New York City at the Relic Room with engineering by Sam Bear, mixing and sound designed by Paciquinones. Original music by Golden Mines, Darko and Dieme based on Patrick Hart's original composition. Fact checking by Erendira Aquino Ayala. Executive producers are Carman gerterol isaac Lee Rose Reed, and Nando Villa. Our executive producers at iHeart are Giselle Mances
and Arlene Santana. Sacred Scandal was created by Melanie Bartley and Paula Vadros. For more podcasts, go to the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.