Notes: On El Salvador

I went to El Salvador a few months back, on a surf trip with a friend. Curious to see how things had changed under President Bukele, to see the so called “Bitcoin country” in action and explore a tiny little place that maybe offered a white pill for the world. 

The surf was world class, the water though a little too warm for me accustomed to more northern and southern latitudes. The food simple, and satisfying, but it was several little interactions that stood out to me that I’ve wanted to share for a while. Little moments of optimism in world feeling of near collapse.

We traveled around Surf City, a stretch of rural towns along the Salvadoran coast, using the local colectivos—buses that cost 50 cents to ride. On board with us were grandmothers and their grandchildren, WeChatting on iPhones without any concern. Everyone seemed relaxed, the atmosphere calm. The bus driver blasted bachata while occasionally yelling out stops in a grumble, giving you mere seconds to jump off. 

The contrast with the disintegrating structures of the first world was immediate. Friends in the Bay Area clung to remote work as their defense, too afraid to take BART or walk through the desolate downtown wastelands lined with “zombies”. I thought of friends in New York City fearing being pushed onto tracks randomly during their commutes. 

But here in El Salvador, on this humble colectivo, snaking its way through packed amusement parks, bustling fish markets, and sleepy colonial ruins, the only real threat being the oppressive humidity, the sound system's assault on our eardrums, and being run over by the lack of traffic rules.

I spoke to a few fellow riders, expecting cracks in the facade, hints of propaganda or fear-induced compliance when I asked how life was under Bukele. All of them spoke positively, with a surprising calm. The grandmothers on the bus painted a picture of a past so violent, it bordered on the apocalyptic.

Buses were once death traps, where gangs extorted and assaulted at will. “iPhones on a bus?” they chuckled. “Impossible.” The gangsters that once ruled the streets like feudal lords had vanished, sucked into the black hole of Bukele’s carceral machine, modeled on the Chinese or Singaporean state. Now, people rode freely. Anywhere. Even at night.

An Argentine hipster girl running a surf shop echoed the same tune. She came for the waves a few years ago, but rarely strayed from the beach resort back then—her blonde hair making her a target. Now, she taught surfing and yoga without a second thought. She was part of the gentrification engine, an extension of the global surf aesthetic driving growth into the Salvadoran coast. She wanted Bukele’s model exported she said and hoped her new President Milei in Argentina would quickly to do the same thing Bukele was doing and had done for El Salvador. 

I thought to my own my mother in Chile complaining how life in Santiago had deteriorated. The once “Switzerland of South America”, now rife with a leftist decay and an intimidating frequency of portonazos, a particularly South American speciality of robbery, where criminals ambush someone at the gate (portón) of their home or building, usually as they're entering or leaving, often stealing their car or other belongings with the force (azo). 

“Things were better under Pinochet,” she’d mutter, nostalgic for a time of brutal order. I remembered how my grandfather cried when Pinochet died—something I didn’t understand fully then when Chile was still a beacon of the Chicago Boys Neo liberal order under centrist democratic rule. But now, as things decayed, it made more sense. The lessons and solutions, it seems, are harder to grasp for those looking in from abroad. The pendulum swings from one extreme to the other.

Later that week we visited a large coffee finca. Taking the tour, I spoke to some of the workers as they raked the red fruit. They told me before Bukele, gang members would demand a cut of every meagre paycheck. It was as though the farm had been liberated from a parasite that had nearly killed it. The gangs had disappeared, and Japanese and European buyers were arriving in person to inspect the famous Pacamara variety. The quality of everything—life, pay, housing—had improved.

Children in uniforms lined up at bus stops, side street vendors sold snacks, the tatted gang members once dominant in the landscape disappeared into the large mega prisons Bukele had built with Chinese direction. Those famous photos of rows of gang members (yes likely removed without trial), stripped to white briefs and crouching under the gaze of military guards, loomed in the back of my mind.

A state of exception with no end in sight. But the people didn’t care. Safety, order—these were the only currencies that mattered. Sure, Howard Zinn and his disciples might drone on about U.S. imperialism and historical wrongs, but this wasn’t a story for Washington. Trump noted Bukele saved the country by exporting his criminals, while the Biden administration fretted over “human rights,” more concerned with theoretical injustices than the tangible daily terror people had escaped/survived with for decades.

At the finca, sipping some coffee, I met a Salvadoran-American family. The daughter, born in the U.S., was opening a coffee shop in D.C. This was her first time visiting her parents’ homeland. They hadn’t been back in over 20 years. Their eyes welled up with tears as they spoke about how incredible it felt to return without fear.

Now nearly retired, they thought about buying a second home in El Salvador. They shared how they had walked through Mexico, paying coyotes to escape the post civil war ordeal and the gang violence that materialized in the 90s gang violence which had made El Salvador one of the most dangerous countries in the world. The system was warping, reversing, folding in on itself, the pendulum correcting.

On the drive back, our driver shared that four years ago, he had tried to migrate to the U.S., skeptical of Bukele’s promises. He’d been caught in Mexico and deported. Now, though, he had a second child and was optimistic about the future. He wore a Bukele hat, emblematic of the new regime, and praised his leader with unfiltered enthusiasm. In the privacy of the car, I didn’t sense any fear of surveillance, no sense of a Bukele-led secret police like Pinochet’s infamous DINA looming censoring or disappearing dissidents.

As he dropped us off at the airport, I thanked him. Before heading to the gate, I picked up a souvenir—a magnet and a hat featuring Bukele in his signature Nehru collar, embroidered in fine detail.

The country, its history, its people—they are too complex to decode in a single essay. But there’s something in the air there, a sense that the timeline has been forked, a sense of possibility woven into the daily life that contrasts sharply with the instability of its neighbors.

And while the question remains if Bukele truly is El Salvador—the savior his country has been waiting for, or just another fleeting chapter in its turbulent history? But for now go visit if you can, buy their coffee, the surf is great, you just might catch a signal, a white pill from the future.