Accusations Against Salvadoran President Following Revelations by El Faro
A critic has accused Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele of attempting to suppress the prominent digital news platform El Faro, accusing them of dismantling the myths propagated by his administration.
The renowned digital publication El Faro, based in El Salvador, alarmed the public on Monday with news that President Nayib Bukele’s government is allegedly planning the arrest of several of its journalists. This follows their explosive interview with two former gang leaders, which cast new light on an alleged collusion with the U.S.-supported Bukele, who once called himself the “world’s coolest dictator.”
According to El Faro, “A trustworthy source within El Salvador has informed us that the Attorney General’s Office, under Bukele’s control, is getting ready to issue at least seven arrest warrants for our journalists.” This development came shortly after they published an interview revealing Bukele’s longstanding ties with gangs, featuring former bosses of the 18th Street Revolucionarios.
This action marks the first attempt in many years to criminally charge journalists for their professional work, El Faro highlighted.
In response to the interview, Bukele made a late Friday post on the social media platform X, stating, “Clearly, a peaceful country without killings, extortion, bloodshed, daily corpses, or grieving mothers does not benefit human rights NGOs, the globalist media, the elites, or [George] Soros.”
The connection between Bukele and certain gang leaders, which has long been suspected in El Salvador, was publicly confirmed for the first time by El Faro through a video where gang members acknowledged their agreement with the government.
As reported by El Faro:
The looming arrests are steeped in irony: the only reason El Faro could interview the two Revolucionarios was their escape from El Salvador, facilitated by Bukele’s regime.
“Liro Man,” one of the escapees, detailed how he was smuggled into Guatemala through a weak point in the Salvadoran border by a gang mediator for Bukele, Carlos Marroquín; meanwhile, “Charli,” or Carlos Cartagena, was detained under a warrant in April 2022 during the state of exception but was swiftly released after a mysterious phone call to the police station.
At the same time, tens of thousands of Salvadorans were arrested without proper legal procedures, accused of gang affiliations.
The video interview revealed for years, Salvadoran gang leaders had secretive agreements with Bukele’s circle. During the 2014 campaign, the FMLN party, which Bukele was part of back then, allegedly paid the gangs a quarter-million dollars to coerce votes in gang-dominated areas for Bukele’s mayoral run in San Salvador and Salvador Sánchez Cerén’s presidential bid.
El Faro emphasized, “This support was crucial for Bukele’s rise to power. ‘You’re going to tell your mom and your wife’s family that they have to vote for Nayib. If you don’t, we’ll kill them,’ Liro Man recounted the gang’s threats to their communities during that election. According to him, ‘Bukele knew he needed the gangs to climb to his current position.'”
Part of their agreement included a secretive “no body, no crime” policy, where gang leaders concealed their victims’ bodies while Bukele touted a significant drop in the national homicide rates, once notorious globally.
“We’ve been wanting to disclose this for a long time because the government parades around claiming they’re anti-gang, but they forget they made a deal with us, and you were the first to report it,” Liro Man told El Faro.
In a striking twist, the Trump administration deported gang members from the U.S. who ended up in El Salvador’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center prison, despite facing federal charges that might have allowed them to testify about their dealings with Bukele.
Reacting to the potential arrest warrants against El Faro staff, Argentine journalist Eliezer Budasoff condemned the Salvadoran leader on social media last Sunday, stating it’s evident that Bukele “wants to silence” the outlet “because they’re effectively debunking the myths of the Bukele administration through diligent journalism.”
The Bukele administration has not only targeted El Faro with allegations of money laundering and tax evasion but has also excluded its reporters from press events and used Pegasus spyware for surveillance. Despite these challenges, El Faro remains committed to journalistic integrity.
“Each citizen must decide whether they want to stay informed or prefer the blind allegiance demanded by this administration from its supporters since day one,” El Faro‘s editors wrote in 2022. “We don’t have that luxury. Our duty is to report the news as it is, and we will always do so.”
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