This past weekend, Los Hermanos Flores made history by becoming the first Central American musical group ever to perform at Coachella.1 As expected, a large contingent of the Salvadoran diaspora was in attendance at the festival not only as a show of support for Los Hermanos Flores, but also to elevate the representation of El Salvador at such a large venue. Los Hermanos Flores, in turn, not only delighted the festival with their signature songs, but also transmitted a positive message celebrating Latin American immigrants. So what’s the issue?

At one point during the performance, lead vocalist, Nory Flores, made a brief statement asking Salvadorans and Latin Americans to visit El Salvador because the country is “at peace,” that “peace [had finally] arrived,” and that Salvadorans over there were “having a great time.”

As innocuous and benign as this comment may seem, it is unfortunately perpetuating a FALSE NARRATIVE about El Salvador. How so?

“BUT SECURITY HAS BROUGHT PEACE!”

There is a stark difference between PEACE and SECURITY. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr. “...peace is not merely the absence of [conflict], but the presence of justice.” Democratic principles like constitutional rights and due process that are respected and adhered to by the authorities represent that justice. When a person is arrested by the State, regardless of whether they are innocent or guilty, and they have access to both their legal and human rights, that is justice. When the authorities abuse their power and their is accountability, that is justice.

Some, then, would argue that SECURITY is a necessary means to achieve safety and stability for there to be peace. Sure, but that SECURITY still needs to be accompanied by rules, procedures, and the same laws that grant constitutional rights and due process. Otherwise, SECURITY that doesn’t have to follow any rules or laws is basically a police state.

ON THE WORLD STAGE, EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL

Returning to the concert at Coachella, Los Hermanos Flores also performed “La cumbia de la paz,” composed in 1992 to mark the end of the civil war. However, in the present tense, the song reinforced the earlier message by Nory Flores about El Salvador being “at peace.” Granted, while Los Hermanos Flores is by no means a political musical group, to call them “neutral, apolitical, or not-political” would be inaccurate. As performers representing El Salvador as a nation, especially on a stage with a world-wide audience, whatever message they choose deliver is by default political.

The abuses of the Bukele regime are not a secret, they are, in fact, well-documented in research, reports, data, & testimonies gathered and distributed by a plethora of reputable sources. Moreover, the corrupt dealings between Bukele and the Trump administration over the migrants illegally sent to CECOT are also known world-wide. The time to claim complete ignorance of what has been happening in El Salvador has long passed.

Los Hermanos Flores could have said any number of positive things about El Salvador are completely true, but instead, they chose to perpetuate a false narrative--one that favors the present regime in power.

Since coming into power in 2019, the Nayib Bukele regime embarked on a large-scale “revitalization” of the Historic Center of San Salvador. But rather than carrying out renovations that: 1) modernized the aesthetics of the Historic Center; 2) maintained its cultural and economic purpose as a commercial hub; and 3) protected the livelihoods of existing residents, the regime instead harassed, threatened, and evicted thousands of street vendors, local businesses, and long-time residents. The end product white-washed away the “third-world” working-class aesthetics of the Historic Center and replaced it with a generic and bland sterility befitting a shopping-mall perpetually stuck in holiday-season. Surely, many Salvadorans would call these changes “progress,” but progress for whom?

Gentrification, as it is being experienced across Latin America, is a neo-liberal process of urban renovation wherein the higher economic classes appropriate poor and working-class neighborhoods and displace and replace the existing residents, resulting in a socioeconomic and cultural reconfiguration of geographic space.

However, there is another neo-liberal urban renovation process called “touristification,” which seeks the transformation of urban space to accommodate the needs of temporary visitors and promote leisure and consumption activities. Public spaces experience a symbolic transformation that promotes an idealized image of said space. Finally, rather than replacing the displaced former residents, touristification substitutes them with a “floating population” of visitors.

While gentrification reconfigures the social fabric of a given space, touristification leaves a space devoid of a social fabric.

The gentrification and turistification boom are direct responses to the globalizing neoliberal urban development model favored by right-wing governments. This model prioritizes the privatization public spaces, favors a service sector economy, and the patrimonialization of historic centers--that is, the assignation of historic, symbolic, or cultural value to a public space as “heritage.” While patrimonialization may seem like a positive, under the neoliberal model it actually strips historic centers (and public spaces in general) of their actual cultural and patrimonial value and converts them into a consumables.

The historic center, thus, becomes just one more product for consumption and its inhabitants become both consumers and consumables. The public space becomes solely an economic driver and loses its social and cultural purpose.

As a result of the ongoing gentrification and touristification project of the Historic Center of San Salvador, the following populations have been affected or displaced:

• Street vendors & informal economy workers: displaced by policies that seek to create “open space” for tourism.

• Low-income long-time residents: displaced to the periphery by the ever-increasing rental prices.

• Elderly residents: who have lost community services and the use of common spaces that have now been converted for commerce and tourism.

• Traditional families: whose homes have been replaced by stores, hotels, cafés, or temporary housing.

• Street artists: who lost performance space which was the source of their livelihoods.

• Artisans & traditional trades: have lost space to businesses that cater to foreign tourism.

Neoliberal urbanism conceives of the city as an economic resource rather than a space for the exertion of rights. Thus, the challenge for contemporary territorial management consists in developing urban policies that can achieve an equilibrium between revitalization and social inclusion. This can only be achieved with the full participation of citizens and the preservation of collective historical memory.1

NOW FOR SOME EXTRA DETAILS

In November of 2024, Revista Factum reported that three Bitcoin entrepreneurs, had purchased at least (4) properties in the Historic Center of San Salvador amounting to $7.47 million--taking advantage of a law passed by the Bukele-controlled National Assembly that allowed for the purchase and transfer of properties in El Salvador without paying any taxes. All three Bitcoin entrepreneurs are close associates of Nayib Bukele.

Since 2024, there have been a series mysterious fires breaking out in or around the Historic Center of San Salvador, the worst taking place on February 13, 2026, which not only destroyed an historic building constructed in 1917, but tragically also resulted in five deaths. Whether or not all these fires have been the result of arson, one thing is for sure, they are a boon for real estate developers seeking cheap land parcels.

Because this story would be incomplete without some good old fashioned government corruption, in February of 2026, El Faro reported that the Bukele family had purchased three (3) new properties in the Historic Center of San Salvador for $1.25 million. Since 2023, the total value of properties owned by the Bukele clan surpassed $2.8 million. The Bukele clan took advantage of the same law that excused them from having to pay taxes.

So who is the Historic Center of San Salvador really for?

On February 9, 2020, less than a year into his presidency, Nayib Bukele ordered heavily-armed police and soldiers to take over the National Assembly building in an attempt to coerce lawmakers into approving a $109 million loan to purchase police and security equipment. In a strange display of autocratic narcissism, Bukele sat at the head of the legislature, and in front of the cameras of the world, wept and prayed. During an orchestrated rally with thousands of his followers outside of the National Assembly building that same day, Bukele would claim, “I asked god, and god told me, ‘Patience.”

First Steps Toward Dictatorship

February 2021 - National Assembly elections give Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas, along with other right-wing allies two-thirds majority status, allowing them to make sweeping changes to legislature.

May 2021 - The Bukele-dominated National Assembly orders the removal of El Salvador’s attorney general and ALL FIVE justices from the country’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court. They were replaced by judges loyal to Bukele.

September 2021 - El Salvador’s Supreme Court rules that Nayib Bukele can serve two consecutive terms as president, despite it being explicitly prohibited by the Salvadoran Constitution.

Making Up Loopholes

September 2021 - Despite the Salvadoran Constitution explicitly prohibiting a president serving two consecutive terms, Bukele’s new judges figured a “loophole,” or more accurately, they made one up. According to Article 152 of the Salvadoran Constitution, a person cannot be a presidential candidate if they have served as president “more than 6 months, consecutively or not, during the period immediately before, or during the last 6 months before the beginning of the presidential period.”

The judges interpreted this clause to mean, that as long as Bukele vacated the presidency 6 months prior to the start of, his still theoretical second term in June 2024, he would be able to run for a second consecutive term.

Consolidation of Power

For much of its post-Civil War history, the Salvadoran National Assembly was composed of 84 deputies representing 262 municipalities. In June of 2023, the National Assembly approved a restructuring of the voting districts by reducing municipalities from 262 to 44, and the number of elected deputies from 84 down to 60.

The new and reorganized National Assembly would give Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas, total control of El Salvador’s legislative branch and the power to pass any laws the regime pleases.

The State of Exception

A breakdown in negotiations between the Bukele regime and criminal organizations resulted in a sudden spike in homicides in late March 2022. The Bukele-controlled National Assembly capitalized on the situation and declared a state of emergency called State of Exception (Régimen de Excepción).

“In the event of war, invasion by a foreign entity, rebellion, sedition, catastrophe, epidemic, or other general calamity or grave disturbance to public order,” (Article 29, Item 1) the State can suspend certain basic freedoms such as speech and assembly, however, as it pertains to due process, the State of Exception suspends the following constitutional guarantees:

“A detained person must be informed in an immediate and comprehensible manner, their legal rights and reason(s) for their detention… the detainee is guaranteed the assistance of a legal defender.” (Article 12, Item 2)

“The administrative detention shall not exceed 72 hours, during which the detainee shall appear before a judge.” (Article 13, Item 2)

The State of Exception cannot exceed 30 days, unless extended by decree of the National Assembly. As of today, the State of Exception has been renewed 40+ times and has now been in effect for more than three years.

New Draconian Laws

With the passage of State of Exception in late March 2022, the Bukele regime also took the advantage of the state of national emergency to pass new and harsher penalties for gang activity as well as laws that further eroded basic freedoms:

• Lowered criminal responsibility of children involved in gang activity from 16-years, down to 12-years-old.

• Allowed prison sentences of up to 10 years for children ages 12 to 16 and up to 20 years for children over 16.

• Convicted leaders of a “terrorist” gang could face 40 to 45 years in prison, previously it was 14 years.

• Membership in these groups now carried a sentence of 20 to 30 years, up from 3 to 5 years.

• Criminalized the creation of any type of publication, image, graffiti or other form of visual expression that “explicitly or implicitly” transmits “messages” about or that “alludes to” the various types of gangs. The penalty is up to 15 years in prison.

• Criminalized media outlets that “reproduce or transmit messages or statements created or allegedly created” by gangs that “could generate a state of anxiety and panic to the population in general.”

The Human Cost of the State of Exception

• Since March 2022, at least 85,000 Salvadoran citizens have been arbitrarily arrested; as of February 2026, the majority remain imprisoned without any actual charges in a state of judicial limbo. Only around 8,000 detainees have actually been released for lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.

• Around 2% of the adult population of El Salvador is incarcerated. El Salvador now has one of the leading incarceration rates in the world, ahead of the United States which has a population ~52 times larger.

• Hundreds of documented arbitrary arrests; forced disappearances; wide usage of torture on detainees have been reported to human rights organizations.

• Tens-of-thousands of detainees have remained imprisoned for 1-2 years, awaiting processing without access to legal representation, or contact with the outside world.

• As of May 2025, at least 378 people have died in custody of the authorities. The actual number is believed to be over 1,000.

• More than 3,300 children have been arrested, some as young as 12-13 years old.

• Nearly 40,00 Salvadorans have been arrested on the nebulous charge of “unlawful association;” less than 1% were arrested for actual violent crimes.

The Abusive Powers of the Salvadoran State

• The authorities can detain and arrest a Salvadoran citizen based SOLELY at the discretion (or whim) of the police officer. Most people are arrested on the nebulous suspicion of “illicit association” to gangs or criminal organizations. No evidence is required.

• The authorities do not have any obligation to guarantee detainees ANY access to legal representation.

• The authorities can arrest and detain any citizen for more than 72 hours without demonstrating cause or formally appearing before a judge. Given the tens-of-thousands of people in the system, the processing time can last months. Some detainees have been imprisoned for more than two years.

• The authorities can violate the privacy of correspondence and telecommunications without a court order.

• The authorities can arrest anyone without a court order and can re-arrest anyone EVEN if they have a cleared criminal record.

• The authorities can conduct mass trials wherein defendants can be charged and sentenced simultaneously for a single crime in groups as large as 900.

The Salvadoran Prison Industrial Complex

• Despite the recent worldwide notoriety that the Center for the Containment of Terrorism (CECOT) has garnered, this Salvadoran mega-prison is in fact a clean and modern “display prison” where the Bukele regime routinely parades alleged gang members for journalists, social media influencers, and Republican officials.

• Other prisons like Izalco and Mariona, which are inaccessible to journalists, are where the remainder of the 85,000+ Salvadoran citizens arrested under the State of Exception are incarcerated, including women, elders, and children. These prisons have hundreds of documented cases of abuse and poor conditions:

• Massive overcrowding; 109,000 people are held in a prison system with a 70,000 capacity.

• Overcrowding has led to inadequate food, poor hygiene, and improper sanitation; some detainees are forced to sleep standing.

• Detainees are routinely subjected to beatings, torture, sexual assault by BOTH prison guards and other detainees.

• Chronically ill detainees are denied basic health care. Many have died as a result of gross neglect.

The Destruction of the Salvadoran Family

• More than 100,000 Salvadoran children and adolescents have been abruptly separated from a parent as a result of the State of Exception.

• The lack of information on the whereabouts and condition of incarcerated loved ones has resulted in increased levels of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues among tens-of-thousands of affected families.

• Despite the resulting mental health crisis among Salvadoran children and youth, the Salvadoran government has not adequately responded to provide them with care or resources.

• The loss of one of more providers has also created greater economic strain on affected families, leaving the remaining parent and/or other family members to carry the burden of maintaining the household.

• Families have to spend between $80-$100 on weekly packets of food and hygiene products for incarcerated loved ones, despite not even knowing if they are still alive. Average salary in El Salvador is ~$365 per month.

• Bukele regime’s poor economic planning and policies have resulted in rising costs for basic food and necessities, and has contributed to an increase of extreme poverty throughout El Salvador.

• The Bukele regime’s securitization of El Salvador coupled with detrimental economic policies have not only heightened and perpetuated cycles of poverty and the destruction of family units, but are contributing to an eventual return of rampant criminality.

Trump & Bukele: Fascist Allies

• Fascism relies on the dehumanization/ demonization of marginalized populations to justify and rationalize its operations of violence.

• The intensification of repression against migrants by the current Trump administration could not have been possible without the first Trump administration (2016-2020) having weaponized the imagery of brown, tattooed bodies of MS-13 gang members to construct a vocabulary of fear and hate for his right-wing base, which through osmosis filtered out into the larger cultural imaginary of the United States.

• Likewise, the escalation of violence and mass incarceration of 85,000+ Salvadorans under the State of Exception would not have been possible without a vicious campaign of dehumanization and criminalization of El Salvador’s poor and working-class by the Bukele regime.

• Both Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele are utilizing the same fascist playbook: to criminalize marginalized populations and keep everyone distracted with spectacle, terror, and outrage, while in the background they dismantle democratic checks and balances and consolidate power.

President for Life

• November 2023 - The National Assembly, controlled entirely by Nayib Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party, approved Bukele to step down as president and take a 6-month leave “to allow him to campaign for re-election.

• February 2024 - Nayib Bukele was unconstitutionally re-elected for a second term.

• April 2024 - The National Assembly approved a reform to the Salvadoran constution that would allow changes to be made to made to the constitution with no waiting period and only 45/60 votes. A full 57/60 assembly members are aligned with Bukele.

• July 2025 - The Salvadoran National Assembly, proposed new changes to the articles of the Salvadoran constitution. These included allowing indefinite presidential re-elections and extending the presidential term from 5 to 6 years. The bill passed 57-3 in favor.

El Salvador is a constitutional democratic republic. At least, it was supposed to be.

Despite having been founded as a modern liberal democracy in the first half of the 19th-century, El Salvador spent the remainder of the 19th-century being ruled by a despotic and exploitative oligarchy that determined the course of the nation. The 20th-century unfortunately proved no different as a succession of right-wing military governments spent five decades committing mass human rights violations and crushing democratic processes– culminating with a 12-year Civil War.

The Peace Accords, signed in 1992, while they were an imperfect end to the popular struggle for a more egalitarian society, they nonetheless offered El Salvador the possibility of finally having a functional democracy. The accords reaffirmed the tremendous importance of constitutional law as an indispensable component of a democracy.

Besides the right to free speech, the right to assemble, and freedom of the press, one of the most important elements in a healthy democracy is something called DUE PROCESS.

Due process is a set of constitutional guarantees that protects the rights of an individual against the power of the state. For example:

“No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, nor of any other rights without a hearing and a fair trial. No person can be charged twice for the same cause.” (Article 11, Item 1)

“All persons charged with a crime are presumed innocent unless their guilt is otherwise proven in accordance with the law, in a public trial, while assuring all necessary guarantees for their defense.” (Article 12, Item 1)1

Simply put, when laws are observed, respected, and followed by the police, law enforcement authorities, and the judicial system and the rights of even the worst criminal in a society are protected, then it also guarantees the protection of rights for EVERYONE, especially the innocent.

Every person, no matter who they are, what their walk of life is, or what they have done is ENTITLED to have their rights respected and protected.

The application of due process is universal, not discretionary. Due process must be applied neutrally and can never be influenced by morality, prejudice, or opinion, whether of a religious, political, or personal nature.

Lastly, when those in power respect the rule of law and due process, it promotes a popular culture that values and defends the principles of democracy, equality, and fairness. It encourages greater civic engagement and leads to a better society at large.

Despite their intended role to maintain public order and serve the public good, the police and all branches of security forces have an inherent tendency to abuse their power. Over 50 years of military rule in El Salvador has proven this.

Due process establishes rules and limitations for the police as they carry out their work and safeguards against any abuse of power.

“In the performance of their work, members of the Civil National Police (PNCSV) shall respect and protect human dignity and maintain and defend the human rights of all persons.” (Article 25, Section 2)

“No member of the PNCSV shall inflict, instigate, or tolerate any act of torture or other cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or penalty;” (Article 25, Section 4), and all “members of the PNCSV shall ensure the whole protection of the integrity and health of any person in custody,” (Article 25, Section 5).2

A breakdown in negotiations between the Bukele regime and criminal organizations resulted in a sudden spike in homicides in late March 2022. The Bukele-controlled National Assembly capitalized on the situation and declared a state of emergency called State of Exception (Régimen de Excepción).

“In the event of war, invasion by a foreign entity, rebellion, sedition, catastrophe, epidemic, or other general calamity or grave disturbance to public order,” (Article 29, Item 1) the State can suspend certain basic freedoms such as speech and assembly, however, as it pertains to due process, the State of Exception suspends the following constitutional guarantees:

“A detained person must be informed in an immediate and comprehensible manner, their legal rights and reason(s) for their detention… the detainee is guaranteed the assistance of a legal defender.” (Article 12, Item 2)

“The administrative detention shall not exceed 72 hours, during which the detainee shall appear before a judge.” (Article 13, Item 2)

The State of Exception cannot exceed 30 days, unless extended by decree in the National Assembly. As of March 2026, the State of Exception has been renewed 47 times and has now been in effect for almost four years.

With the passage of State of Exception in late March 2022, the Bukele regime also took the advantage of the state of national emergency to pass new and harsher penalties for gang activity as well as laws that further erode basic freedoms:

• Lowered criminal responsibility of children involved in gang activity from 16-years, down to 12-years-old.

• Allows prison sentences of up to 10 years for children ages 12 to 16 and up to 20 years for children over 16.

• Convicted leaders of a “terrorist” gang face 40 to 45 years in prison, previously it was 14 years.

• Membership in these groups now carries a sentence of 20 to 30 years, up from 3 to 5 years.

• Criminalizes the creation of any type of publication, image, graffiti or other form of visual expression that “explicitly or implicitly” transmits “messages” about or that “alludes to” the various types of gangs. The penalty is up to 15 years in prison.

• Criminalizes media outlets that “reproduce or transmit messages or statements created or allegedly created” by gangs that “could generate a state of anxiety and panic to the population in general.”3

• Since March 2022, at least 85,000 Salvadoran citizens have been arbitrarily arrested; as of May 2025, approx. 90% remain imprisoned without any actual charges in a state of judicial limbo. Only around 8,000 detainees have actually been released for lack of evidence of any wrong-doing.

• Around 2% of the adult population of El Salvador is incarcerated. El Salvador now has one of the leading incarceration rates in the world, ahead of the United States which has a population ~52 times larger.

• Hundreds of documented arbitrary arrests; forced disappearances; wide usage of torture on detainees have been reported to human rights organizations.

• Tens-of-thousands of detainees have remained imprisoned for 1-2 years, awaiting processing without access to legal representation, or contact with the outside world.

• As of May 2025, at least 378 people have died in custody of the authorities. The actual number is believed to be over 1,000.

• More than 1,000 children have been arrested, some as young as 12-13 years old.

• Nearly 40,00 Salvadorans have been arrested on the nebulous charge of “unlawful association;” less than 1% were arrested for actual violent crimes.

• The authorities can detain and arrest a Salvadoran citizen based SOLELY at the discretion (or whim) of the police officer. Most people are arrested on the nebulous suspicion of “illicit association” to gangs or criminal organizations. No evidence is required.

• The authorities do not have any obligation to guarantee detainees ANY access to legal representation.

• The authorities can arrest and detain any citizen for more than 72 hours without demonstrating cause or formally appearing before a judge. Given the tens-of-thousands of people in the system, the processing time can last months. Some detainees have been imprisoned for more than two years.

• The authorities can violate the privacy of correspondence and telecommunications without a court order.

• The authorities can arrest anyone without a court order and can re-arrest anyone EVEN if they have a cleared criminal record.

• The authorities can conduct mass trials wherein defendants can be charged and sentenced simultaneously for a single crime in groups as large as 900.

You are entitled to your opinions about gangs and incarcerated people. But your feelings, prejudices, or outright hatred for these individuals are NOT the basis for law nor are they the basis for a system of justice in a constitutional democracy. In fact, this pointless arguing over whether gang members “deserve” human rights IS A DISTRACTION from the central issue:

When the Salvadoran people give the State permission to violate the basic human and legal rights of criminals and prisoners without any accountability, it is also giving the State the authority and discretion to abuse whomever they deem as a threat to the Salvadoran State and its interests. We have already seen the Salvadoran state target and arrest union organizers, community activists, water defenders, and even elderly former combatants!

Unfortunately, the need for security by a traumatized population, combined with an irrational thirst for vengeance and the dehumanization of incarcerated people perpetuated by Salvadoran government propaganda, has made many people blind or ambivalent about the human rights abuses being committed by the Bukele regime.

Absolutely NO ONE is forcing anyone to like gang members and prison inmates, feel any empathy for them, or even regard them as human beings.

Absolutely NO ONE is saying that hardened criminals, murderers, rapists, or other violent offenders should be set free to roam the streets.

Absolutely NO ONE is saying that detainees and prison inmates should be given 5-star hotel accommodations.

These are all hyperbolic talking points that the Bukele regime utilizes to arouse outrage, to enrage, and to distract the Salvadoran population and keep them from asking themselves some very basic questions:

What are the consequences of giving the Bukele government so much unchecked power?

What are the consequences for the whole Salvadoran nation in suspending basic legal rights and due process?

If El Salvador is the safest nation in Latin America as Bukele claims, why is the State of Exception still being renewed every month?

And if after understanding what is at stake in losing due process, a given person is still in favor of the Bukele government having the power to selectively suspend the rights and due process for anyone it deems to be a criminal; if they are okay with Salvadoran police arbitrarily profiling and arresting innocent citizens on the mere suspicion of being “associated with gangs;” if they are just fine with said innocent citizens DYING in prisons because they never got access to legal representation or medical care…

Then said given person is fundamentally against the very concept of constitutional rights and of democracy itself.

The irony of course is that if said given person were to be stopped by a cop, they would want every last precious legal right guaranteed by the constitution to be respected. But if the people of El Salvador can potentially lose their legal rights, well, that’s fine because gang members having basic human rights is somehow letting them “win.”

The illegal deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador by the Trump administration has fixated the world’s gaze upon the Salvadoran carceral system. And while the mainstream progressive narrative in the United States is hyper-focused on the abject cruelty and despotism on display inside Salvadoran prisons, and immigrant rights organizations vociferously condemn the violation of due process and the human rights of deportees, it is disheartening to see how hardly anyone is acknowledging that over the last three years under the authoritarian regime of Nayib Bukele, more than 80,000 Salvadoran citizens (including children and the elderly) have had their constitutional rights violated and have been subjected to unjust detainment, torture, sexual assault, gross medical neglect, and even death while in prison.

The Salvadoran prison industrial complex that the world gawks at in horrified awe, and which is now being exploited as America’s own outsourced prison colony, was built upon the backs of the Salvadoran people and over the grave of Salvadoran democracy. And despite the sudden fixation of the world’s press upon the “gulag” that is tiny El Salvador, the police state that presently rules over the country did not materialize overnight.

Over the last six years, journalists, academics, labor unions, human rights organizations, on-the-ground activists, and entire communities based in El Salvador have been warning the world about the abuse of power and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Bukele regime. Multiple U.S. presidential administrations, both Democrat and Republican, watched, tolerated, and eventually, fully endorsed the Bukele regime as it dismantled democratic institutions, covered-up negotiations with gangs, unleashed a campaign of terrorism against its own poor people, and rigged an unconstitutional second presidential term.

And yet, when you peruse recent mainstream news reports on the unlawful deportations of migrants to El Salvador, while journalists are generally doing their due diligence in providing a thorough and comprehensive picture of who these migrants are as human beings and the potential ramifications to American democracy these deportations pose, the representation of El Salvador as a nation is nonetheless reduced down to the authoritarian clownery of Nayib Bukele and his pet project, his maximum security mega-prison (CECOT). There is no deep dive into how the abuse of executive power, the dismantling of government, the grifting and poaching of public resources, and the arbitrary arrests of enemies of the state as carried out by Donald Trump during the first 100 days of his second term has already happened in El Salvador under the Bukele regime.

So-called experts on Latin America have confidently reported about El Salvador but never reached out to Central American scholars to provide historical and political context; they didn’t seek out data, statistics, and victim testimonies gathered by Salvadoran human rights organizations; they didn’t interview with Salvadoran grassroot organizations and on-the ground activists to obtain an alternative opinion on the Bukele regime; and they certainly didn’t have access to other Salvadoran prisons beyond CECOT and take notice that the incarcerated populations inside them are regular-looking people who don’t bear any resemblance the tattooed mareros that get paraded around for the world press and Republican politicians. As has always been the case, North American mainstream journalism is ill-equipped to provide a complex and nuanced depiction of El Salvador.

Thankfully, there are numerous large immigrant/human rights organizations in the U.S. who work directly with the Salvadoran diaspora and who can provide news organizations with accurate and contextual information on the Bukele regime… except they don’t. The case of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran migrant legally residing in Maryland and who was illegally kidnapped by ICE and deported to El Salvador’s CECOT, highlights a glaring contradiction within the politics of North American immigrant/human rights organizations. That is, these organizations have spent considerable time, effort, and resources marching, rallying, and advocating for the release and return of this one singular Salvadoran migrant, and yet, that same level of energy has not necessarily materialized for the tens-of-thousands of Kilmar’s Salvadoran compatriots who were also illegally kidnapped and imprisoned, but by the Bukele regime.

Of course, for immigrant/human rights organizations based in the United States, the Ábrego García case carries with it tremendous urgency and potentially catastrophic ramifications for the immigrant populations they advocate for and provide services to. Unquestionably, the legal rights of Ábrego García must be defended vigorously and his release pursued tirelessly. And yet, given that Ábrego García has been taken to a Salvadoran prison system with literally tens-of-thousands of individuals who are there under carbon copy circumstances as him, it would behoove immigrant/human rights organizations to, at the very least, acknowledge this fact.

I would argue that focusing exclusively on the rights of Kilmar Ábrego García as an individual, or for that matter, the Venezuelan migrants who been deported to El Salvador, while ignoring that 2% of the Salvadoran adult population has been incarcerated without due process in the last three years alone, reinforces the American Exceptionalist (and false) ideology that only human life that has proximity or affiliation with the United States holds any inherent value. To actively refuse or passively neglect to name the Salvadoran citizens suffering in prisons along-side the deportees is to subject them to social death.

Granted, for immigrant/human rights organizations that in particular cater to the Salvadoran diaspora, and given how a large percentage of that population has been supporting and voting for Nayib Bukele, it’s likely that said organizations would rather not take a public principled position against the rise of fascism in El Salvador and risk jeopardizing their relationship with their Salvadoran clientele. However, if these organizations are willing to openly criticize the Trump administration and its policies, why can’t the same courtesy be extended toward the Nayib Bukele regime, especially after Bukele’s visit to the White House this week and his enthusiasm to serve as Trump’s personal penal colony warden? At this point, is there really a difference between a Salvadoran disappeared by the Trump administration versus a Salvadoran disappeared by the Bukele regime?

The fact of the matter is that fascism relies on the dehumanization/demonization of marginalized populations to justify and rationalize its operations of violence. The intensification of repression against migrants by the current Trump administration could not have been possible without the first Trump administration (2016-2020) having weaponized the imagery of brown, tattooed bodies of MS-13 gang members to construct a vocabulary of fear and hate for his right-wing base, which through osmosis filtered out into the larger cultural imaginary of the United States. Likewise, the escalation of violence and mass incarceration of 80,000 Salvadorans under the State of Exception would not have been possible without a vicious campaign of dehumanization and criminalization of El Salvador’s poor and working-class by the Bukele regime. Take heed, fascism is a globalized phenomenon, and demagogues are taking notes from each other.

On June 18, 2024 at the Republican National Convention, and then again on June 20 at a campaign rally, Donald Trump publicly accused the president of El Salvador (Nayib Bukele) of artificially lowering El Salvador’s crime rates by sending all their “criminals” to the United States. While many journalists and pundits on social media attempted to understand Trump’s statements within the contemporary context of his relationship with Bukele, Trump’s commentary was less about Bukele as an individual, and more about the re-weaponization of racist rhetoric centered on MS-13, and by extension, Central American migrants and their homelands. Presented here is a brief history of how the demonization of Central America contributed to the Trump presidency’s violent and racist anti-immigration platform.

2015 - When Mexico Sends its People…

In June of 2015, Donald Trump descended down from his penthouse into the lobby Trump Tower in New York City. In front of a crowd of journalists, fans, and paid supporters (who were paid $50 to cheer for him and hold up signs), he announced his intention to run for president of the United States on the Republican ticket. Some people in the audience gawked, some cheered, and some were just dumbfounded. Regardless, whatever absurdist and surreal circus atmosphere had been generated in those first few minutes following his announcement, five minutes into Trump’s speech, he launched into the now infamous racist tirade against Mexicans.

What resulted was a conflagration of near universal public condemnation, both in the United States and Latin America. For almost every Latinx person living in the U.S., Donald had become public enemy #1. The controversy not only resulted in Trump losing lucrative deals with NBC and Univision, but he was forced backtrack his vitriol and tone down the anti-Mexican rhetoric for the remainder of his presidential campaign. But he would soon find a new and much easier group to target and vilify.

2016 - The New Enemy of White America

In August of 2016, Donald Trump travelled to Mexico and met up with Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, who himself was also a right-wing demagogue and generally reviled in his homeland. While the more prominent topic at this meeting was to discuss U.S.-Mexico border security and Trump’s pet project, the southern border wall, the meeting also served a another purpose: to change the narrative around migration to the U.S. and develop mutual policies of control over the Central American region.

In November of 2016, Donald Trump not only beat Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States, but he also chosen by TIME Magazine as its “Person of the Year.” In the middle of what became his trademark long-winded and meandering manner of babbling, Trump shows TIME journalist Michael Sherer a news magazine article cover local gang violence and makes the following statement following statement:

“They come from Central America. They’re tougher than any people you’ve ever met... They’re killing and raping everybody out there. They’re illegal. And they are finished.”

But unlike his racist statements against Mexicans the prior year, this time not a single major publication reported on this. Not a single Latinx organization or media outlet expressed any outrage. There were no protests, no condemnation, not even any acknowledgement that what Trump had said was wrong. The statement simply defaulted to the status of unchallenged commentary.

2017 - Trump & Mexico Become Friends

A few days after his inauguration as president in January 2017, Trump announced at the Department of Homeland Security his new executive orders on immigration, including the construction of the southern border wall. During his speech, his feelings on Mexico had drastically changed. Now referring to Mexico as an economic and security partner, Trump had shifted the supremacist American imaginary away from vilifying Mexicans (at least temporarily) and turned its eyes to the Central American migrants, mareros, and unaccompanied children. Trump categorized Central America as a new existential threat to both the U.S. and Mexican interests.

That same January of 2017, multiple Mexican news agencies were reporting that the Mexican government was considering using Central American migration as a "bargaining chip" in order to protect Mexican trade and remittances from Mexican migrants in the U.S. Finally on January 24th, Luis Videgaray, Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs admitted on Mexican television that Mexico was willing to continue blocking Central American as long as the U.S. respected Mexican remittances.

From this point forward in the Trump presidency (2016-2020), MS-13 and Central American migrants would become the focal point of his racist rhetoric, and convenient bogeyman to scare white America.

2017 - Animals

Starting in 2017, the Trump administration deployed a rhetoric of "animalization" against MS-13, which was no longer considered just a criminal organization, but a monstrified existential threat to American Christian goodness and integrity. To wit, in a press conference by ICE Director, Thomas D. Hoffman in JULY 2017, MS-13 members were not depicted as whole human beings, but as disembodied pictures of tattooed brown skin. That same month, on Tucker Carlson's program (FOX News) incarcerated gang members were presented to the U.S public as creatures living in squalor in cages. Trump and the White House further perpetuated the racist narrative of total dehumanization.

2018 - Logistics

In JANUARY 2018, Trump announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 200,000+ Salvadorans living in the U.S. They were given one year to get a green card or "self-deport." Doubling down on his odiousness, that same JANUARY, during a meeting in the Oval Office with U.S. Senators to discuss a possible immigration deal, Trump questioned why the U.S. should allow entry to migrants from African nations, Haiti, and El Salvador, which he all categorized as "shithole" countries. In SEPTEMBER of 2020, the Federal Appeals Court finally allowed Trump to end TPS for 330,000 people from 10 countries, which included several African nations, Haiti, and the largest recipient, El Salvador.

In FEBRUARY 2018, the White House held a Law Enforcement Roundtable on MS-13. The following are notable comments made by members of the Trump administration and select members of Congress:

1. The wholesale criminalization of Salvadoran migrants AND their descendants as well as unaccompanied minors - John Cronan, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice Criminal Division.

2. Condemnation of programs that provide pathway to residency for children refugees; frustration over inability to access confidential family court records - Angel Melendez, ICE Office, New York.

3. Frustration over inability to legally deport or prohibit asylum to a migrant who has committed no crime, based solely on the presumption of being a gang member - L. Francis Cissna, Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

4. Classification of families housing alleged MS-13 members as “MS-13 families” - Michael McCaul, Congressman (R), Texas, 10th District.

5. Condemnation of Temporary Protected Status - Lee Zeldin, Congressman (R) New York, 1st District.

2018 - 2020 - Scammers

In NOVEMBER 2018, a caravan of migrants attempted to cross the border at Tijuana. U.S. Border Patrol responded by deploying tear gas on crowds that included children. Trump downplayed this act of violence by claiming the tear gas was "safe" and that migrant parents (assuming they were even the parents, according to him) were intentionally putting children in harm's way to take advantage of U.S. immigration laws. In APRIL 2019, Trump made the claim that asylum seekers were just gang members in disguise, attempting to "scam" the system. Pejorative terminology such as “vile,” “evil,” “monsters,” “vicious,” and “savage” would continue to be part of the Trump vocabulary for the remainder of his presidency.

2022 - A New, But Also Old, Narrative

At the America First Policy Institute Summit in JULY 2022, now former President Trump delivered a meandering keynote address where he moved from advocating the death penalty for drug dealers to decrying how the Biden administration had allowed "millions" of undocumented migrants entry into the U.S.--never mind that Biden KEPT many of Trump's draconian executive orders on immigration. He rambles on about ICE agents getting into a scuffle with MS-13, Central American countries refusing to take deportees back, and him refusing economic aid in retaliation--at which point, he makes the claim that the (corrupt) leaders of these countries intentionally send their criminals to the U.S. If that sounds familiar...

2024 - Precipice

...it's because Trump recycled, almost verbatim, the 2022 speech when he delivered the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention on July 18 and at a campaign rally on July 20. Except this time, Trump called out the "young president" of El Salvador as the culprit sending criminals to the United States. Whatever the reasons for Trump doing this, two things are true: 1) since 2019 when Bukele was elected, record numbers of Salvadorans have fled El Salvador (at least 400,000); and 2) Trump is once again re-deploying the tried and true strategy of demonizing Central America to whip up white America into a frenzy and mobilize them to support the Republican Party's anti-immigration platform: "the largest deportation operation in the history [of the U.S.]. Even larger than that of [President Eisenhower]," i.e., the infamous "Operation Wetback."

Updated for 2026: Well, shit.

To my dear Central Americans in the diaspora,

November 2nd is Día de los Difuntos, a day in which we remember and commemorate the lives of loved ones who have passed. For those of us who were raised with particular community and familial traditions, it’s a day to open or widen a gateway to speak with our ancestors. But for a lot of us who have grown up in a land that is not ours, today can perhaps be a sad reminder of how uprooted and displaced we are from our culture, traditions, community, and ancestors.

Those of us who grew up in the Southwest of the United States, are familiar with the Mexican Día de los Muertos, and for quite a few of us, it became our proxy holiday for remaining connected to our deceased ones. We didn’t have much of a choice, really.

But traditionally in many parts of El Salvador, Día de los Difuntos means taking our entire families to the cemeteries where our loved ones are interred. It means cleaning the tombs with lye to whiten them, to paint crosses in light blue, or any other preferred color, and rewriting the name of the deceased. It means decorating the resting place not just with flor de muerto, but with all types of colorful flora and wreaths made from cypress. It means bringing whole meals, pan dulce of all kinds, and lots of coffee–because the whole family would be there all day and night. Families reminisce, laugh, weep, and express to their ancestors just how much they are loved and missed.

My parents told me stories that in the old days, the cemeteries in San Salvador would build bonfires at the entrances. All mothers carrying babies were expected to throw in a wreathe of cypress (el sahumerio), and as the smoke would rise, the babe was held from their ankles to bathe upside down in the billowing fragrance. This was done because Día de los Difuntos is a day particularly strong with spiritual energy, and babies needed extra protection from the undue influence roaming spirits and entities in the vicinity. After the rite, the babe was ready to take part in the festivities and meet their ancestors.

Sadly, for those of us who live outside of lands of our ancestors, all these customs, rites, and traditions become lost and forgotten, and over the course of generations, we become further absorbed into the dominant culture of the places we inhabit. And yet, our connection to the ancestors is not something that needs to die, for us to mourn and long for.

My mother once told me that a home without an altar to the ancestors is like a body without a heart. Her home in El Salvador had an permanent altar, and when she migrated, every single apartment our family ever lived in in the U.S. had an altar as well. To live severed from the ancestors is to not live at all. My mother would tell me stories about how the Catholic priests, when they were not too busy taking unnatural interest in young girls, would denounce viejitas for performing rites with ruda and altamisa. Sure, the Catholic Church could claim a monopoly on spirituality and ubiquitous ownership over holy spaces in El Salvador, but our nanas and our tatas knew better. They knew that the magic of the land, which coursed through their veins, didn’t speak in Latin homilies, or manifest itself in transubstantiation during mass.

No, our magic was in the gentle tapping made by the casquitos of the cadejo as it passed in the middle of the night; in the voice of the cenzontle as she sang her song at sunrise; in the withered cinammon hands of a 96-year-old nana as she broke copal into tiny pieces; in the stern love of our mothers as they boiled epazote to cure us of lombrices; and of course, in the creation of altars, the special spaces where we prayed to the elements and spoke to our beloveds who had passed on.

No, my dear family, setting up altars to celebrate our deceased is not solely a Mexican thing. Our respective peoples have always done it as well. And so, for those of you out there who seek to honor your ancestors, I invite you to set up your own altar in whatever space you feel safest. And it’s not about the aesthetics or showiness, but about intention and intimacy.

Beloved family, on this coming Día de los Difuntos, and we invoke the names of our ancestors. To those who were taken from us unjustly, to those we left behind, to those we lost along the way, and to those who came to rest in these foreign lands. We may not know all their names, but they know ours. We may not know their stories, but the life we live is their legacy. Honor and commemorate your loved ones.

We are the fruit of resilience. We are the stone in the boot of colonization, thwarting its march. The root of our people still lives, and so it is time to cultivate it.

Archived Update from October 2020: “I wrote this piece two years ago at the peak of what felt like an ever-inclining mountain of dread and despair for our Central American community. Here we are in 2020 and that mountain turned out to be a super-volcano. The COVID-19 pandemic has particularly been devastating to Black, Latinx, and Native communities in the U.S. In California alone, of the 900,000+ cases of COVID, more than 60% are among Latinx. Of the 17,000+ deaths, 50% are from the Latinx community. My father (who thank the ancestors has been safe and isolated) reported to me last month that at least eight (8) of his Salvadoran friends and acquaintances who migrated to the Westlake-MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles in the late 1970s and early 1980s died as a result of COVID-19. It is horrifying to think that generations of our elders to fled Central America due to war, poverty, and violence, came to this country, overworked themselves and died ignobly due to a pandemic that could have been manageable, if not preventable. There is much sadness, loss, and rage in our community. Now more than ever, we need to connect with our ancestors, show them our love, and seek solace in them.“

Archived Update from November 2, 2023: I originally wrote this piece back in 2018–five years have gone by but it feels like twenty. The last time that I updated was in October of 2020 at the existential height of the COVID pandemic. I am saddened to say that three years later, COVID is not only very much still with us, but it has become a seasonal plague. There was so much potential in that 2020-2022 period to really take control of the pandemic and mitigate both mass sickness and death, but instead, politically-driven misinformation and first-world capitalist individualism solidified COVID’s permanence in our pantheon of common communicable diseases. Since 2018, conditions in Central America have gotten worse. In the last five years, the meteoric ascendance of Nayib Bukele to become El Salvador’s ruling monarch has left the country in a dystopian nightmare of mass arbitrary arrests and worsening poverty. In Guatemala, after the successful 2015 mass protests that resulted in the ousting of right-wing authoritarian Otto Pérez Molina, the country is now facing a potential coup by corrupt right-wing forces who want to prevent the presidency of the democratically-elected candidate. Central American history is the most un-fun carousel. And if that weren’t enough, the world is witnessing the state of Israel carry out a genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, with the ultimate outcome of completely wiping them off the face of the earth. It is simply far too much to handle. So, today especially, we not only venerate our ancestors, but beseech them for their wisdom. How did they survive through colonization, genocide, and civil war? How did they not allow the sorrow of the world to crush them? How did they manage to preserve love in their hearts? So as you prepare your altars today and make space for your ancestors, keep that spiritual door open for our Palestinian kin. Their deceased are very much welcomed at our table.

The majority of the 70,000+ Salvadoran citizens who have been imprisoned as a result of the State of Exception were arrested on the suspicion of “illicit association.” (agrupación ilícita). According to Article 345 of the Salvadoran Penal Code, there are four criteria the state needs to prove:

1) that the suspect is a member of an illicit [forbidden by law] grouping, association, or organization; 2) that the grouping consists of two or more people and have some degree of organization; 3) that the objective (or one of the objectives) of the group is the commission of a crime; and 4) that the group performs violent acts or utilizes violent means for the induction, permanence, or departure of its members.

On paper, the law provides specific characteristics for what constitutes a criminal organization, that is to say, simply “belonging” to a gang is not a criminal offense. However, being a member of an organized group while committing (or having the intent to commit) a violent crime is how the law defines a gang. In practice, however, Salvadoran police have taken creative liberty in interpreting the “illicit association” law and have routinely demonstrated their own self-entitled authority and discretion to arrest any citizen on the mere suspicion of being a member or collaborator of an illicit group, which unfortunately in some cases includes the families of gang members and even the victims of gang extortion.”

Bear in mind that prior to the implementation of the State of Exception in March 2022, the Salvadoran government was already engaged in heavy-handed policing against gangs. But at the very least, any Salvadoran citizen arrested under the suspicion of illicit association would, per the nation’s constitution, have to be formally charged before a judge and then given a fair trial with legal representation where the State would have the burden to prove that the defendant met all the criteria for the crime of illicit association.

Because the State of Exception has in effect suspended due process, including the right to legal representation and the right to timely judicial processing, at the moment, any Salvadoran citizen is subject to arrest based entirely on the biased opinion and at the discretion of any given police officer or a third-party’s accusation; and said citizen could spend years incarcerated waiting just to be made aware of the charges against them. As the Director of the Salvadoran National Civil Police Stated in a press conference in February 2023, “A police officer is a judge on the streets…”

The Bukele regime is also facing a public relations problem. To date, Nayib Bukele’s greatest achievement in office has been the reduction of homicides and the alleged dismantling of all gang organizations via the State of Exception, and which has privileged the Bukele regime with widespread public support. Despite the regime having assured the public that every single individual arrested under the State of Exceptions was indeed a vicious gang member, or associated with gangs, government officials likely have knowledge that thousands of arrested citizens in reality never had ANY ties to gangs or any related criminal activity.

But the Bukele regime cannot simply release tens-of-thousands of unjustly arrested and incarcerated citizens. Doing so would not only place the regime in the vulnerable position of having to admit that it committed a grave miscarriage of justice, but it would also undermine the entire rationale and justification for the State of Exception. And especially with the upcoming 2024 presidential elections, Nayib Bukele needs to continue banging drums for his War on Gangs and keep the population fixated on the topic of security, and NOT on the pressing issue of the economy. As Bukele stated in a speech from May 2023 “we will crush these damned murderers and their collaborators, we will put them in prison and they will NEVER get out.”

In a round-table discussion hosted by state-controlled Canal 10 on the first anniversary of the State of Exception (March 27, 2023), attorney general Rodolfo Delgado, spoke about the government’s appalling end-goal strategy for the 70,000+ detainees still waiting to have their day in court. According to Delgado, the implementation of State of Exception served as the first stage from which new and extremely punitive reforms to existing law would stem:

HARSHER SENTENCES - In March 2022, the National Assembly passed reforms to the penal code that increased sentences for membership in a gang from the previous 5-8 years to 20-30 years; and for alleged leadership of gangs, from 14 years to 40-45 years. Additionally, prison sentences for children ages 12-16 were increased to 10 years, and for minors over the age of 16, up to 20 years in prison. According to Rodolfo Delgado, “Using all the tools, including the prosecution of minors,… will generate tranquility for the Salvadoran population.”

MASS TRIALS - Due to the unprecedented number of Salvadoran citizens arbitrarily arrested under the State of Exception (70,000+) neither the nation’s prison nor the judicial systems had the capacity to adequately hold and process, respectively, such an enormity of individual defendants. The result was a human rights disaster with thousands of Salvadoran citizens being incarcerated in overcrowded, ill-equipped, and dangerous prisons for months on end without being properly charged.

But rather than release detainees for whom there existed no criminal record, the Salvadoran state began seeking the legal means to prosecute alleged gang members as collective groups, rather than for individually-committed crimes. In July 2023, the National Assembly passed a new bill which would force detainees to remain imprisoned for an additional two (2) years and allow the Salvadoran state to charge and sentence defendants simultaneously for a single crime in groups as large as 900 individuals. The new law even allows individuals from the same region to be tried as a group. Finally, the maximum sentence for leadership of a gang was raised once again, from 45 years, to a maximum of 60 years in prison. Perhaps nothing better embodies the detached and mechanized manner in which the Salvadoran state perpetrates human rights abuses than the following words from bill proposing mass trials, introduced to the National Assembly on July 25, 2023:

“...all this in effect to achieve a greater efficiency in the determination of responsibility of those subjected to judgment…”

NO HOPE OF RELEASE - Echoing the punitive mantra of Nayib Bukele, attorney general Rodolfo Delgado reiterated that any detainee that was sent to the newly-constructed mega prison “would never be let out.” This despite the fact that according to the Salvadoran Constitution, life sentences are prohibited (Article 60) and the Special Law Against Terrorism only allows for a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison (Article 26).

The Bukele regime knows fully well that tens-of-thousands of Salvadoran citizens who have been arrested during the State of Exception under the suspicion of “illicit association” (i.e. being a member of a gang) do not actually meet the criteria for the legal definition of the crime they have been arrested for. Under normal circumstances, without a State of Exception in effect, even with a compromised judicial system, any given defendant arbitrarily arrested and unjustly charged with “illicit association” might stand a chance of being set free since that State would not have sufficient proof to prosecute them. Again, the Bukele regime KNOWS this, which is why with the perpetual State of Exception in place, they pushed the Nuevas Ideas-controlled National Assembly to approve the use of mass trials, giving the state the power to prosecute and sentence thousands of innocent Salvadoran citizens for crimes they neither committed nor had any association to. And with new harsher sentences for gang association in effect, untold numbers of innocent citizens could potentially spend decades in prison.

The State of Exception and rapid incarceration system that the Bukele regime has created will become a permanent fixture, not only as a means of dealing with criminals and other undesirables, but as a symbol of terror against any future popular critique, dissidence, and revolt. As it is, the Bukele regime has already been employing the State of Exception against its political opponents: journalists, academics, labor organizers, environmental defenders, and community leaders. But this newly-minted Salvadoran prison-industrial complex (P.I.C.) will also allow the Bukele regime to deal with another growing issue: mass poverty.

Despite Bukele regime’s high public approval ratings due to its security policies, the lives working-class and poor Salvadorans have not fundamentally improved–in fact, things have gotten worse:

• Wasteful mismanagement of public funds.

• Growing national debt due to flagrant borrowing from IMF .

• No incoming foreign investment.

• Lack of attention to root causes of scarcity and poverty.

• Mass gentrification dislodging people from traditional forms of employment.

• Eviction of families from their lands due to tourism megaprojects.

• Unaffordable prices on basic foods.

• Thousands of families with at least one provider in prison due to the State of Exception.

As La Prensa Gráfica recently published in July 2023, 1.8 million Salvadorans are presently living in poverty. And given the Bukele regime’s single-mindedness on elevating El Salvador as a global brand through tourism-megaprojects and empty advertising campaigns, economic insecurity will only worsen, leading millions of Salvadoran citizens to seek alternative ways to survive, including criminal activities. And thus, the cycle of criminality and incarceration will begin again.

There is perhaps no better descriptor for the dark road that lays ahead for El Salvador than the following passage from a special report from the human rights organization, Cristosal, marking the one-year anniversary of the State of Exception:

“Massive arbitrary detentions are the entry point to a cycle of terror that includes tortures, cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment; possible arbitrary deaths; prescribed sentences and trials without any guarantee of due process... the systematic perpetration of these human rights abuses as state policy that is decided at the highest level, of a systematic nature and directed against a specific segment of the population (residents from conflict communities, the poor, and the youth) allows us to categorize them as crimes against humanity.”

Sources:

“El Salvador: Reformas legislativas amenazan derechos fundamentales,” Human Rights Watch.

“Delito de agrupación ilícita será comprobado con la existencia de pandillas, según el fiscal,” El Mundo.

“Informe: Un año bajo el régimen de excepción, una medida permanente de represión y de violaciones a los derechos humanos,” Cristosal.

“El Salvador amplía estado de emergencia por 14ta vez para combatir a pandillas,” AP News.

“¿Cuáles son los cuatro elementos para probar el delito de agrupaciones ilícitas?” Gato Encerrado.

“El Salvador clears way for mass trials as crackdown on gangs ramps up,” The Guardian.

“El Salvador tiene 1.8 millones de pobres, la cifra más alta en cuatro años,” La Prensa Gráfica.

Constitución de la República de El Salvador.

Código Penal, El Salvador.

Dictamen No. 12, Comisión de Seguridad Pública y Combate a la Narcoactividad, 25 julio de 2023.

Earlier in the year, a Salvadoran student from UC Davis named Sophia Escobar reached out to me to conduct an interview for a paper they were writing for their Latin American Art class. Sophia’s paper was focused on doing a comparative analysis between the artwork of Fernando Llort and two of my works in that style, De Centroamérica a Westlake con amor and San Romero en el paraíso.

Aside from the honor of having my work being compared alongside Llort’s, what I found personally meaningful and moving were the sincere words from Sophia in her essay:

“The difference between the homeland art of Llort and the diasporic art of Interiano is the [latter’s] use of political criticism needed to heal the Salvadoran people from all the wounds created by colonial institutions that influenced the civil war… Although these two artists are separated by geographical distances and political outspokenness, they are connected by their love for their people. They both chose to represent their people […] in their day to day lives, but their use of vivid colors also created joyous scenes that represent the strength of Salvadoran people despite their trauma.”1

Wow. For me, it’s like being seen and heard by someone like you and who understands you, and so, suddenly, you exist. And not only is there existence, but continuity and connectivity with what was, and perpetuity with what will be. It feels quite healing. Thank you Sophia for reaching out and making this bicho happy.

I was also tremendously impressed by the questions that Sophia had prepared for me, not only because there was much precision and thought behind them, but also because they compelled me to dig into myself more than I had expected. And so, with Sophia’s permission I am presenting below the full interview transcript.

1. What impact has the civil war had on you, and did you feel its effects while still living in the diaspora?

Most people simply don’t understand that for us Salvadorans, the civil war is this immense, amorphous entity, like a shadow that envelops, permeates, and intersects with every aspect of our existence, from the overt to the invisible. It manifests itself in ways that surprises even us years later. How and where we choose to live, who we choose to allow into our lives, how much of ourselves we reveal to the world is always invisibly informed by war-driven fears and paranoia.

I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1980s, during the height of the war. I remember how even revealing that I was Salvadoran meant that people would look at me with a gaze that had already been tainted by whatever horrible imagery the news had broadcasted about El Salvador. When I was six or seven, my mother and I were in mass at St. Vincent de Paul’s and the priest made a call to the congregation to pray for El Salvador, and then asked for any Salvadorans to come forward to the altar. My mother got up and pulled me with her. As we walked down the church aisle, people would extend their hands out, some would pat me on the head, others on the shoulder. I didn’t understand why people were touching me, and why they were looking at us with faces of pity. I hated being the object of their charity.

2. As a Salvadoran living in the diaspora, what led you to create artwork such as De Centroamérica a Westlake con amor?

Back in 2015, I applied to become part of the Community Scholars Program, a joint venture between the UCLA Luskin School of Urban Studies and the UCLA Labor Center. The program aimed to being together scholars and community members to work on a particular social issue. That year, the issue on everyone’s mind was how to address the unaccompanied minors coming from Central America. The group I was a part of (Education) decided to create a resource guide for Central American families in the Westlake-Pico Union districts. Since we needed artwork for the guide, I decided to give it a go and that’s how that piece came into being. The really interesting part is that it was the first time attempting to draw something in my life. My motivation in creating this piece is the same as today: to show the world that us Central Americans are not misery and sorrow, but that we are full of life, color, and joy. That our lands are rich with diversity, and that we bring these riches to the United States (albeit involuntarily).

3. Why did you choose to use the national birds of Central American countries in your artwork?

I am not a big fan of nation-states nor their nationalist symbols. This is why most of the art I produce never uses any of the Central American flags as symbols of pride. But I’ve always been an amateur ornithologist and so I have a tremendous amount of love and respect for birds. The birds of Central America, much like our people, are unique and full of color. And more importantly, because of flight, birds do not recognize arbitrary human-made borders. Their home is wherever their is sustenance and safety. It serves as a good analogy for migration. Perhaps it’s due to Disney creating an entire industry out of anthropomorphising animals for our entertainment, but I’ve found that using anthropomorphic birds in my political artwork has allowed for easier acceptance of messaging.

4. Who inspired your artistic aesthetic? Is Fernando Llort one of your inspirations?

Fernando Llort is certainly one my inspirations, though of course, there’s now a multitude of artisans in El Salvador creating magnificent artwork on wood, so credit goes to them as well. Though I would say that Llort’s work tended to also be both fantastical in scope and minimalist in detail at the same time, using only black outlines and a handful of vibrant colors to depict every day scenery, but as interpreted by the surrealism of one’s dreams. Perhaps the type of imagery that our ancestors saw when they drank chicha! I tend to take the spirit of that aesthetic and give them a bit more detail.

Another source of inspiration, particularly for my political artwork, are the anti-imperialist posters from the late 1970s and onward. For example, on the left is a poster from the early 1980s condemning U.S. interventionism in Central America; while on the right is my own design calling out the U.S. utilizing the Mexican government as its own anti-migrant attack force.

5. How does your art differ from other Latinx artists- especially those of Mexican descent? How would your art differ from other Salvadoran artists who live in El Salvador?

I feel that the Mexican Revolution at the onset of the 20th century played an enormous role in developing a nationalist aesthetic sensibility that was fueled by indigenismo and the movement of revolutionary and populist muralism. Fast forward a century later, and add the hyper-popularity of the surrealist work of Kahlo, and you have the foundation for Aztec-kitsch that seems to be at the core of much of present-day Mexican-American and Chicanx art.

I think that because of the cultural and institutional lack of exposure to Central American art movements, some Central Americans in the diaspora have tended to reproduce that Chicanesque kitshy aesthetic in their own art and poetry. However, when Central American artists have either lived or visited the homelands in the isthmus, or grew up in households where the very particular aesthetic of our artesanal artwork was absorbed through osmosis, it creates not only a deeply personal connection to it, but it radically changes their creative cosmovision. As an example, Kiara Machado is Salvadoran-Guatemalan artists who paints large landscapes of green jungle foliage that hide Mayan inspired dolls and worry dolls, wearing colors and patters that can only be reproduced after having been absorbed in person.

So the same goes for me. The pieces Westlake and San Romero are very much influenced by Salvadoran artisans. Even the political art that I’ve made has it’s roots in political posters from the 60s-80s calling out the repression in Central America and U.S. interventionism.

And that’s the particularity about Salvadoran-American art that differs from Mexican/Chicanx–war, migration, displacement, uprootedness are always in the background, in the unconscious intentions of the artist. There’s a deep sense sorrow for the loss of language, traditions, history. Whereas for Salvadoran artists living in El Salvador, the work they produce tends to channel a collective anxiety over the future, or some degree of apathy over the current state of affairs.

6. I don’t think you’re religious, but why did you choose to make an art piece of St. Oscar Romero, and what significance does he have to you?

While I am not a Catholic, or follow any form of organized belief system, I do possess some ancestor-based spirituality. That being said, for Salvadorans, the figure of San Romero transcends the borders of El Salvador and Roman Catholicism, to become a universal symbol of courage and love for one’s people. I personally have mixed and contradictory feelings about San Romero. There’s a part of me that grieves for him as a martyr for our people, there’s also the other part of me that is suspicious because of what the Catholic Church has represented in El Salvador: genocide of indigenous peoples, ladinization, misogyny, heterosexism, and patriarchy. And it is for this reason that when I created the piece San Romero en el paraíso, I decided to include all kinds of Salvadorans in the background, not only peasants, but also migrants, students, guerrilleros, gang-members, and queer couples. I’m perfectly fine holding San Romero in reverence, while still interrogating and challenging what he represents.

7. What does living in the Salvadoran Diaspora mean to you?

Rather trying to dig through my feelings to give an inadequate explanation, I’ll repeat something I wrote a while back:

“To be Salvadoran at times feels as if one were an ambulating wound, held up only by the most minimal of scarred tissue, constantly anxious that any small blow will open a discharge of plasmatic weeping, globules of rage, and blood clots blackened by all the pain we have sustained as a people. We ambulate in a state of constant denial that we are survivors of a profound and collective trauma, which we appease with sad nostalgia, or exaggerated Salvadoraness, or an absurd love for the gringo nation.”

8. What makes Salvadoran art different from other Latinx art?

Salvadoran art is much like its creators: brutally honest in a way that gets confused for vulgarity; at once fearful of touching our wounds, but once we get into that zone of pain, we wallow in it; apathetic and cynical about present existence, but oddly nostalgic and hopeful for a better future; morbid and dark as our nightmares about the war, or colorfully bright as our souls when we hear a cumbia.

By Sandra Xinico Batz (sxinicobatz@gmail.com)

Para la versión original en español

Schools, colleges, and institutions are all ready for Independence Day festivities. Many young people, girls and boys, have been asked to dress up in the “traditional attire” to march; it’s one of the two occasions throughout the year when it’s good and permissible to dress us as “little Indians,” because we are celebrating Guatemala, and in the name of independence, we say we are proud of our roots (and so, it is worth the sacrifice to look like an indigenous person for just a few hours.)

There won’t be a shortage of military haircuts at educational institutions (after all, we haven’t yet abolished militarism, including off our own heads). There they go, little boys and girls marching and imitating military bands. It seems as if school marching bands are they only thing that we can offer youth and children to keep themselves busy or feel part of something. The musical repertoire that the majority have performed in the last few years are songs from the Mexican banda genre in the style of “La Trakalosa de Monterrey” or “La Arrolladora Banda El Limón”, making sure to also wear all corresponding the paraphernalia.

The independence torches will inundate the country, hundreds of Guatemalans will run through the streets, motivated by patriotic nationalism represented in the fire of liberty, which they will carry to their municipalities and towns. These are days in which we sing the anthem to Guatemala and Central America (“five fingers forming one hand”), we pledge allegiance to the flag, and the country dresses up in blue and white. Vehicles will be sporting little Guatemalan flags, driven by energetic drivers who have no qualms about running over you as you walk at the pedestrian crossing.

This is your independence, Guatemala! This what it has all been about since it was signed: a simulation of liberty and autonomy. The country that claims to feel pride in itself every September 15th is a nation controlled by racism, dispossession, and inequality that has never stopped being a criollo nation and that still operates like a finca (hacienda). An enslaving country, without memory, where the corrupt are in power while the poorest work from sunup to sundown without rest. A country full of chapines who feel proud of their Spanish “ancestors” but are vociferous against foreign interference when convenient, that is, when their privileges and concentration of power are challenged. A country in constant crisis, which in the name of “life” promulgates death and hatred, and which allows its “citizens” to die of hunger and malnutrition.

A country that is not only dependent (economically and ideologically) on the North Americans and Europeans, but also on the manipulation of the rich (locals), Christian churches, and corporate mass media. A country that exterminates and impoverishes indigenous communities in the name of “progress,” one that calls Mayan women “Marías,” “indias,” and “inditas,” who every September 15th and December 12th will lend out their “rags” so that everyone else can dress up as “Guatemala.”

A country where one blames a volcano for all the misfortune it caused, where one can lose everything and three months later, “life goes on” living in a shelter.

Sandra Xinico Batz

Sandra is Kaqchikel, originally from Patzún, Chimaltenago. She was born on 1 Kab’an 10 Yaxk’in. She is a primary school teacher, anthropologist, and opinion columnist. At the Universidad de San Carlos of Guatemala, she was a student representative and advocate of university reform. In 2014, she received recognition as a proponent for Juventud Nacional (National Youth), awarded the Premio Guisella Paz y Paz y Jorge Rosal, granted by the Red por la Paz y Desarrollo de Guatemala (Network for Peace and Development of Guatemala). She is presently a member of the Red de Educación para el Desarrollo Sostenible RCE-Guatemala (Education Network for Sustainable Development – Guatemala).

By Romario Bautista

Note: This text was originally published as a story on the author’s Instagram account. The author has given permission to reproduce this text as a blog post.

Okay, so I never really like to talk about these things on my Instagram, because that’s what my Twitter is for. But “Chicanx” Twitter got me heated on these conversations about being “indigenous” and “reclaiming your roots.” So I am going to be giving y’all some insight on the difference between being “indigenous” and “a person of indigenous descent.”

There is no problem with Latinx folks “reclaiming” their indigenous roots. For some Latinx folks, colonization has impacted their families much more than others and I’m all about folks wanting to learn about their roots and understanding where they came from and how their family history has changed.

I do have a huge problem when folks who are “reclaiming” their roots begin to identify themselves as an indigenous person. Umm, NO, you absolutely do not get to do that and let me tell you why.

The Chicanx “identity” has taught all “Mexican” folks that they are “indigenous” and they need to “decolonize” themselves from the European identity. Like I said, y’all are more than welcome to learn about your roots and where you come from. But if you have no family history of what tribe you come from and begin associating yourself with the “Mexica/Aztec” identity and begin to claim “Aztlan” and start giving yourself a “Mexica/indigenous” name, you need to take a step back and check yourself.

So… are you able to claim being an indigenous person, or are you a descendent of indigenous people? Let’s find out!

First things first. BEING NATIVE ISN’T SOLELY DEFINED BY BLOOD QUANTUM! When I say that a community has to claim you, I dead ass mean a community has to claim you. For example, my Zapotec community governs themselves through a traditional form of government called “usos y costumbres” (uses and customs). Because our family members own land, we have a civic obligation to our land and tribal government. Whether we like it OR NOT, (most of the time, we don’t like it hehe), that is what keeps us tied to our land and our Zapotec people.

I currently live in Oregon, but my community has a tribal council located in Los Angeles, California due to the amount of indigenous migrants that reside in Southern California and Pasco, Washington. This reason being is that the politics that occur in the tribal council affect each and everyone us, regardless of where we reside physically. Our community depends on one another, and regardless of where we go we cannot escape the issues that continue to occur in our communities.

The fact that the Latinx community is at a point in time where EVERYONE wants to claim indigeneity, everyone wants to wear indigenous blouses, grow their hair out, give themselves an indigenous name, and more than anything want to claim “Aztlan” (which is an entirely different conversation itself), and the Mexica identity and perpetuating that onto other Latinx without acknowledging the fact that there are over 200 indigenous communities is insulting and problematic AF.

Just because you took a 23AndMe test that told you you have 60% native ancestry does not give you the right to call yourself indigenous. It’s insulting to indigenous folks who have been taught to be ashamed of themselves for speaking their language, practicing their traditions, and fighting for their rights in their communities since the moment they stepped foot on this earth. It’s insulting to the indigenous people who spent their whole lives hating themselves from the discrimination they faced from Mestizx/Latinx folks. Because anti-indigenous and anti-blackness still exists in he Latinx community.

This is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. This is the type of shit that makes me laugh but cringe at the same time because Chicanx folks really think you can slap indigeneity and decolonization onto any little thing without consulting indigenous people and including them in the conversation.

A recent article written by Jessica Hernández, a Zapotec/Ch’orti’ Indigenous Scientist clearly outlined how Chicanx folks subconsciously have and continue to silence ALL other indigenous people:

“When it is time for indigenous peoples to talk or speak, remove yourself from that discourse or conversation. Acknowledge the tribes and indigenous communities that still exist. I continue to be silenced by Chican@s who claim they are indigenous so they think they can take up that space designed for indigenous peoples. They get insulted when I tell them that there is a difference between being indigenous and indigenous descendants. It is as though everyone wants some indigeneity to claim, without having to face the threats and violence that comes from it.”

I know that I’m not perfect and I’m not always right, but this something I’ve been analyzing and have been affected by for a while now. If you want to have a discussion about this, I’m more than happy to, I’m just tired of seeing Mexican Nationalist and Chicanx folks taking up spaces from other indigenous folks who are literally fighting for their communities.

I also wanted to send a lot of love and support to folks from the following communities: Mixtec, Purepecha, Zapotec, Yaqui, Taramura/Raramuri, Mayan, Afro-indigenous folks, Mixe, and Nahua.

Thank you for the support and encouragement to uplift my experience. I know y’all have experienced the same things and continue to be silenced by the Chicanx/Latinx romanticization of “indigeneity.” I will continue to advocate for our and all indigenous communities so we can have a spot at the table and be heard.

Also sending lots of love to all the Chicanx and Latinx folks who have showed support and have begun having these conversation within their own communities. Like I have said, my intention is never to attack folks, but to create a space and platform to engage in conversation and to reflect and analyze.

For more information on this topic, please check out the following articles:

How the Chican@ Discourse Silences Indigenous Peoples from Mexico + Central Americans By Jessica Hernandez

Geographies of Race and Ethnicity III: Settler Colonialism and Nonnative People of Color By Laura Pulido

Decolonization is Not a Metaphor By K. Wayne Yang & Eve Tuck

Beyond Aztlán: Reflections on the Chicanx Student Movement By Nicolas Cruz

As I was checking my Instagram stream back in February of 2018, I came across an image that absolutely captivated me: it was a vibrantly colorful portrait of a Guatemalan doll, like the kind I had seen as a child selling in markets in El Salvador as a muñeca chapina (not to be confused with the smaller, and admittedly cuter, quitapenas, so-called “worry dolls.”) I stared at the image for quite some time, soaking in the gorgeous purples and pinks of the pattern on the doll’s refajo, contrasted by the deep greens of the foliage, and the yellow-green of the nardos, ready to blossom. There was an air of familiarity in the image, like a memory of lost childhood in Central America. Perhaps I was less remembering my own life, and more channeling someone else’s. As I ruminated over the haunting stare of the doll, I wondered, why was she hiding behind the foliage? What was she witnessing with those eyes that never close? I began to feel a profound sense of sadness, of loss. The painting was triggering that pesky trauma that all us children of genocide and war carry inside us. This painting was a still-life unlike any I had seen before. Who was this artist?

In March of 2018, I got my chance to meet finally meet the artist, Kiara Aileen Machado. She, along with fellow artist, Nicaraguan photographer Tanya Flores Hodgson, held a joint exhibition as Central American artists titled Quiubo Maje at their school, Cal State Long Beach–perhaps the first time that institution had ever held such an event. After a lengthy 45-minute drive from Pasadena, I got to the exhibition and was met with a cheerful and amicable young woman in her early 20s, along with her equally cheerful and amicable parents who were helping her set up the hors d’oeuvres** for guests: quesadilla and an assortment of Central American breads, snacks, and soda. Of course Kiara’s parents were there. No matter what we’re involved in throughout our lives, our Central American parents will always hold diversified roles as our support mechanisms, cheerleaders, and number one critics.

And so, on that Sunday late-afternoon, a usually stuffy and pretentious art gallery at an institution of higher learning, which typically housed the insipid concoctions of white artists trying to figure out how to squeeze color out of a tube of white paint, had suddenly become a most colorful Central American family affair. A safe haven for quesadilla, cumbia, and cacophonous laughter. As for the artwork? Even better in person! Check out the pieces below:

**Yes, I had to look up how to spell the damned word.

Since that exhibition in Long Beach in early 2018, it has greatly pleased me to see Kiara’s star riding high and shining bright. Her artwork has been featured in publications such as Voyage L.A. Magazine and the Los Angeles Review of Books PubLab, as well as numerous art exhibitions throughout Southern California, including most recently, at the University of Central Florida. Her large wall-sized works on canvas are also routinely presented at Central American-based conferences and community events where guests take great delight in taking selfies with them.

An Hamaca of One’s Own

Following the opening of her most recent show, Hermana Querida (July 2019), I asked Kiara if I could do a more in-depth interview her for the opening of this series. She not only agreed, but graciously invited me to visit her studio space at home. And so, on a sunny Monday afternoon, I drove out 25 minutes from my own home and visited the artist at her space of creation. At this point I should mention that I’ve seen Kiara’s parents at various Central American-themed events so many times now, that I’m basically a friend of the family. So as soon as I arrived, Kiara’s mother insisted I sit down for cafecito y cukis and catch up on life. One must never, ever, reject coffee or food from a Central American mother.

And so, Kiara’s studio space turned out to be her former bedroom. Now, imagine if one of Kiara’s paintings, full of colorful flowers, leaves, vines, weeds, and everything else that grows in the density of a rain forest, one day spontaneously combusted and exploded all over the walls. That’s pretty much what her studio/bedroom looks like.

I’m a big fan of finding the little details in images. Besides the obvious gorgeous painting on the easel, check out the torogoz wind chime behind it, along with the El Salvador sports pennant, and the quetzal key holder on the right.

Hermana Querida (2019)

This past July of 2019, Kiara debuted her latest collection titled, Hermana Querida, at Patria Coffee in Compton, CA. The visage of her sister is quite obviously the centerpiece. Unlike Kiara’s previous works, which I will cheekily refer to as her “Green Phase,” the color palette shifted from greens to magentas in this new collection, giving all the pieces the distinct feeling of having been rendered during “magic hour.” If you wish to see them for yourself, you have one week left as of the date of this article’s publishing (exhibit ends on October 26, 2019). Otherwise, enjoy the pictures below.

During the video interview embedded at the onset of this article, I asked Kiara where she sees herself in the next five years. She stated that she hopes to take her artwork outside of the United States, and in particular, to Central America. I see no reason why that won’t happen. I am genuinely excited for Kiara’s future, not only as the talented artists that she is, but also how well she will represent the Central American community in the world stage.

P.S…

As I remarked at the beginning of this article, this is the first painting of Kiara’s I ever saw and instantly fell in love with it. And so, I gladly purchased and it is now making my home office a happier and more colorful space.

To learn more about Kiara Machado, please visit her at:

Web:

https://kiaraaileen.weebly.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiara_aileen_arts/?hl=en

To purchase her art: https://www.artsy.net/curatorlove/artist/kiara-aileen-machado

At the 90th Academy Awards on March 4th , as expected, the Disney/Pixar film COCO won the Oscar for Best Animated film of the year. Following speeches by the directors and producers of the film, the voice of Miguel, Anthony Gonzáles, got up to the microphone and yelled out “¡Viva México!” As many of you know, Anthony is Guatemalan-American. While I’m sure that the shout out to Mexico was very much appreciated by millions of Mexican folks, the action personally left me with an unsettled feeling in my stomach, as I’m sure it did for many other Central Americans who were watching the show that evening, or saw a clip of the speech pop up in their social media feeds the following day.

Before proceeding, I would like to make clear that by writing this essay, I am in no way trying to throw shade on Anthony Gonzáles. Quite the opposite, I would like to take this opportunity to say how proud we are of all this achievements and that he deserves every last accolade that has been bestowed on him. We respect his hustle, and how much he and his family have had to sacrifice to get him where he’s at. He’s an amazing talent and we wish him all the best with whatever he chooses in his life. All that being said, I am very much interested in examining how Anthony is perceived and received as a Guatemalan-American within the broader landscape Mexican-dominated popular culture because it provides an opportunity to deconstruct and analyze the limitations of representation politics as they relate to the Central American community.

Let’s Play the Representation Game!

Just this past year alone, the hashtag #RepresentationMattters has galvanized into a genuine movement demanding greater inclusion and diversity of marginalized communities within the entertainment and publication industries. And without a doubt, Disney/Pixar’s animated film COCO is certainly at the forefront of this cultural paradigm shift. Especially for a Mexican community that for the last century has either been ignored by the Hollywood film industry, or seen itself reduced to a series of recyclable racist tropes in popular media, COCO was a much welcomed respite; an at once idyllic and fantastical representation of Mexico full of familia, cultura, and ganas; a positive pastel-colored reflection of the Mexican community at a time when they have been so maligned by Donald Trump; the perfect distillation of what it means to be Mexican as only the white master-craft hipster imagineers (actual Disney term!) at Pixar Animation can do it. So now that the film has won the highest prize in the land, we can now herald in a new age of Latinx representation, right? Well, not exactly.

I would like folks in the audience to take a moment to consider the following: when it comes to the game of Representation Politics, it’s not a democratic engagement where everyone gets their turn to play. No, it’s more like the most dominant and loudest voice is the one that ends up being heard. Despite the fact that we as Latin Americans are very diverse and heterogeneous conglomeration of peoples, by sheer virtue of population size and geographical permanence, it is almost always the Mexican voice that comes through the loudest and clearest. Just look at the chart below if you need evidence of the obvious:

Look at that! As of 2016, there were 36.2 million Mexicans living in the United States. Central Americans? Only 5.3 million. That’s a ratio of almost 6 to 1. I hate to burst the bubble of perceived Latinx equality, but Central Americans are nowhere near having the same level of access, opportunity, resources, and political and cultural power as Mexicans do. That’s a fact. And no amount of upholding and glorifying the LATINX umbrella term will make equality a reality.

Look, it’s okay for Mexicans to be proud of who they are and their rich history and culture, but because Mexicans are the largest Latinx demographic by a ridiculous margin, all other Latinxs end up getting obscured, or erased entirely. Almost all of Spanish-speaking television reflects a Mexican imaginary. Even most Latinx social media platforms still largely cater to a Mexican demographic. Tacos, conchas, and chingonxs, y’all. This is the reason why in the last couple of years, so many Central American platforms have popped up. It is out of sheer necessity.

So it should come as no surprise that when it comes to investment in large-scale productions across all types of media (film, television, internet, and publications) that is purportedly intended for the Latinx population, media creators are only willing to invest millions of dollars to market to the demographic with the largest amount of purchase power, i.e. Mexicans.. There is no way said media creators would ever consider investing in creating an expensive animated film about Central America, let alone indigenous or afro-descendent populations within the isthmus. (But then again, would we really want that to happen?)

That Dreaded H-Word

During those moments when we as Central Americans voice our concerns about erasure within the larger Latinx framework, or attempt to express the uniquely compromised position we fill in the geopolitical machinations of the North American powers, especially where it concerns Mexican complicity in these matters, I’m always struck at how Mexican folks will engage with us under the presumption that we both wield equal amounts of cultural and political power. And in some cases, Mexican folks will react to our legitimate grievances and critiques as if we were actually capable of causing them harm. I tweeted once that “One of the clearest symptoms of being embedded in a cultural hegemony is an obliviousness to one’s own dominance… How else do you explain 35 million Mexicans in the U.S. feeling like 6 million Central Americans somehow have the same access to resources and power?”

When we discuss this concept called the #MexicanHegemony, we’re not talking about some nebulous fantasy sprung from the imagination of a Central American who has an overabundance of haterade running through their veins. It comes from a place of lived experiences, from the trauma of being trapped in a living Venn diagram, slowly getting crushed between two enormous nationalist ideologies. It is a material reality of not only having to assimilate to the primary hegemony of American whiteness, but also to a secondary hegemony of Mexicanness, and then having to spend the rest of our days learning to navigate between the two. Now, I would like to make clear the the Mexican Hegemony does not have the same power as the capitalist white supremacist American hegemony. But when we’re dealing with a population as small as the Central American community, the Mexican and American hegemonies might as well be the same size. And while it can be argued that the American hegemony’s imperialist ambitions have caused untold trauma and death in Central America, within the last twenty-years, the Mexican nation state has become America’s compadre in committing incalculable atrocities to Central American migrants.

For many Central Americans, how they have survived, coped with, and navigated through the Mexican Hegemony is as varied and unique as their individual life experiences. For some, it was a matter of learning to live with it and accept a quasi-paternalistic relationship with the Mexican community, forever subjected to passive aggressive and thinly veiled disdainful comments. For others, it meant flat out denying their Central American ancestry and pretending to be Mexican to avoid being bullied or mocked. Still, for others like my father who came to the U.S. in the mid-1970s, it meant having to learn Chicano caló so he could communicate better with the neighborhood cholos and pass by them without being harassed. And finally for some, it meant choosing the route of self-defense, to gather together the unwanted and ostracized to protect themselves from the relentless violence of Mexican gangs, which incidentally, is how the La Mara Salvatrucha came into being.

I could go on and on, but the point here is that most of us as Central Americans have had to assimilate in some form or another to Mexican culture. And while I personally would sardonically argue that decades worth of Chicano-based curricula across all levels of education is tantamount to institutional acculturation to Mexican culture, I am also inclined to admit that not every single interaction between Central Americans and the Mexican population is necessarily demarcated by an overt hierarchical power relation. Quite the opposite, I believe that Central Americans have made every effort to live in community with Mexican folk and vice-versa, many of whom we are happy to call our friends, neighbors, colleagues, partners, and even family members. And it’s not like there are roving bands of Mexicans force feeding cultura to poor Central Americans. But then that’s the tricky thing about a cultural hegemony, it doesn’t need to be forecul to exert power and reinforce a hierarchy–it just needs to be the default. Even it its most benign form, the sheer ubiquity of Mexican culture in the Southwest of the United States makes it not only the default, but fatalistically inescapable.

In purely practical terms, it means that to have been a migrant from the Central American isthmus who entered the geography of the Southwest necessitated possessing at the very least a rudimentary knowledge of Mexican language, culture, and pop culture to not only make a living, but to move around, socialize and interact within any given community. Because no matter how densely packed any Central American enclave may have been, it was still surrounded by Mexican folks. However, to be the children of Central American who were born Southwest, means that Mexican culture was almost a congenital development within us, having already absorbed it from a very early age. Growing up eating flat Guerrero tortillas, or being called güey at school, or hearing the whole neighborhood erupt when Mexico scored a goal, these were all the hallmarks that we were living on a land that wasn’t ours. But the sad part was that we didn’t even know we were foreigners until that fateful day when asked where our parents were from.

(For further reading, please check out Virginia Lemus’s Always Say You’re Mexican Part I and Part II).

So, You’re Central American, Eh?

And so we return to thesis of this essay, what does all this have to do with young Anthony Gonzáles?

A couple weeks ago, Anthony appeared on Telemundo’s Don Francisco Te Invita to promote the future release of COCO on home video. During the course of the interview, Don Francisco asked Anthony about his cultural background:

Don Francisco: “Oye, ¿y tú eres de origen guatemalteco, no? ¿tus padres?

Anthony: “Sí, yo soy de Los Angeles, pero mis padres son de Guatemala.. Y tengo muchos familiares de México también. ¡Y amo a México!”

It is at this point that Don Francisco asks Anthony to sing a Mexican tune, to which the young Guatemalan-American obliges and belts out ¡Viva México! by Pedro Galindo Garza. Now, to most Mexicans watching this scene unfold, a Guatemalan boy dressed as a charro singing his heart out to Mexico must not only seem like the cutest thing in the world, but must feel quite flattering. But to many Central Americans, this scene opens up a Pandora’s Box of complicated emotions.

On the one hand, it’s wonderful to see a young Guatemalan-American have this level of success and represent Central Americans in a positive way. But on the other hand, it must be asked whether he is even representing the Central American community at all? In that short exchange between Don Francisco and Anthony, I personally found it strange that upon being asked about his cultural background, Anthony chose to localize his own origins in the city of Los Angeles, but his parents back in Guatemala–almost as if he didn’t want to be attached to that part of his heritage. And then, seemingly renouncing his Guatemalan origins, Anthony proclaimed his love for Mexico by stoking the ardent fires of Mexican nationalism with a patriotic song. Now, as strange, unnatural, and disconcerting as this whole scenario may seem to a many proud Central American, there is a legitimate reason for it.

While a substantial number of written publications have been specific to note that Anthony is indeed Guatemalan-American, in the video interviews I researched for the purposes of this essay, Anthony himself is never forthcoming about his Guatemalan heritage. Now granted, in most interviews with various English-speaking media outlets, Anthony’s Guatemalan ancestry is Not an important detail because, presumably, the English-speaking world (the primary American hegemony) by default just assumes that he is of Mexican origin. However, it’s in the Spanish-speaking interviews where the Guatemalan origins of Anthony’s parents becomes a point of conversation, and in some ways, a contradiction of competing nationalisms, whose only resolution is to publicly express an unabashed love for Mexico. How so?

Well, according the story that Anthony and his family has put forth in many interviews, Anthony and his siblings have always had an affinity for mariachi music. In fact, Anthony grew up watching his siblings perform at La Placita Olvera (which has historically been the Mexican heart of Los Angeles), and he decided that he wanted to dedicate his life to performing mariachi professionally. Now I want you, dear reader, to take a moment to ponder what it must have been like for these Guatemalan-American kids to enter and perform professionally in a musical genre that quintessentially and culturally defines Mexican nationalism. Because to be both an openly and vocally proud Central American AND a professional mariachi performer in any entertainment product that will be mass marketed to a Mexican-dominated Latinx audience, is not only anomalous, but a contradiction.

Now, let me be clear, that to be a Central American and love mariachi music, even to the point of wanting to perform it professionally is in it of itself is not a contradiction. And simply because Anthony loves mariachi does not by default make him a Mexico-phile. Central Americans have been loving mariachi, corridos, and boleros since the days of Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Javier Solis, José Alfredo Jimenez and so on. For generations, Central Americans have grown up listening to all kinds of Mexican music, and we love it to bits. In fact, there are hundreds of mariachi conjuntos all over Central America, who perform and appreciate Mexican music, but nonetheless remain proud to be Central American.

That being said, when presenters on Telemundo and Univisión, television networks whose largest audiences are that precious Mexican demographic, ask Anthony about his Guatemalan origins, they do so because it’s an opportunity to publicly resolve the contradiction of Anthony, a Guatemalan-American boy, portraying a Mexican character (and the most important part), in a $200 million Disney production that absolutely, positively, needs to connect, resonate, represent, and be validated by the Mexican community living in the U.S.

Now, I’m sure many would argue that the Mexican community in the U.S. wouldn’t care one way or another if the voice of COCO had been performed by a non-Mexican Latinx, and that may indeed be the case since, since at the end of the day, COCO is still just an cute animated film, the flavor of the month. But perhaps to Anthony and his family, the film functions as a national public audition for a desired future career in music for Anthony. However, I would ask you to seriously consider the following scenario: what if during the press junkets for COCO, Anthony had announced the following in every interview: “I am a proud Guatemalan and I love mariachi music. ¡Viva latinoamérica!” At this point, I guarantee you would have had a considerable number of Mexican folk on social media complaining how Anthony was not representing Mexico adequately. Mexican nationalism, as a hegemonizing sociocultural mechanism would never allow Anthony to be a proud Guatemalan while serving in the capacity as an appointed representative of Mexican culture.

So unless one wants to be the lonely but proud Central American mariachi who is othered and politely ostracized to the fringes by a puzzled Mexican audience, a smart Central American will keep quiet or minimize their origins and overcompensate by proclaiming one’s love for Mexico from every street corner.

To wit, in another Spanish-speaking interview, this time with Despierta América, the host brings up Anthony’s Guatemalan parents, at which point his mother comes on and delivers the following message to the audience:

“Venimos a Los Angeles hace muchos años. Nuestros hijos nacieron en Los Angeles. Amamos la cultura mexicana.. [she then speaks of advice she gave Anthony]

Hijo, abre tu corazón. Los Angeles es unidad. Estado Unidos es estados unidos. Tu corazón tiene que ser universal. La música es lo mas lindo. Conectas con el público. Da lo que puedas de tí. Lucha por tu gente como César Chávez, Dolores Huerta–tantos líderes que hemos tenido en Los Angeles… Abre tu corazón sin mirar banderas.”

And although to a lot of folks, that may sound like a lovely statement of multicultural Latinidad, in the end, it’s about elevating Mexican culture and history. It’s also about a mother making a calculated effort to legitimize her son as professional mariachi performer and not get rejected for something he loves doing. Would Mexicans ever spend their money to buy concert tickets, CDs, and other paraphernalia for a Guatemalan mariachi?

No self-respecting Central American will scream out “I Love Mexico,” or pay homage/tribute to Mexicans, unless they absolutely need to, whether it is for career advancement, or to not get harassed and beaten up, or simply, to survive.

Mexican Social Media Reaction to Anthony’s “¡Viva Mexico!”

With all the effort that young Anthony Gonzáles and his family have put forth in trying to build a public image that both flatters the Mexican ego while marginally acknowledging the family’s Guatemalan origins, everything seemed to culminate successfully with el grito de “¡Viva Mexico!” at the Oscars. Reactions from Mexican audiences on social media have been overwhelmingly positive, and expectedly, problematic–mostly due to having little if any knowledge or understanding of the complexities and nuances of being a Central American in the Southwest.

Reactions on social media have come in four distinct flavors:

1. That Guatemalan kid is just wonderful This is a win for all Latinxs!

2. That Guatemalan kid is really singing his heart out for Mexico. That’s so cute! Good for him!

3. That kid loves mariachi and Mexico so much he might as well be Mexican.

4. That Mexican kid is awesome!

As benign and inclusive as the first statement may seem, ultimately it is most definitely a win for Mexico, but NOT for Latinxs everywhere, no matter what the COCO marketing says. The fact that Anthony is a Guatemalan-American was overshadowed and minimized every single time he exclaimed his love for Mexico and sang dressed up as a charro. And it was totally erased the moment he yelled out ¡Viva Mexico! to an audience of millions. At that moment, he was a vessel for Mexican nationalism, which is the self-appointed representative for all Latinidad before the world of white people. And that phenomenon is not a unique occurrence. In the white imaginary, Mexico continue to be the conveniently local stand-in for the rest of Latin America. And thankfully for Mexico, the mustached Mexican bandolero has ceased to be archetypal antagonist to American audiences.

The second statement, again may sound benign, but reeks of paternalism. The fact of the matter is that most Mexican folks don’t know much about Central America, or its peoples. As a cultural hegemony, there is no incentive for Mexicans to really learn anything about the rest of Latin America, especially, Central America and the Caribbean, unless they are somehow exposed to it through mass media. So what they know about Central Americans is largely still a melange of stereotypes, reductive tropes, and whatever sensationalist story Primer Impacto pulls out of its orifices. So outside of the continuous stream of sordid, sad, and altogether negative stories about Central America, the only time we’re actually visible to them is if we address them directly, or even better, is if we ingratiate ourselves to them.

It’s the third and fourth statements that are more worrisome. At this point, whatever semblance of Anthony being a Central American becomes irrelevant because some Mexican folks either collapse him into Mexicanness or flat out just make shit up. Like Anthony being from East Los Angeles, because we all know that to have a legit Mexican/Chicano origin story, the star of COCO needs to have come from the rough barrio streets of East L.A. And his name is probably Antonio, but he changed it to Anthony because like Ricardo Valenzuela (aka Ritchie Valens), he still needs to appeal to the Disney gabachos, right? No of course not! Because Anthony and his Guatemalan family are not from East L.A. and he is named Anthony because we Central Americans love giving our kids anglicized names.

The other statement I find downright disturbing is this notion that inside us poor Central Americans is a Mexican dying to get out, hence, the use of that infamous quote from Chavela Vargas: “¡Los mexicanos nacemos donde nos da la rechingada gana!” While I’m sure that quote serves to puff up Mexican chests with pure unadulterated chingonxness, to me it denotes Mexican nationalism’s quasi-imperialist relationship with Latin America; that is to say, that Mexicans can be born wherever the fuck they want because to be a Mexican is a transcendentalist existence, one that cares for no borders and seeks to correct the malformation of not having been born Mexican. It’s not that different from how American nationalism functions, folks. Of course, it’s an ironic quote given that Chavela Vargas was born in Costa Rica. And while Chavela’s full-on embrace of Mexicanness is understandable given the harsh treatment she received in her homeland as a queer woman, the way her quote is being utilized in this present-day context is to eradicate the wrongness of being Central American.

Some will continue to argue that COCO is just about Mexico and no other nationality, and therefore, who cares about what us Central Americans think or want? And yet, I must contend that 1) the film is still marketed as a triumph for ALL Latinxs, and 2) the principal voice of the film, is nonetheless a Guatemalan-American actor. Nothing changes that. To ignore that Anthony is of Guatemalan descent, it not only an act of erasure, but a disservice to all the Guatemalans AND Central Americans who loved and supported the film COCO. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, the only way COCO is a win for Latinx representation is if all Latinxs democratically voted for Mexicans to be our duly appointed representatives to the world of white people.

Some Concluding Thoughts for Fellow Central Americans

Now let me be clear, Anthony Gonzales is young man who is still developing his own sense of identity, and is entitled to self-identify however he wishes. No one has the right to impose any identity on him nor presume it for him. Yes, for many of us Central Americans, it is a disappointment that he’s not proudly claiming his Guatemalan roots, but then, that’s the reality with so many of our youth. And as unfortunate as it may be that Anthony isn’t repping hard the Central American isthmus, if at all, it’s also unfair to hold it against him. The same goes for his mother. If she’s out there telling the world how much she and her family love Mexico, its because she’s a mother who loves her boy, and wants every avenue of opportunity available to him. It’s no different than our parents kissing up to white people if it will mean an opportunity for us.

At the end of the day, Anthony is a youth who doesn’t deserve to be the subject of a nationalist tug-of-war between adults trying to claim a piece of the representation pie. He is a youth who deserves to do what he loves without the scrutiny of competing nationalisms commodifying him as if he were a Miguel doll. Anthony deserves to have a community who feels proud of his accomplishments, and who will support him on whatever endeavor he chooses for himself. If he ever puts out a mariachi album, I will be more than happy to purchase it.

As for our Central American community, who feels bereft of proper representation I say this: no one will do it for us, so we must build it for ourselves. We have so many stories that need to be told, on our terms, in our own voices. But luckily, we are overflowing with talent. And though the resources, opportunities, and access for us are limited, like our parents and grandparents before us, somos pueblos trabajadores, and we will create new avenues for ourselves.

Okay, bichxs, that’s as cheerful and optimistic an ending as I can manage. Thank you for taking the time to listen to my ranting.

by Víctor Interiano

I recently had the tremendous privilege of having been included in a Remezcla article on U.S.-based Salvadoran artists and how their work reflects mutable nature of national and cultural identities, written by two fabulous salvadoreñas who themselves are accomplished artists, Jessica Ofelia Alvarenga and Yeiry Guevara. Quite frankly, I am beside myself at the beautiful art and work we are creating as a community and I am humbled at being included in such an illustrious and inspiring group of Salvadoran artists.

Backtracking a bit, when Jessica proposed my inclusion in the Remezcla article back in late August – early September, she sent me a couple question prompts. I didn’t realize it then, but the prompts would force me to understand my childhood in a different way than I have before. In many ways, being able to verbalize some issues was, quite honestly, very cathartic and healing. After reading my full responses, Jessica informed that she could only portions of them, but encouraged me to publish them on my own. And so, here they are. Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts.

To read the article, please follow this link: 6 Creatives Carving Out a Space for the Salvadoran Diaspora

What does it mean to be Salvadoran in the U.S?

At the risk of sounding poetic, I wrote this a while ago about how I felt to be a U.S.-born Salvadoran:

El ser salvadoreñ@ a veces se siente como que si uno fuera una herida ambulante, sostenida solamente por el más mínimo de tejido cicatrizado, constantemente ansiosa que cualquier golpecito abrirá un flujo de llanto plasmático, glóbulos rabiosos, y coágulos hechos casi negros por todo el dolor que hemos aguantado como pueblo. Ambulamos en un estado de constante negación del hecho que somos sobrevivientes de una trauma profundo y colectivo, el cual apaciguamos con triste nostalgia, o guanaquismo exagerado, o con un absurdo amor por la patria de los gringos.

To be Salvadoran at times feels as if one were an ambulating wound, held up only by the most minimal of scarred tissue, constantly anxious that any small blow will open a discharge of plasmatic weeping, globules of rage, and blood clots blackened by all the pain we have sustained as a people. We ambulate in a state of constant denial that we are survivors of a profound and collective trauma, which we appease with sad nostalgia, or exaggerated Salvadoraness, or an absurd love for the gringo nation.

My feelings about being Salvadoran in the U.S. are very much marked by my experience growing up during Reagan’s America in the 1980s. Every morning at school meant being forced to do the Pledge of Allegiance while staring at the portrait of Reagan, almost as if praying to a saint, all the while his administration was training and arming the Salvadoran military to kill my own people. At the same time, through a sort of cultural osmosis, “America” as an idea was fomenting a civil war inside me as a young person, arming a burgeoning American patriot with a sense of superiority whose orders were to destroy the Salvadoran in me. All this conflict to become a “Salvadoran-American,” a creature with a brown face that spoke like a white man.

At the same time as I was trying to navigate through my identity crisis brought on by the hegemonic tidal wave of whiteness, growing up as a Salvi kid in 1980s Los Angeles meant I was also subjected to a secondary cultural force of nature: the Mexican hegemony. It was bad enough that the only Spanish-speaking station back then (KMEX) was just non-stop Mexican culture on parade, or that the only time we saw El Salvador represented was on 6 o’clock news report on how many lives the civil war had claimed. But what made conditions intolerable as a young Salvadoran were the passively xenophobic stares of puzzlement my parents would get from Mexicans in our neighborhoods. These microaggressions at the adult level then filtered down to their children and transform into the violence and bullying I endured from Mexican kids who would beat me up for saying the word “gaseosa.” I think that I have described the whole experience as drowning in a sea of competing hegemonies.

Even after 40 years of life, this conflicting and contradictory relationship with both what it means to be “American,” and trying to differentiate myself from what it means to be “Mexican” has not subsided–quite to the contrary, it’s become far more acute and complicated. Post civil wars, the U.S. never stopped intervening in the affairs of El Salvador and Central America at large, resulting in unstable republics incapable of sustaining their own citizenry, and necessarily, Central Americans have continued to migrate in waves seeking refuge from poverty and violence. Seemingly learning a lesson from its past interventions, the U.S. utilized its ample resources to hire the Mexican government to control the flow of migration stemming from Central America. These actions have resulted in the Central American refugee crisis, a humanitarian crisis that hardly anyone wants to recognize as such. Compounding the entire crisis is a construct of Latinidad in the United States that while it professes unity as Latinxs, in practice replicates the same old hierarchies present in Latin America, with Central America and the Caribbean nations at the bottom.

How do you use your art as a way of creating the Salvadoran diasporic identity and/or how do you use your art as a form of activism?

As complicated, angry, and pessimistic as my relationship with the U.S. may seem, there also exists the polar opposite in me, and that is my tremendous love for what it means to be Salvadoran and Central American–as problematic as those categories can be. And admittedly, having a nostalgic relationship with El Salvador is the result of having spent part my childhood there, but nonetheless, always as a visitor, never a resident. And I fully recognize the contradiction of my own privilege, to have been an American-born Salvadoran child in the 1980s, to have the power of documentation to travel back and forth between the U.S. and El Salvador, to live in the comforts of the first world while my own family had to stay put and endure a country that was blowing itself up. And yet, between the imposed process of assimilation and Americanization that I underwent just to be tolerable to white people, and the continued bullying and derision from Mexican kids because of how I spoke caliche, unless I was in the safe space between my parents, the United States simply never felt like a home to me growing up. No, the most at home and welcomed that I had ever felt as a child was being with my family in El Salvador. And that, is the baseline from which I create my art.

The art I tend to create is polarized almost to a ridiculous degree. My political art as it relates to existence in the U.S. is hypercritical of and wrathful toward all systems of power, institutions, ideologies. But the sentimental art I create about El Salvador, my parents, and Central America as a whole is imbued with almost a child-like reverence; it’s funny, compassionate, loving, deeply spiritual, and full of life. And so, the political and the spiritual are always at play inside of me, sometimes working on their own, sometimes collaborating, sometimes competing with each other.

But real talk though, living and working in the United States and having the privilege to comfortably create my anxiety-driven political art and happy nostalgic strolls down Salvi memory lane also means that I’m full of shit. I am a willing participant in the ideological contradiction of being critical of the U.S. while still reaping benefit from my own complicity with this capitalist, white supremacist, heteropatriarchal system. And so as you can see, I also have a complicated relationship with what it means to be an artist!

I have a hard time seeing myself as an artist, because I mostly see myself as a shit talker. And so my artwork, cartoons, memes, and infographics serve as shit talking, but with illustrations. But not shit talking in a toxic way that seeks to destroy people, but in a way that highlights ideological contradictions, or challenges privileges, or asks uncomfortable questions that may serve to shake established beliefs.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of my art looks like it was drawn by a child, and that’s because it was! There is a small Salvi brown boy inside of me, full of love, anger, anxiety, nerdiness, sincerity, black humor, and magic who spent over three decades working through his pain and trauma to finally find peace in self-love. And all he wants is help create a world where no one is harmed, and everyone is loved. And if my shit talking artwork can push that process a bit further, entonces para algo serví , as my mama would say.

by Susan Cruz

This statement was originally published on the author’s personal Facebook page. The material has been reproduced here with author’s permission.

Recently I met with Salvadoran government officials to discuss re-entry and re-insertion efforts for deportees. I am writing to share with you one of the most egregious efforts against deportees created by the Salvadoran Assembly. Decree 717 was created in response to Trump’s statements about deporting alleged gang members en masse. In a knee-jerk reaction the Salvadoran Assembly passed, and President Sanchez Céren ratified Decree 717 which creates a deportation-to-prison pipeline. It went into effect July 14, 2017. (Click here to read Decree 717)

After hearing about this from the government officials, I met with a Salvadoran Assembly-member, who did not vote for the Decree, but was kind enough to confirm the information and provide me with an official copy of it so I could read it. I consulted with three different attorneys in El Salvador and they all agree that it is an affront to the Constitution and a gross violation of civil rights; however, it is real and it is already being implemented. In essence, Decree 717 criminalizes anyone who is deported as soon as they land in El Salvador.

This is how it works: Any law enforcement officer in the United States, and it seems that in other countries as well, can label a Salvadoran national as an alleged gang member or associate. This is accomplished usually by reviewing social media, which doesn’t require a court order, and other surveillance tactics, including observations from School Resource Officers and school personnel sharing information with local law enforcement, who then feed this information to Federal agencies like ICE. A teenager wearing a t-shirt of the Salvadoran soccer team using a nickname on social media can be labeled a gang member by law enforcement, even if they are not gang-involved. This affects both minors and adults.

Upon arrival in El Salvador, immigration officials review that person’s records, provided by ICE in conjunction with law enforcement in the U.S. The deportee is then instructed to register with Salvadoran law enforcement, and has to provide an address so they can report either weekly or bi-weekly to their local police department to sign a registry book, much like being on probation or like a sex-offender registry. If they refuse to comply, they are arrested and put in prison. If they leave El Salvador, say to visit a neighboring country, and do not inform the police, they are arrested and put in prison upon return. This is without committing any crime in El Salvador. The threat of incarceration rests on the gang allegation made in another country, like the United States.

The Salvadoran officials who told me about this are aware of the tremendous strain it will put on an already bloated prison system and on the National Civilian Police; however, they noted all they can do is implement the law, but they are not the authors.

On the U.S.-side of things this will create an unnecessary burden on the immigration court system as immigration attorneys scramble to counter gang allegations made against their clients. It is far too easy for someone to be accused of being a gang member or associate, and extremely difficult to remove the allegation as neither law enforcement or the different court systems (juvenile, criminal, immigration) truly understand the dynamic evolutionary nature of gang membership. In the United States it has been shown that gang databases included infants and other persons who were not gangsters (see: http://www.latimes.com/…/la-me-ln-calgangs-audit-20160811-s…)

I write about this to ask that you help to raise awareness. This is a transnational issue that affects both the United States and the Northern Triangle, not just El Salvador. If you have media contacts, please share this with them. Share this with your elected officials so they stop funding the government of El Salvador until they stop abusing civil and human rights. If you’re an attorney, share this with your colleagues who represent Salvadoran nationals. If you know and care about someone from El Salvador, share this with them as well. You might save their lives.

For all questions or inquiries, please contact the author at susanncruz@gmail.com

by Sandra Xinico Batz

El artículo original en español está disponible aquí: Racismo de revista

Translators’s Note: The term ladino/a is utilized in various parts of Central America, in particular Guatemala, to denote a person who is a mestizo/a and speaks primarily Spanish.

Guatemala, this is your racism. A portion of reality turned into an image. Racism kills our communities and our cultures. It expropriates, displaces, and impoverishes. What is happening with indigenous textiles in part of the this problem, but that is not the entire problem. Racism does not consist solely of discriminatory practices, but principally, it is an ideology provoked by a culture that feels superior to others and can can bring this ideology to the plane of reality through its actions.

I grew up listening to my family and people from my community and other communities, listening to experiences from generations older than mine, about how they were obligated to work for free for ladinos. In public schools, indigenous girls were made to care for the children of teachers while at the same time having to defend themselves from the physical aggressions of ladina girls.

Things are no longer like this. But just because things aren’t like they were does not mean that racism has disappeared, diminished, or that even an attempt made to challenge it. What has changed are some expressions, but other have not, they have remained in place.

Last week on a radio news program, the person in charge of the Commission on Antiquities for AgexPort stated that sales of indigenous textiles generated more than $60 million in revenue every year, provoking a 5% increase in Guatemala’s GDP, with the United States and Europe as its principal clients.

To profit from the identity and culture of indigenous people is a lucrative business. That is to say, as they dissolve our cultures through racism-driven poverty, they appropriate our textiles. Through a discourse of entrepreneurship and innovation they want to justify cultural theft as “artisanal fashion.”

We, as indigenous women, are treated just as was seen on the cover of the July issue of LOOK Magazine. We are the “muchachas,” the “marías,” the “inditas,” the “marchantías.” Who weaves your textile fashion? What would your textile fashion be without indigenous textiles? How do you think the textiles in your fashion have survived in this context of racism? Or do you continue to believe that they’re just “traditional clothing” and colonial uniforms? Until when will this racism persist?

To practice racism or to be racist is not about “making a mistake.” To eliminate racism and change our actions, it is necessary to recognize that we are racist and that we live in a society and country built upon racism.

LOOK Magazine ended up changing its cover and apologize for what they defined as an “error.” On the new cover is Francesca Kennedy, who wears part of what is defined as “artisanal fashion,” but all it does is to convert a güipil (q’anjob’al from Soloma) into a dress, and a faja (kaqchikel from Patzún) into a belt, demonstrating clearly the appropriation of our attire while [the magazine] awards itself an authorship that is not theirs. A racism that robs and exploits the labor of indigenous communities.

LOOK Magazine must recognize its racism and rectify it.

About the author

Sandra Xinico Batz

Sandra is Kaqchikel, originally from Patzún, Chimaltenago. She was born on 1 Kab’an 10 Yaxk’in. She is a primary school teacher, anthropologist, and opinion columnist. At the Universidad de San Carlos of Guatemala, she was a student representative and advocate of university reform. In 2014, she received recognition as a proponent for Juventud Nacional (National Youth), awarded the Premio Guisella Paz y Paz y Jorge Rosal, granted by the Red por la Paz y Desarrollo de Guatemala (Network for Peace and Development of Guatemala). She is presently a member of the Red de Educación para el Desarrollo Sostenible RCE-Guatemala (Education Network for Sustainable Development – Guatemala).

Translation to English by Víctor Interiano

by Sandra Xinico Batz

El artículo original en español está disponible aquí: Bajo el disfraz de ladina

Translators’s Note: The term ladino/a is utilized in various parts of Central America, in particular Guatemala, to denote a person who is a mestizo/a and speaks primarily Spanish.

I migrated to Guatemala City when I was 15 years old because in my community there weren’t that many opportunities for one to become a teacher, which for me was a necessary step to complete my goal: to work in education and study at the university. One of the first radical changes that I experienced was to stop wearing my Mayan clothing in my daily life. I justified doing so by thinking of it as a measure of convenience for whenever I took the bus, or by rationalizing that it was simpler and cheaper to buy a pair of pants and a blouse, especially since having to wash and dry skirts and güipiles (traditional woven blouse) in a small apartment on the fourth floor seemed like an investment of time and effort that I was not willing to maintain. A couple of years passed and I felt comfortable going unnoticed among the people of the city, avoiding all the insults and discomforting looks (which I had experienced on those few occasions when I would travel to the city wearing my Mayan clothes).

When I returned to my village, that was the moment when I would reclaim my clothing and felt part of my community, a place that is was stranger to racism, but it was also not strange for someone to wear Mayan clothing, speak our languages, and feel comfortable in our practices. It was as if I had carried on with two lives in one, one from the city (as a mestiza), and the other from my village (my origin).

It would be a lie if I told you that by studying at the university, and above all, that studying anthropology allowed me to recover my culture, empower myself with my own history as a Kaqchikel Mayan and as a woman, because it was not so. In fact, I feel like seeing and reading all the racism contained in the social sciences provoked such indignation in me that at times I became anti-academic. I witnessed the university incapable of moving beyond the “official” version of history, one which denied that indigenous peoples safeguarded their cosmovision in their clothes, as an example, and that such garments were not imposed on them by the Spanish (which archaeology itself can demonstrate); that the relationship with nature is fundamental in the existence of indigenous peoples and that such a relationship is translated in our clothing; [our clothing] are not amorphous creations, but astronomical, mathematical, and geometrical, representations, among others. During my training as a teacher I never learned anything about indigenous communities nor their histories, thus, I was destined to continue reproducing the same story with my students, simplifying more than 5,000 years of history as a perverse category called “pre-hispanic,” as if the history of those lands began with the invasion of the Spaniards.

That indignation provoked by what I consider one of my passions, education, motivated me to investigate for myself, but more than that, to open my mind and observe instead of just seeing; to observe within my family, my community, to observe how in the city and towns there was a constant desire to eliminate the face of indigeneity from this country. If you know this country [Guatemala], then you understand that inevitably you will come across those colorful and unmistakeable [Mayan] clothes, whose contradiction is situated in that they seem so common to us but at the same time, they are so unknowable in their past and present.

One of those afternoons, while I was disguised in a pair of pants and a blouse, or a dress, on my way to the university, a woman sat next to me and began a talking to me. The conversation began with a question directed at me, about whether I studied or not, and I very politely responded that, yes, I was a university student. Immediately, the woman said to me, “Good for you, young lady that you’re studying, because these days, even the little indians are beating us. Or have you not noticed that they even go to university now? That’s why we cannot stay behind, we cannot allow them to surpass us. Imagine! If people like them can get degrees, why not us?”

That afternoon was fundamental in my life; that day I finally understood why I was disguised and why I continuously justified to myself the loss of my clothing, of my identity. I finally understood why we opt to camouflage ourselves among the masses: because racism hurts and it has hurt for generations.

I also learned about strength and perseverance from my K’iche neighbors on the second floor in that apartment building where I lived. Every morning after their working day had gotten started (which as food vendors began at 3:30am), they would wash their clothing, taking over the garden in the back, adorning the grass with their güipiles, skirts, aprons, sashes, and shawls, stretched out in sun, just like how women continue to do so along the edges of rivers.

I have also come to understand that we indigenous communities are constantly defending what is ours because the pillaging and expropriation of our resources has not ended. Because the homogenization of culture by way of racism forces our people to prefer invisibility, even if it means to undress ourselves of our history, of our identity. Given the history that we indigenous communities have lived, presently it is us women who are principally fighting and defending to keep our clothing, not as objects, but as links to our past. We fight so that our clothing is not commercialized or folklorized, and we know that it is not necessary for others to patent our designs [in an attempt] to keep us from wearing our own clothing, because for the last 500 years racism has been trying to do just that.

Now that I am me again, without any disguise or camouflage, racism continues to blatantly strike at me, as if my clothing was an announcement permitting other to discriminate me, but I am also stronger now because I wear more than 5,000 years of history; and because I carry a struggle that is not solitary, rather, we hope that it can grow to such a point that the defense of our people’s heritage is not a question solely for indigenous communities, but that the struggle become yours as well, a struggle by all.

About the author

Sandra Xinico Batz

Sandra is Kaqchikel, originally from Patzún, Chimaltenago. She was born on 1 Kab’an 10 Yaxk’in. She is a primary school teacher, anthropologist, and opinion columnist. At the Universidad de San Carlos of Guatemala, she was a student representative and advocate of university reform. In 2014, she received recognition as a proponent for Juventud Nacional (National Youth), awarded the Premio Guisella Paz y Paz y Jorge Rosal, granted by the Red por la Paz y Desarrollo de Guatemala (Network for Peace and Development of Guatemala). She is presently a member of the Red de Educación para el Desarrollo Sostenible RCE-Guatemala (Education Network for Sustainable Development – Guatemala).

All photographs are provided by the courtesy of the author.

Translation to English by Víctor Interiano

By Elena Salamanca

El artículo original en español está disponible aquí: Yo no quiero ser salvadoreña cachimbona

Translator’s Note: The term cachimb-ón/ona is a Salvadoran caliche meaning good, excellent, strong, fierce, courageous, good-looking, the best there is.

The nationalist, political, and economic publicity which appeals to “our people” and pretends to show the communal spaces (including the miserable ones) in Salvadoran identity is in reality a repetition, in full color and beautiful imagery, of an oppressive structure, and the repetition of everyday hierarchies. What the cachimbón Salvadoran does is construct itself as miserable myth.

Video Caption: (I must confess that I really did like “El Salvador happy” the first time. However, on a second review, my heart began to wrinkle, thinking about how all these scenes of everyday misery are being happily depicted: how many ambulatory and sub-employed workers are there in El Salvador who have no access to the most basic of rights, and who work more than 12 hours? The truth is that I feel more like weeping than dancing.)

A few years ago on Twitter, a television presenter uploaded a photo of an old lady selling candies on the street. The photo was taken from the presenter’s car with her cell phone. The caption that accompanied the image said something like this: “How lovely! I’ve been driving through here for years and she is always here from 5am in the morning selling her little candies.” The end. Applause from the Twitterverse for the beautiful struggle of our people. What a marvel it is for someone who is 80 years old to wake up before 5am to sell her candies! Of course, if she doesn’t sell them, she doesn’t eat that day. There are many more Salvadorans who don’t have access to social services and basic rights, much less a pension.

The phrasing of that presenter and from her fans repeats itself in other spheres, with a discourse that appeals to pride in poverty and an eternal necessity to work. Both advertising and entertainment programs tell us this, and far away from honoring actual work and workers, they put a pretty face on structural oppression and the hierarchies we live with every day.

Over the last decade, many commercials for Salvadoran brands have become inundated with a tendency I call nationalist advertising, and which consists of speaking about “our people” as if the population who have no say in the discourse–that is to say, the poor—were a belonging, as if the country were a finca (an estate), or being Salvadoran meant that one was a possession of those who call us “our.”

That is why I can’t stand advertising that appeals to what is “Salvadoran.” Not because it’s trying to tell me what it means to be Salvadoran, someone who was born in El Salvador, raised in El Salvador, who is a migrant academic, etc., or because I am trying to banalize a problem we’ve been trying to answer for many years in all possible languages, whether it be visual, or literary, or even language itself; no, it’s because advertising tells me that a cachimbón Salvadoran, the badass, is the one that suffers and is conformed with their suffering.

The problem with this nationalist advertising (Digicel, Marca país, Super selectos, TCS) is that a Salvadoran is considered a cachimbón(a) because they make pupusas starting at 4am, or does heavy lifting without “throwing in the towel” at La Tiendona (largest outdoor market in San Salvador), all the while fucking up their spinal cord, or laughing despite not even earning a minimum wage. It’s advertising for social stratification without any inkling of social mobility, almost promoting a stagnant society.

The problem is that the Salvadoran in that advertisement is a Salvadoran without a political culture, without any knowledge of history, and who cannot demand access to their most basic rights, and who believes that the boss is almost a saint for giving them work, but no security; the one who is born to be a flowerpot but will never leave the corridor, but what a lovely corridor it is. Or do you need more proof about social stagnation?

So then, the Salvadoran people are a people who are in need of rescue, anxious, and miserable. It is that Salvadoran who dares to travel undocumented to the North, putting their life in danger because the Salvadoran state–who should be fulfilling its social contract and providing all Salvadorans with their most basic rights, identity, and even work and edication–has for decades been forcing its own citizens to put their lives at risk.

Advertisements register hierarchies in everyday interaction, ones that are evidently vertical. These advertisements are precious because all of us love to see some really old woman wearing colorful clothing (especially if it is indigenous) who hails from Nahuizalco or Santo Domingo de Guzmán, regions where the Salvadoran indigenous population survives on less than a dollar per day, according to the International Labor Organization. Or, we love to see a smiling shoe shiner, or vigorous day laborer. But what these advertisements are really showing are the saddest portraits of Salvadoran society, ones that we only recognized when prettied up. Here, there are personal stories of struggle and poverty that we prefer not see because it’s better to think that [poor people] must eternally work so that the rest of us can someday retire and go on vacation. And maybe not so much. Have you the miserable pensions we will have in 20 or 30 years?

I am passionate in my studies on Salvadoran identity and nationalism, sometimes to the point of stubbornness. And I and grateful for and admire all the effort in trying to define what means to be Salvadoran that surges out of this nationalist advertising. But there is a small detail that it at once both simple and complicated: there is no substantive effort to research and rethink and sincerely ask ourselves questions about our identity. Because year after year, commercial after commercial, we receive the same message: we are good being poor; what beautiful sights we have in country, even though behind the camera there are malnourished children–like at the beaches of La Libertad. And what dignity is there ns a woman working on the street for 70 years of her life without access to the basic things some of us have?

The problem with the construction of this cachimbón Salvadoran is how to we affirm them? Roque Dalton said in his Poem on Love that Salvadorans were do-everythings, sell-everythings, and eat-everythings within a deep wound in the country he loved. He didn’t say this so we could applaud, 40 years after the poem, for the Salvadorans who were still doing everything, selling everything, and eating shit.

P.S. If you are in advertising and you believe in and defend this cachimbón(a) Salvadoran, I congratulate you, but do not try to convince me that I have to “support what is ours,” or swell with pride in the search for “our people.” I have my own political culture and sufficient knowledge of history to back up my opinions, which took great sacrifice to obtain them.

Translated by Víctor Interiano

Translation to English by Gabriela Ramírez-Chávez & Víctor Interiano

La series de artículos en español están disponibles aquí: El síndrome de Ixcanul: ¿entre realidad y película? Part I, Parte II, Parte III (Final)

Part I

Art, when not presented neutrally, has the capacity to induce us, to guide us to a predetermined end, and film is an art (the “seventh” art, as they say). It is naive to believe that “good intentions” can move the world and that nothing is predetermined. In a country like Guatemala, to speak, to write, to project, to dramatize, etc., indigenous life (today) has some clear benefits, as long as it is not indigenous peoples themselves with their structural demands (and above else whose voices emerge from poverty, outside of the academic, outside of fame, that is, as nobodies) who raise their voices to be heard. When indigenous peoples speak with their own voices and in their own manner about their own situation, they are severely judged, but when they are spoken of by a non-indigenous voice, the issue is transformed, it is no longer the same (and then we do listen).

We live in a country with a largely indigenous population, whose culture and complexity is reduced simply to “indigeneity,” making unknown (almost completely) their history, their forms of creating, their way of living life. Racism does not allow us to recognize each other as distinct cultures, but instead we disavow the other to feel and make ourselves superior. It is this context of racism that makes Ixcanul such a famous and celebrated film in its own home country (Guatemala) because it apparently portrays a sliver of indigenous life that we are willing to see and “understand” only through a movie screen, simulating what we find there as [representative] of all “indigenous life.” Moreover, we even become indignant over the way “they live” and immediately reaffirm all the stereotypes inherent of indigenous peoples, such as poverty, alcoholism, machismo, monolingualism, among others.

We feel pity for what the screen translates to us as “the condition of the indigenous woman,” reinforcing the notion that only in that country indigenous men are machistas, they consume alcohol, and they are poor. But not other cultures? Well, other cultures are considered “developed,” which fails to recognize all the structural problems that intersect with distinct communities (including ladinos) such as patriarchy, classism, inequality, which are not foreign to Mayan communities. To the contrary, these issues makes [Mayan peoples] culturally complex, not homogenous, but full of contradictions, such as elites among their own social classes.

I have seen Ixcanul outside of theaters, that is, after a trek trying to find it in one of the bigger markets in the city, the same way that we the poor consume the seventh art in this country, where we don’t have enough to eat, much less to go see movies. I have seen the film in my language, in Kaqchikel, something that deeply impacted me given that it’s my birth language, but even so, I did not understand it. The Kaqchikel utilized in the dialogue was incomprehensible to me, something I had to corroborate with other members of the Kaqchikel community who also did not understand it. In that moment, a great doubt emerged within me: given that one of the marketable traits of this film was precisely that it was spoken in Kaqchikel, who was this film really made for?

Part II

Why react this way to the film? Because in the words of the director, Ixcanul is based on the lived reality of a woman he knew. The filmmaker clarifies in various interviews that his film is a story (a particular one) and not ethnographic in nature. Yet, one of its primary successes (perhaps the most important) has been to portray “indigenous life”: practices of a Mayan worldview, their relationship to nature, their work with the land, their clothing and language, and their cultural practices. Would the film have had the same upturn without the indigenous base it utilizes? Of course, to accept that “Mayan culture” was a foundational part of the film would mean it bears a great responsibility in such a racist and unequal country like Guatemala.

In my opinion, this is a contradiction and that is what motivates me to write on the subject, because I consider that speaking lived histories involves a great responsibility that cannot be omitted, because decontextualizing them gives the impression of wanting to profit from the raw reality that torments Mayan communities: the racism, something we don’t identify (or recognize) in the film because apparently it is only an individual history. The film avoids delving deeper into the very scenes it presents: the slave labor in coffee plantations, for instance, or the monolingual hegemonic system (of Spanish) that is imposed on the other 24 cultures that exist in the country.

The “rural” life portrayed in the film is linked to poverty and is not valorized as another way of living or of conceiving life itself. A way of living that is not based on cement or the destruction of the environment, and that thousands of Mayans defend day by day so that it is not destroyed by extractive industries such as mining, monoculture, and hydroelectricity. In our “Chapina”* view, this way of living is considered underdevelopment and justifies the imprisonment and murder of decent Mayan leaders (both men and women) who have defended the territories of rural communities.

Aside from the machismo and the “poverty” that prevail in the “drama,” attention has not been focused on the scenes that I believe could have helped strongly motivate some critical debate. For example, the scene in which men and women sing in Kaqchikel as they cut coffee on a plantation. This scene made me recall a few films about the African American community in the United States who, being slaves on cotton plantations, sang while they picked cotton and fell dead in the furrows, a form of drowning to death in life that slavery entails. This should smack us in the face because it is the reality for thousands of Mayan slaves in Guatemala who continue to work in fields of cane and African palms, and whose communities are left enclosed within expanses of crops that appear infinite. During the colonial period, for example, Mayan women were enslaved in cotton farming and spun yarn that they wove and embroidered to satisfy the Spanish demand that ransacked our textiles.

*slang for “Guatemalan”

Part III (final)

Why a syndrome?

One only has to google the word “syndrome” to find a simple and clear definition: “a group of symptoms that concur with one another and characterize a determined condition.” In this case, the convergence of structural problems (which would be the “symptoms”) such as colonialism, ahistoricity, racism, and classism, which transform fiction (this film) into a “reality” perceivable solely on the movie screen and that ends in an hour and forty minutes. After which, in a racist country, the image of the poor and ugly indigenous person returns to its place in our minds, action, and everyday life. From xkanul to ixcanul.

“This is a personal dream, humanitarian and of a nation” stated Jayro Bustamente [director of the film] as he received the Premio Platino (Platinum Prize) “Camilo Vives” in Uruguay during one of many moments of international recognition after demonstrating to the world the existence of Guatemala, a country which is labeled as third world (and treated as such); making [Bustamante] a hero for uncovering the misfortune of indigenous life in contrast with the majesty of the natural landscapes and of an imposing volcano whose translation (of its namesake) in Kaqchikel was written as ixcanul instead of xkanul, resulting from the great ignorance that prevails around Mayan language, its structure and grammar, and which continues to called dialects as a way to strip them of merit and value. How exactly is [this film] humanitarian and of a nation?

Ixcanul appears to move a (Guatemalan) society from a “reality” that is not perceptible in reality. Expressing astonishment over the talent of Mayan actors without a “formalized” acting background denotes a mode of thinking that believes that indigenous peoples are incapable of talent, and continues to deify the non-indigenous person (the good one) who discovers and potentializes that talent, as if they were doing a favor to this country full of indians and backwards people. Do you doubt this? Another of the international prizes that this film received was the Premio Fenix (Phoenix Prize) for “Best Costume Design,” which was attributed to Sofía Lantán. One only has to observe the publicity for the film to notice that the principle “costumes” used in the film is Mayan attire, a strong symbol of identity for indigenous communities and which we have maintained for thousands of years despite attempts at extermination and the inherent subject of discrimination in its use, and whose defense is an ongoing battlefield to recognize our individual and collective rights of ownership. Lantán dedicated her award to all of Guatemala and I cannot help but ask, which one? To that same Guatemala that goes on believing that our attire was imposed on us by the Spanish?

[Ixcanul] is a French-Guatemalan film, and not Guatemalan-French.

I saw the film once again and I noticed (at the beginning) two logos that drew my attention: that of INGUAT (Guatemalan Institute of Tourism) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in France, and that explains a few of the things that I see on the screen.

(Do not look for reality in fiction, open your eyes and observe. Our indigenous past is also yours).

About the author

Sandra Xinico Batz

Sandra is Kaqchikel, originally from Patzún, Chimaltenago. She was born on 1 Kab’an 10 Yaxk’in. She is a primary school teacher, anthropologist, and opinion columnist. At the Universidad de San Carlos of Guatemala, she was a student representative and advocate of university reform. In 2014, she received recognition as a proponent for Juventud Nacional (National Youth), awarded the Premio Guisella Paz y Paz y Jorge Rosal, granted by the Red por la Paz y Desarrollo de Guatemala (Network for Peace and Development of Guatemala). She is presently a member of the Red de Educación para el Desarrollo Sostenible RCE-Guatemala (Education Network for Sustainable Development – Guatemala).

By Elena Salamanca

The original article in Spanish can be found here: La calidad del desaparecido: México y Centroamérica

Translator’s Note: In the context of New Spain between the 16th and 18th centuries, calidad was a sociopolitical, economic, and legal term that identified, differentiated, and placed in order the diverse subjects of the colony. Calidad represented the totality of one’s personhood in relation to society, including skin color, gender, caste, class, place of origin, modalities, limitations, and expectations. Although in English the term “social quality” is a close approximation to the significance of calidad, the English term is far too ambiguous and does not sufficiently represent the multiple dimensions in which a person from Latin America, whether in the colonial period or the present, interacts with their society. As such, calidad will be utilized in its original form in this text.

Every time a clandestine mass grave appears, an abyss opens up beneath our feet. Here, in Mexico or in Central America, the mass grave is filled with bodies that will be either recognized by memory or suppressed in the official story.

To look at the popular mobilizations in response to the disappearance of the 43 normalista students from Ayotzinapa, Mexico, allows us to observe, and hopefully emulate, the mechanisms of solidarity [action] and the demand for justice. But at the same time, it allows to see the speck of sawdust in another’s eye: Central Americans that disappear in Mexico are apathetically forgotten. Yes #AyotzinapaSomosTodos (#WeAreAllAyotzinapa), but when will Mexico say ‪#‎CentroaméricaSomosTodos‬ (#WeAreAllCentralAmerica)?

I write this text to address two questions, two preoccupations: the calidad that the State assigns to disappeared persons in Central America and Mexico; and the calidad that the State and the Mexican imaginary assign to Central American migrants that disappear in Mexico. Although Mexico and its citizenry give us an honorable example of [what] solidarity and [the] demand for justice [looks like] for its own citizens, things change where it concerns foreigners and othered persons.

Of course, there are exceptions, like the emblematic examples of solidarity demonstrated by Father Alejandro Solalinde, the Patronas movement, and the Nuestra Aparente Rendición movement. But the discussion at hand continues to be about calidad, that colonial term that is ever present in our daily practices.

The Calidad of the Disappeared

Even as the 43 normalista youths have become the unfortunate paradigm for the disappearance of citizenry, all across Latin America, people have come together in a heart-wrenching rally for Ayotzinapa. But the international community did not come together–with the same insistence and impact–to rally for the murdered women of Juarez nor for the massacre of migrants (many whom were Central American) at San Fernando, Tamaulipas. In these particular cases, we have to question the calidad of the disappeared persons: their origin, race, and color. But origin, race, and color are no longer valid categories in our times.1 In fact, we get offended in discussing these issues because they derive from discrimination. But in the collective Central American and Mexican imaginary, the question of [colonial] caste and calidad are not just present, they are perennial.

Mexico and Central America exist in various strata of time that are compacted into what [we understand as] the present. In this sense, in spite of modernity and postmodernity, the region is embedded in the Old Regime of coloniality.

I have always believed–as I have maintained in my own classes–that in El Salvador, and perhaps in Mexico and all of Central America, we live in between the 21st and 18th centuries, in a form of compacted stratus where through our daily practices, we are relocated to a colonial mentality where the past and the present are indistinguishable from one another.

Calidad in these cases is not defined by simply being, but in what others–such as the State and institutions–want us to be. Calidad qualifies while at the same time disqualifies, it excludes, and constructs either a monster or an enemy.

In Mexico, the calidad of the Ayotzinapa students as poor indigenous youths, has served as a turn of the screw for the Mexican imaginary; for that precarious calidad has become humanized, created empathy, and has provoked indignation and massive mobilizations. In Central America however, the calidad assigned to its own disappeared (young people with limited resources) has accomplished the construction of the “the enemy,”–rather than generate empathy, it has served to stigmatize them.

And precisely here, in that hinge anchored between the colonial period and state-based society, is where we find ourselves when we look at the calidad of the disappeared.

Two months ago, we witnessed the Mexican State’s late response to the disappearance of the 43 normalista students of Ayotzinapa, in Iguala, Guerrero–a state which exists in the periphery of Mexico. Its capital, Chilpancingo, doesn’t even appear in any tourism posters nor is it notable for any regional history–unlike Acapulco, of course. We now know that Guerrero’s governor ordered the capture of 43 youths, between the ages of 16 and 19, to have them murdered and their bodies disappeared. Easily. The official story (and a rather inconclusive one) from the attorney general of the republic stated that the captured students were given to cartel gunmen who then proceeded to murder them and set their bodies on fire. During the press conference delivered with a frigid tone, prosecutor Jesús Murillo Karam presented images of charred bones. And we watched in terror as Karam seemingly narrated a horror movie from the golden age of Mexican cinema, stating, “Please, do not stop looking at the images.”

Although the State had lowered itself to the same depths as Mexican newspapers such as “El gráfico” (which specializes in showing dead bodies next to women in bikinis on its front page), this was not what was alarming. The alarms went off when the state official declared that “Iguala is not the Mexican State.” This pushes forth the post pertinent discussion for these times: What is the Mexico? What is the Mexican State? Who are Mexicans? Who are the legitimate Mexicans? The perspective of Murillo Karam subjects the Mexican citizen to a question of calidad, almost to its usage in the colonial concept.

The problem with calidad is not exclusive to Mexico. The disqualifying declarations of Murillo Karam immediately reminded me of a response by Manuel Melgar when he served as Security Minister of El Salvador in 2010. Back then, in a statement about the disappearances and murders of Salvadoran students, he said “If [mothers] don’t want their children murdered, then they should pay for private colleges.”

Devastating and cynical. But the declaration–which I saw on Noticiero Hechos on channel 12–left very clear what the calidad of the disappeared and murdered students was: they were not citizens because they were underage (they didn’t even have national IDs); but they were also not valuable or foreseen as future citizens because they were poor and in public education.

In Honduras, the journalist Daniel Valencia found the same indolence. In fact, he encountered the following euphemism from the State which he included in his chronicle: “The disappeared are individuals which the State deems as extinct, and so do not matter.” You read that right: extinct.

The three declarations in these three countries are political: not all of us are important to the State, our lives are not valued the same. The disappearances, whether by criminal organizations or by the State itself, represent for these governments a form of social cleansing. The model of youth presented by the State are that of workers and middle-class, students and entrepreneurs. Never poor. Never at their limits. Social mobility is no longer of concern for the State; in fact, social stagnation justifies the disappearances and public apathy.

Central America in Mexico

#AyotzinapaTodosSomos (#WeAreAlllAyotzinapa) has been one of the most utilized hashtags in the last few months. We are indeed Ayotzinapa for different reasons, among them, because we are not “the Mexican State” of Murillo Karam, because we are othered, those others of the symbolic Ayotzinapa. Although Central Americans (mostly Hondurans) disappear daily in Mexico, I have yet to hear #TodosSomosCentroamérica (#WeAreAllCentralAmerica). And while Mexican solidarity is commendable as it looks toward Ayotzinapa, it does not look outward, nor does it look at its closest outward, toward the Central American tragedy. Who will want to beCentral American in Mexico? Not even in hashtag form.

In August of 2010, 72 migrants were found murdered in San Fernando, Tamaulipas. They were classified as disappeared until their deaths had been confirmed. They had fled from Ecuador and Central America, crossing through Mexico to get to the United States. They were murdered by the Zetas cartel.

There was no apology by the Mexican State, nor from the countries of origin. In an interview with Channel 33 of El Salvador, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hugo Martímez, summarized the case as such: “Salvadoran brother, do not migrate. You can be happy here.” What horror. His statement, which according to him called for solidarity, in reality unmasked the cynicism of it all. A country that was producing 15 deaths per day was supposed to be a place to be happy. A State that did not guarantee the most basic rights was discussing well-being; the discourse was proclaiming brotherhood to those the State had expelled and spat on.

None of the Mexican presidential regimes nor those of the Central American countries have taken responsibility for the deaths of Central Americans. The former, criminalized migration, and the latter, sent its own citizens to their deaths. In Mexico, Central Americans die or are disappeared daily. Clandestine graves in Chiapas or Veracruz are their last resting place.

In 2013, the president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, visited Honduras, the country with the highest number of migrants crossing through Mexico on their way to the United States. The media coverage made no mention of migration. In June 2014, Peña Nieto’s private secretary mocked the Honduran soccer team that was participating in the World Cup. In his Twitter account, he posted an image of Hondurans sitting on top of an airplane: wetbacks, illegals. The image was taken down after a backlash, but the official did not apologize, citing that his “account had been hacked.”

In the 20th century, Mexico was characterized as a nation receptive to exiles fleeing crises and political dictatorships: in the 1930s, it received republicans who were victims of the Spanish Civil War; during the 1970s and 1980s, it received South and Central Americans who were fleeing military dictatorships and State terrorism. Mexico received them, socially integrated them, granted them the calidad of asylees and refugees, respected and dignified them. But today, Mexico is both a nation of refuge and a mass grave nation.

This week, a caravan of Central American mothers arrived at Juchitán, Oaxaca, in search of their children’s remains at a local common grave. When they arrived, they found a garbage dump and a sign indicating “NN,” no identifiable bodies.

It is not the same for a Mexican to disappear in Mexico as it is for a Central American to disappear there. The calidad that the Mexican system grants Central American migrants does not approach any guarantee of human rights. And to disappear in the country of origin doesn’t even grant the dignity of a disappearance, that is to say, it does not activate a mechanism of search for missing persons.

From Mexico to Central America, the disappeared person simply ceases to exist, and that disappearance from the social and legal system implies two outcomes: to search or to forget; and almost always, the easiest road is to forget.

Limbo

Limbo–that in-between state for the unbaptized who have no possibility of redemption in spite of having just one sin, the original one–was suppressed by the Catholic Church in 2007. But the figurative and symbolic place that appears in literature still remains. It is in limbo where we can precisely situate disappeared persons: they are citizens, but have lost their civil rights; they are not yet dead, and even if they were dead, if they have not been recognized as such by the law and by their families, they will never be dead; there will be no burial. There is no mourning.

Limbo for the disappeared is the allegory for an inefficient system that cannot even guarantee the lives of those who, through a social contract, are under its protection.

The disappearance, within and without the countries of origin, is an abyss within the justice system. At the Institute of Forensic Medicine of El Salvador, for example, many people place photocopies with information and pictures of their disappeared family members. Families hope to at least be able to recognize them at the morgue, but not all bodies get to the morgue. Mass graves surface in a terrible metaphor of death in El Salvador, Mexico, and the rest of Central America.

Every day, in many Mexican universities, the list of the 43 disappeared normalistas is passed around for each name to be called out. They are 43 youths that represent more than 20,000 disappeared (or as many as 42,000) during the last two Mexican presidential terms. I ask myself two things: If in Central America we passed around a list of those that disappeared during the war and postwar periods, how many days would we spend repeating the word “missing?” If Mexicans passed around an ever-growing list of all the migrants that disappear in their territory, how many Mexican voices would join in calling out each Central American name?

What is named, what is pronounced, exists. When will the governments name their own disappeared? To name, is symbolically to make new again, to bring back.

***

That clandestine mass grave is an abyss so big that it no longer opens up beneath our feet; simply put, we are living in it.

Translated by Víctor Interiano