Bukele’s ‘miracle’ is Delmy’s nightmare

Mrs. Delmy Cortéz swears that she sees him. Sometimes, she imagines him arriving home on his bicycle and greeting her through the living room window, or ordering tortillas with cheese. She revels in these images, until reality overshadows everything.

It’s been almost three years since her son, Mauricio, set foot in La Noria, a town in southeastern El Salvador. During all this time, he hasn’t ridden a bike, looked out the front gate of the family home, or tasted his mother’s homemade heavy cream. Mauricio is now just one of the many innocent people who’ve been locked up under the state of emergency.

“In the past, I suffered because of the gangs. Now, I suffer because of the state,” Cortéz laments. She speaks with EL PAÍS in the living room of her increasingly empty house.

His absence isn’t the only one that weighs on her. Portraits of this woman’s children multiply across the living room wall, as if there’s a possibility that they might be forgotten. Alongside the photograph of Mauricio — pictured after he graduated from high school — the others smile happily. But that was a long time ago. Today, each of Cortéz’ five children shoulders the ills of a country that’s seeking to escape its violent past with more violence.

Mileidy — her youngest daughter — stopped hearing from the father of her daughters after he was arrested. Humberto lives on scraps from farming. Javier was forced to migrate to the United States. And Beatriz died in 2017, after being denied an abortion that was medically necessary to prevent lupus from consuming her.

The case of Beatriz is emblematic of the obstetric violence that women are subjected to in El Salvador. In the Central American nation, abortion is prohibited under any circumstances.

This country, the matriarch sighs, is too unjust.

On June 13, 2022, Mauricio was walking with a relative on a soccer field when a police patrol approached. Barely three months had passed since President Nayib Bukele announced a state of emergency to stamp out the gangs at any cost. When she found out what had happened, Delmy Cortéz rushed to the police station and was told that her son was being detained for the crime of illicit association and that the legal process would take a long time. “I explained to them that he wasn’t a gang member, that everyone in the neighborhood knew this. But they told me that’s how the regime functions.”

A few weeks after Mauricio’s arrest — amid hundreds of complaints from impoverished families across the country — Marvin Reyes of the Police Workers’ Movement warned that many officers were being forced to meet arrest quotas. He denounced systematic abuses of power, such as soldiers demanding sexual favors in exchange for a family member’s freedom, or settling scores by cramming several young people into patrol cars. His statement contrasts with Bukele’s defense that there is a “margin of error” to the state’s crusade.

Mauricio was the fifth detainee in the Bajo Lempa area in the first three months of the state of emergency. The fourth was his brother-in-law (Delmy’s son-in-law). Now, after almost three years of Bukele’s crackdown, there are at least 111 young people in the area who have been disappeared. Their mothers don’t know anything about their whereabouts. Almost all of the abducted individuals are male, while all of them are poor. Some were captured at night while they were sleeping. Others, during their birthday celebrations.

Often, María del Pilar Amaya dreams of Walter Alexander and prays that he hasn’t been harmed. Meanwhile, Marcela Alvarado takes solace in the fact that her son — José Duval — was briefly released from prison after two judges demanded his release. Even though he was eventually returned to prison, “at least I know he’s not dead,” she says with a shrug.

The members of the Committee of Relatives of Victims of the State of Exception of the Bajo Lempa continue to visit the prison like clockwork every month, in order to deliver “the packages.”

The mothers cannot see the prisoners. They don’t know if they’re okay, or even if they’re still alive. Yet, they continue to bring a care package of basic necessities to the jail every month. Each packages costs around $120 and its contents are dictated by the prison officials: four bags of milk, four bags of cookies, four bags of Incaparina (a food supplement), two kilos of sugar, 12 rolls of toilet paper, bleach, bath and laundry soap, a broom and a change of clothes. “I don’t know if he’ll get anything or nothing, but it’s the only thing I can do for him,” Alvarado explains. The 53-year-old woman acknowledges that there isn’t always “enough money.”

“Even if I can’t get the whole thing to him, how can I not bring something to my son?” she asks. Her son was arrested while returning from a day at work in the fields. He was accused of feeding gang members because he was carrying a Tupperware container that was “too big.”

Before the state of emergency, Bukele claimed that there were 70,000 gang members in the country and that he would put all of them behind bars. However, since its proclamation on March 27, 2022, the government has imprisoned approximately 84,000 people, reaching the highest incarceration rate in the world: 2% of Salvadorans. To date, none of them have been convicted. This is confirmed by Juan Pappier, deputy director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “This shows that it’s a policy of mass incarceration,” he tells EL PAÍS. “The figure is astronomical.”

One of the greatest fears of human rights defenders is that repression will increase and that gangs will no longer be the sole targets. “A good part of the legal framework that the government has been building could end up being used to move against critical voices, journalists and opponents. They want to repress dissent in El Salvador,” Pappier warns.

The women’s movement has also been harshly attacked since Bukele came to power. Since 1998, the Salvadoran Penal Code has criminalized women who choose to terminate their pregnancies, or simply suffer a miscarriage. Yet, the level of persecution has increased with the arrival of a president who equates abortion with genocide. During his administration (2018-present), religious beliefs have infiltrated the public sector.

El Savlador is one of five countries in the region where voluntary termination of pregnancy is prohibited and punishable by up to eight years in prison. El Salvador once had more than 70 women jailed because of this. However, their cases didn’t reach any international court, as was the case with Delmy’s daughter, Beatriz.

Women are “becoming the most politicized”

“At least we got some justice,” says Delmy, in response to the ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which recognized that the state had committed obstetric violence against her daughter. After Beatriz’s death, she took up the mantle: her daughter’s cause became her own. Now, her face is one of the most recognizable in the movement fighting for the decriminalization of abortion. The reparations demanded by the judicial ruling are some of the few consolations for this mother, who lives in a constant state of mourning and struggle.

For Morena Herrera — a Salvadoran activist and founder of the Citizens' Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion — Bukele’s policy has forced women like her to become politicized: “The social structure places us as those in charge of ensuring life and care. In the face of this repression, it is women who carry out the procedures, seek solutions and justice... they’re the ones who are becoming the most politicized because of the regime.”

Alvarado — Delmy’s neighbor — only thinks about getting her son out of prison. This obsession has robbed her of sleep, laughter and a steady blood pressure. She’s been bouncing back and forth to the emergency room for weeks, on the verge of a heart attack. “I’m not going to recover until they release him,” she says breathlessly. She stops dead in her tracks and gasps for air. Her daughter runs over: she knows the drill. She hurriedly spreads mint cream on her mother’s chest, pops a pill in her mouth and asks her to breathe deeply.

Delmy strokes her friend’s hair as the young woman prepares to take her back to the hospital. “You have to be strong, Marcela. You can’t die of anxiety. When your son comes out of prison, who’s going to take care of him if you’re not there?” she asks.

La Noria is a small town in Bajo Lempa that was created after the civil war (1979-1992). The plantations belonging to large cotton and sugarcane landowners were divided into plots and given to former combatants as a result of the peace agreements. Some fighters received houses and land. Others — like Delmy — only managed to obtain a small plot. The lack of basic services forced communities to organize and strengthen their social fabric.

For Celia Medrano — a journalist specializing in human rights — the way in which the Bukele regime impacts communities is no coincidence: “[The policy] was never designed for the gangs; the government made deals with them. It was designed to break up this neighborhood organization and frighten the population. That was the only objective, and they’re achieving it.”

Meanwhile, the government continues to boast about having pacified the country. “The excuses for not supporting the continuation of the state of emergency will always come from the opposition,” said ruling party legislator Caleb Navarro earlier this year. “But the results are undeniable: there are no more gangs, no more illicit checkpoints, no more extortion in our country,” he asserted.

Indeed, the reality is that violence has fallen dramatically. The homicide rate— which exceeded 106 murders per 100,000 inhabitants a decade ago — has now fallen below two per 100,000, according to official figures. In 2024, this new scenario attracted greater foreign investment and nearly four million tourists, 17% more than in 2023. This, in a country with a population of only six million.

The miracle that Bukele boasts about still weighs heavily in a country that has historically been suffocated by extortion and fear. “Do you know what it means to be able to walk around the city at night?” asks Francisco Alexander, an Uber driver. “Not everything [Bukele] does is good, but we breathe a little easier.” For others, however, the blank check in exchange for security is no longer enough.

Many of those who once boasted about Bukele’s iron fist now lower their voices when speaking about his government. The discourse surrounding human rights violations resonates more strongly because it no longer only affects others. More and more people have an acquaintance in prison. Many have removed their tattoos or changed their attire, for fear of being the next person in handcuffs.

For this reason, many Salvadorans have no choice but to migrate. Before, they fled gangs and the lack of opportunities. Today, they continue to flee Bukele’s El Salvador. In 2024, the country was still among the top 10 in Latin America for migration. The United States is the second home of Salvadorans, where practically a sixth of its population lives. Javier — Delmy’s youngest son — is one of the migrants. He foresaw the escalation of police abuses five years ago.

Javier left for Houston — without papers — to paint houses, in exchange for some cash to help pay for his imprisoned brother’s care packages. Remittances — like the ones coming from this 26-year-old — are the ones sustaining a large part of a country, which suffers from extremely high rates of inequality. The Center for Consumer Defense (CDC) estimates that 70% of households earn less than $500 a month, while the cost of living in El Salvador is around $900. And, while inequality is the norm, so is resilience: the residents simply have to endure, because there’s no other choice.

These women know that they’ve inherited not only poverty and a fear of violence, but also the notion of collective struggle. “If anything fills me with joy, it’s that we’re fighting together,” says María del Pilar Amaya. “That way, they will surely hear us.”

Translated by Avik Jain Chatlani.

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