Police officers grabbed the shackled woman by each arm, leading her to the judge who would order her imprisonment.
“You won’t silence me!” shouted Ruth López, a Bible in her hands, journalists crowding around her. “What I want is a public trial! The people deserve to know!”
The arrest of López, a prominent lawyer in El Salvador who helped uncover alleged government corruption, has become emblematic of the increasing authoritarianism of President Nayib Bukele.
A judge on June 4 ordered López jailed pretrial for at least six months on charges of illegal enrichment, accusations her lawyers say are baseless. Days later, a second lawyer critical of Bukele, Enrique Anaya, was detained and accused of money laundering.
Now the lawyers are being held in the same police station, not knowing when — or if — they will be freed.
The arrests are part of an escalating crackdown by Bukele on the last bastion of dissent in a country where he already controls all state institutions, analysts and activists say. López’s arrest and a new law targeting nongovernmental organizations have accelerated an exodus of civil society: In recent weeks, dozens of academics, lawyers, researchers, human rights defenders and journalists have fled the country.
Their departures resemble the flights of critics from autocratic regimes in Nicaragua and Venezuela, but with a key difference. This time, the United States isn’t condemning the repression — it’s deepening ties with its author.
The Trump administration, which is paying Bukele’s government to imprison migrants deported from the U.S., is praising his leadership and holding him up as a model for the region. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau traveled to El Salvador last week as part of his first foreign trip, the purpose of which was to “further strengthen diplomatic ties and cooperation.”
A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. is “aware of the recent arrests of these Salvadoran nationals.”
“The United States assesses that El Salvador will continue its strong commitment to investigate and prosecute cases involving embezzlement and other crimes against the people of El Salvador,” the spokesperson said.
Bukele, credited with dismantling the country’s gangs and dramatically reducing violence in what was once one of the most dangerous nations in Latin America, is widely popular at home and throughout the region. But the self-styled “world’s coolest dictator” has pacified El Salvador in part by detaining more than 85,000 people, often without due process, access to a lawyer or a proper trial — while tightening his grip on the country’s Legislative Assembly and courts.
Bukele has long been accused of human rights violations. But the recent arrests and threats, Noah Bullock said, are sending a more explicit, brazen message: “You dissent and you will be punished.”
“It feels like overnight, El Salvador became an even more repressive regime,” said Bullock, executive director of Cristosal, a human rights organization where López works. “A person who likes to make jokes about being a dictator is now embracing it.”
Bukele says he is unbothered by critics. “I don’t care if they call me a dictator,” he told Salvadoran lawmakers this month. “I’d rather be called a dictator than see Salvadorans killed in the streets.”
But with each week, the threats have intensified. Last month, a group of journalists from El Salvador’s premier investigative news source fled the country after getting word of possible arrest warrants against them. When journalists from that outlet, El Faro, prepared to reenter the country last week, according to the El Salvador press association, they learned police officers were planning to arrest them at the airport.
When hundreds of people gathered outside Bukele’s house last month to protest an eviction order, he arrested a human rights advocate and evangelical pastor who had aided them.
He later accused nongovernmental organizations of “manipulating” protesters and proposed a “foreign agents” bill to tax foreign contributions to nongovernmental organizations at 30 percent. The Salvadoran legislature, controlled by Bukele, approved it.
The European Union condemned the new law, saying it “risks restricting civil society actors’ access to funding, which is essential for their functioning and vital to any healthy democracy.” The bloc also expressed concern over the recent detentions of human rights defenders: “The shrinking space for civil society risks undermining development and could negatively impact cooperation.”
Bukele responded with insults: “El Salvador regrets that a bloc which is aging, overregulated, energy-dependent, tech-lagging, and led by unelected bureaucrats still insists on lecturing the rest of the world.”
Many of the researchers and human rights defenders who now feel targeted have previously worked closely with the United States, and some worked on projects that received U.S. aid that is now cut off. Some of those who have fled El Salvador advocated for detainees in the country’s expanding prison system, including the Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration to the megaprison known as CECOT. Others documented alleged corruption or human rights violations and shared their findings at times with U.S. government agencies.
As director of Legal Humanitarian Aid, which advocates for people detained arbitrarily in El Salvador, human rights lawyer Ingrid Escobar is accustomed to being surveilled by the Bukele government. She learned this month that she was on a list of possible targets for imminent arrest.
She had scheduled an urgent surgery in El Salvador for last week. But days before, she took her children, 9 and 11, and fled the country. If she did not, she feared, she might be detained and denied the medical treatment she needed.
“If I stayed in El Salvador,” she said, “I could have died.”
Under previous U.S. administrations, one lawyer said, the U.S. Embassy would have been seen as an important partner in advocating for the release of López. “In El Salvador,” the lawyer said, “we’re alone.” She spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for her family’s safety.
López was detained at her home late at night on May 18, summoned outside by police officers who claimed they needed to tell her about a report of a car accident. Instead, they arrested her and accused her of embezzlement. That charge was later changed to illegal enrichment. The attorney general’s office said the charges stemmed from her work with a magistrate and former electoral official, Eugenio Chicas, who was arrested in February on charges of illicit enrichment.
Bullock said López’s role in that work didn’t involve managing money. Her lawyer and Cristosal have said her arrest was retaliation for her work exposing government corruption.
López helped file criminal complaints against officials with the attorney general’s office. In one, she alleged that money intended to support families during the covid-19 pandemic was sent to gang leaders. In another, she alleged corruption in the country’s prison system. Because of this work, Cristosal fears she will be in danger if she is transferred to a jail under the custody of the prison system director she denounced.
On the day of López’s hearing before a judge, Anaya, a constitutional lawyer, defended López and criticized the police who pushed her as she made her way through the crowd. “They do it to prevent Ruth from speaking to the press, cowards!” he wrote on X. “I will see the dictator and all his lackeys burn in hell.”
The following day, Bukele targeted those who he said “spent the entire day publicly threatening anyone who supports or works for the government.”
Some of those critics, he said on X, had “clear ties to criminals.”
“The days of impunity are over,” he threatened. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
Anaya was arrested less than two days later. He was placed in a cell next to López’s. |
