MEXICO CITY — They have fled to Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica and Spain. Most left in a hurry with few possessions, unsure of when — or whether — they would be able to return home.
As El Salvador cracks down on dissent, jailing critics of President Nayib Bukele, droves of human rights activists, journalists and other members of civil society are leaving the country out of fear.
More than 100 people have fled in recent months — the biggest exodus of political exiles since the country’s bloody civil war. That puts El Salvador in the company of other authoritarian Latin American nations, including Nicaragua and Venezuela, where dissent has been criminalized and critics choose between prison and exile.
On Thursday, one of El Salvador’s most prominent human rights groups joined the flight. Cristosal, founded in 2000 by leaders of the Episcopal Church, announced that it had suspended its operations in the country, and that nearly two dozen of its staffers had left.
We can’t help anybody if we’re all in prison
— Noah Bullock, director of the civil rights group Cristosal
Cristosal has been a thorn in the side of Bukele, a charismatic populist who has disregarded democratic norms — and who appears emboldened by his close alliance with President Trump after El Salvador’s deal to detain migrants deported by the the U.S.
Cristosal opposed Bukele’s unconstitutional run for a second presidential term last year and has investigated allegations of corruption by his government. It has criticized El Salvador’s ongoing suspension of civil liberties as part of Bukele’s sweeping crackdown on gangs, compiled evidence of torture and other abuses and provided legal representation to hundreds of people it says were wrongly imprisoned in the country’s notorious jails.
Nayib Bukele, at right with his vice president, Félix Ulloa, was reelected in February 2024.
(Alex Peña / Aphotografia / Getty Images)
Cristosal’s leaders have for years faced surveillance, police harassment and attacks by Bukele on social media.
But the situation has worsened in recent months.
Authorities passed a new law that would impose a 30% tax on donations to nongovernmental organizations like Cristosal.
And in May, police arrested Ruth Eleonora López, the leader of the group’s anti-corruption program, alleging she stole public funds during a stint working for the government years earlier. International rights organizations, including Amnesty International, say the charges are spurious and describe López as a political prisoner.
Her detention and the recent jailing of other outspoken Bukele critics, including constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya, environmental activist Alejandro Henríquez and pastor José Ángel Pérez, prompted Cristosal to close its offices and remove its employees from the country, said the group’s director, Noah Bullock.
Police escort Enrique Anaya out of court in San Salvador after a June hearing. The constitutional lawyer was arrested and accused of money laundering.
(Salvador Melendez / Associated Press)
“There is no impartial institution where we can plead our case if and when the government decides to continue to persecute us and our staff,” Bullock said. “We can’t help anybody if we’re all in prison.”
Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party controls Congress and has purged the judiciary, replacing independent judges with loyalists.
Amid that concentration of power, independent journalism and civic groups “were the only pillar of democracy that remained,” Bullock said. He said the recent arrests send a clear message: “Democracy is over.”
“El Salvador is on a dark path,” said Ivania Cruz, an attorney who heads another nonprofit, the Unidad de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos y Comunitarios. She has been living in Spain with her son since February, when her group’s office was raided and one of her colleagues was arrested.
Cruz, too, had represented inmates swept up in Bukele’s mass imprisonment campaign, under which more than 85,000 people, or nearly 2% of El Salvador’s population, were locked up. “Bukele has criminalized us for defending the rights of the people,” she said.
Indefinite exile in a new country has not been easy, she said. “I came with only a small suitcase,” she said. “It’s hard knowing you can’t go home and you have no choice but to start a new life.”
Bukele has also waged a campaign against journalists.
An analysis by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and digital rights group Access Now found that more than two dozen journalists were surveilled for more than a year with the spyware Pegasus, whose Israeli developer sells exclusively to governments.
At least 40 journalists have fled the country, according to the organization that represents them in El Salvador. They include the reporters who documented the Bukele government’s negotiations with gangs, corruption in the awarding of public contracts during the pandemic and the Bukele’s family acquisition of dozens of properties valued at more than $9 million during his first presidential term.
El Faro, the investigative news site that first exposed the gang negotiations, pulled its reporters out of the country after government sources warned that they were about to be arrested.
“We know what’s coming: exile or prison,” editor-in-chief Oscar Martínez said in an interview published by the Committee to Protect Journalists earlier this year. “As long as we have time, we’ll keep reporting.”
Under President Biden, the U.S. frequently criticized the Bukele government for violating rights or democratic norms. That has not happened under Trump, who has repeatedly praised Bukele, and who this year sent hundreds of U.S. deportees to El Salvador’s jails.
During an April meeting with Bukele in the Oval Office, Trump said his administration hoped to also send U.S. citizens to Salvadoran prisons.
“We’ve got space,” Bukele said.
Bukele, 43, has maintained high approval ratings in large part because his security crackdown has helped dismantle the powerful gangs that long controlled El Salvador.
Citizens were so hungry for peace that they have been willing to overlook the violation of rights of people who were falsely imprisoned, said Ingrid Escobar, a human rights lawyer. “Bukele took advantage of Salvadorans’ desire to live free of violence.”
Attorney Ingrid Escobar discusses human rights in her homeland of El Salvador during an appearance in North Hollywood in 2024.
(Alejandro R. Jimenez / For Los Angeles Times en Español)
But polls show that a growing number of Salvadorans fear speaking out against the government. That sentiment may grow as the Bukele government cracks down on critics and members of civil society flee.
Escobar, who had documented police harassment against her on social media, decided a few weeks ago that it was no longer safe to stay in El Salvador. She asked that, for her family’s safety, the nation where they now live not be named while she seeks asylum.
“I just grabbed my suitcases, my two children, and I left,” she said.
“Before, we feared gang members,” she said. “Now it’s security forces and the state.”
