El Salvador: News & Updates

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.

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.”

More than one hundred national, international, and solidarity organizations, with a presence in Canada, Europe, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and South America, signed an open letter addressed to the Attorney General's Office of the Republic of El Salvador to demand the immediate release of environmental lawyer Alejandro Henríquez and community leader Ángel Pérez, president of the El Bosque Agricultural Cooperative, who were arbitrarily detained on May 12 and 13, 2025.

In the letter, the organizations condemn the use of security forces to repress the families of the El Bosque community, who were exercising their legitimate right to peaceful protest due to a planned eviction, when they were dispersed by riot police, resulting in the arrest of Ángel Pérez and, subsequently, of lawyer Alejandro Henríquez, who was providing legal advice to the affected families.

Marco Rubio, Matt Gaetz and Donald Trump Jr. have made pilgrimage to El Salvador, and Republican commentator Tucker Carlson said Bukele “may have the blueprint for saving the world.”

“The gang pacts with Bukele are not a thing of the past; it’s a present-day aspect of how one man came to amass total power,” says Óscar Martínez, editor-in-chief of El Faro.

While thousands of innocent people remain incarcerated in inhumane conditions in the prisons of El Salvador, one of the most recognized gang leaders in the Central American country, Carlos Cartagena López, aka Charli de IVU, was secretly released by the government of President Nayib Bukele and has since given an interview to the digital media El Faro in which he shows his face and shares details about his deals with the Bukele administration.

Óscar Martínez, editor-in-chief of El Faro and co-author of the article, told EL PAÍS that “[this interview] describes how gangs turned Bukele into a relevant politician. It allows us to reach the stark conclusions that it is impossible to understand Bukele’s rise to total power without his association with gangs.”

Charli became one of the most famous gang members in El Salvador after starring in the BBC miniseries Eighteen with a Bullet. In the series, Charli, at just 16 years old, already emerges as the leader of one of the most important strongholds of Barrio 18, the IVU neighborhood in the capital. In the video, he confesses to having committed several murders and other crimes. His criminal record has only lengthened over the years, and he is currently a fugitive from justice.

Bukele maintains a merciless public rhetoric against the gangs and has marketed himself as a global example of crime-fighting. But back when he was mayor of San Salvador, he protected the gangs, demanding their support in return.  Bukele’s people would give warning to the gangs about police operations targeting their neighborhoods. Gang members, in turn, would threaten political opposition activists in their neighborhoods and force their families and neighbors to vote for Bukele.

There is a wealth of evidence regarding the negotiations between the Salvadoran gangs Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha 13 with the various governments of Nayib Bukele: prison intelligence documents, prosecutorial investigations, photos, audio recordings, and even accusations from the U.S. State Department. Now, these testimonies from Charli and another gang leader are added, providing details of the pacts for the first time.