Deaths in custody, extreme overcrowding, torture and arbitrary arrests. These are just some of the many allegations leveled against the Salvadoran government of Nayib Bukele, who has kept the country under a state of emergency for over a year as part of its controversial crackdown on gang violence. EL PAÍS spoke to two former detainees who confirmed the systematic abuse denounced by international and national human rights organizations. Both watched people die in their cells, both were tortured and both lived in overcrowded prisons with little food and never speaking to their family or lawyer.
Manuel, a fictitious name for security reasons, and Dolores Almendares, who agreed to go public, spent months in jail after being accused of being members of a gang. They were released due to lack of conclusive evidence, but both are still awaiting trial. These are their stories.
Dolores Almendares in the streets of San Salvador.Víctor Peña
Manuel says he hasn’t seen the sun in almost a year. He was held in Izalco prison, about two hours west of San Salvador, from mid-April last year until early February. “From the moment I walked in until I walked out, I saw no sunlight,” he says. There were more than 70 in a cell designed for 20 people. Due to the lack of space, the inmates took turns sleeping sitting up at intervals of two to three hours. There was only one toilet. And often they only got one meal a day: “two tortillas and a spoonful of beans.”
Among his cellmates was a diabetic, “a 62-year-old man who ran a shop and made a lot of money,” says Manuel, who is in his forties. Manuel says the inmates made the man sleep sitting up all night while the others stood. One day he didn’t wake up. They tried to move him, but he was frozen. When the guards arrived, he had no pulse. Manuel says that only “two or three times” did a doctor come by to give him the insulin injections his family reportedly sent him every week. The lack of medical care in prisons is one of the many grievances denounced by human rights organizations.
Manuel recalls that another prisoner, “a 21-year-old boy named Daniel,” also died in the cell. “He was desperate and screamed for medicine or complained of hunger and pain.” The police responded by beating him. He was kicked, beaten with batons and hit with rifle butts. “One day they beat him so badly that they beat him to death and dragged him out like an animal.”
The feet of Manuel, who chose not to reveal his identity: Víctor Peña
An investigation by Human Rights Watch, which had access to a Justice Department database, found that at least 32 people died in custody during the first five months of the Bukele state of emergency, from March to August. Most of the deaths occurred in Mariona and Izalco prisons. Another count by the Salvadoran organization Cristosal brought the number of deaths to 80 in October.
“You Just Want To Die”
Besides beatings, Manuel also mentions another torture method. He says officers often hosed the cells down with water and, once the floor was wet, would send an electric current to shock everyone inside. Manuel was jailed along with men with tattoos from El Salvador’s two main gangs: the 18th Street Gang (Mara Barrio 18) and MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha). He says they were the ones most often taken out for punishment. “I didn’t talk to them because I hated them. I felt like I was there because of them.” Group prayer sessions were common. “Our support was faith.” He says one of the prisoners, an evangelical Christian, prayed most for everyone. “The biggest enemy you have in it is depression. You feel an immense emptiness and you just want to die.”
Police transports during the state of emergency. Victor Pena
Manuel was arrested at the end of March, a few days after the state of emergency began. According to Manuel, he was arrested out of revenge. He explains that a few years earlier, officers beat up his 10-year-old son for not having ID with him when he returned from tortilla shopping during the pandemic. Manuel reported the officers and a judge finally convicted them. In retaliation, 10 police officers showed up at his home with an arrest warrant. On the same day he was beaten “until [the officers] Boring.” They broke two ribs. But for Manuel – who worked in an office before his arrest, filling out Excel sheets and making photocopies – what hurt most was being presented to the press as a gang member charged with racketeering, murder and membership of a terrorist organization was charged.
Operation Bukele achieves its goal of reducing street violence and taking down the gangs. But it has also been plagued by allegations of human rights abuses and a lack of transparency. Nearly 63,000 people were arrested in the raid by January, according to Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro. This number is not random: it is the estimated number of gang members in El Salvador, where almost six million people live.
Police officers who are critical of the regime have revealed that arrest quotas must be observed. According to Bukele, only 5% of the inmates held under the state of emergency have been released. But according to human rights organizations in the country, only a third have proven ties to gangs. Furthermore, they argue that crimes such as belonging to a “terrorist organization” are so broad that they include almost anyone.
“I can shoot you right now”
Dolores, 53, was arrested by five police officers on May 6, 2022 for extortion. “They told me that my kids were raising money from companies and I was raising it,” says Dolores, a clerk at Cuscatancingo City Council. She explains that she was given a document with the charges but didn’t sign it because “they didn’t have any evidence”. She asked for a lawyer but was not provided with any legal representation during the five months she was detained. Dolores, a union member, said she was arrested for leading several strikes to increase wages and get uniforms.
Three people wait outside the El Penalito headquarters in San Salvador for a detained family member. Victor Pena
Arriving at the police station, officers put her in a cell with heavily tattooed inmates. “Some had MS tattooed on their foreheads.” Dolores says she wasn’t scared because she “never heard of anything like it.” Like Manuel, she decided not to speak to the other inmates. She remembers being told by a police officer the first night, “Now the target is you. I can shoot you right now and say you tried to escape.”
On the first day in Ilopango prison, half an hour from San Salvador, they lined her up with the other prisoners. They stripped her naked, had her bathed in a barrel in the courtyard with 20 other women, put her through a scanner and performed a vaginal search “in case I had drugs or something, I think.” Dolores spent 22 days in a 150 square meter cell with a tin roof and metal mesh walls. Dolores estimates that more than 800 women slept next to each other on the cement floor. Each with their head level with the other’s feet. The toilet was a bucket and the shower was a hose. The food was “dry bean paste”.
One of the inmates, Esmeralda, had an infinity symbol tattooed under her neck. Dolores recalls that “she vomited up everything she ate.” She also suffered from diarrhea and eventually died of dehydration. When she lost consciousness, several inmates carried her “because she was chubby.” The police took her away and they never saw her again. “They told us she died on the way to the hospital.” Human rights organizations have spoken out against the authorities for not reporting the deaths of prisoners. Several people have filed complaints after finding the body of their imprisoned relative in a communal grave.
El Salvador government moves gang members to new mega-prison in Tecoluca SECRETARIA DE PRENSA DE LA PRESI (Portal)
Dolores spent three more months in Apanteos prison, an hour and a half from San Salvador. “They treated us a little bit better there. We could go out on the patio for an hour, they gave us three meals a day, and sometimes a priest would come in.” During the time she was in prison, she only had two remote hearings, at which there were no witnesses or lawyers. She was released in mid-September and has to report to the police station every two weeks. Her trial is set for December 8, but her lawyer has told her, “If the regime ends before then, those of us who have been released from prison will be completely free.” She’s not sure if she does should give hope or not.
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