“La Isla” Shows the Absences Left by El Salvador’s Mass Arrests
When the government of El Salvador declared a “state of exception” in March of last year, after a sudden spike in gang killings, it was supposed to be temporary. Soldiers and police officers could arrest anyone they considered suspicious. No one was entitled to a legal defense. Each month, the country’s Assembly would have to vote to extend this state of affairs. But the party in power, called Nuevas Ideas, held a super-majority. Their fealty to the President, Nayib Bukele, was total, as was his commitment to an indefinite campaign of law and order based on mass arrests.The state of exception has now been renewed eighteen times. As one journalist put it to me, el régimen de excepción has become la normalidad excepcional, the exceptional norm. In the past year and a half, the government ha...