SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – A 19-year-old man stepped out of a police car and fell into the arms of his girlfriend, who stole a desperate kiss. His sister, seeing, cried. Seconds later, the young man, Irvin Antonio Hernández, was gone, dragged into the prison across the street.
The two women collapsed on a nearby wooden bench beside strangers who understood better than anyone what had just happened. Their sons have all disappeared behind those same walls.
After a record-setting weekend of gang killings in March, the Salvadoran government declared a state of emergency and suspended constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. The ensuing mass arrest campaign resulted in the imprisonment of more than 25,000 people for about a month and a half.
Many of the detainees were sent to a prison known as “El Penalito,” or “small prison,” a dilapidated building in the capital San Salvador that has become a no-go for the protests. Police pressure is perhaps the most aggressive in the Central American country. History. This is the first stop in what could be a long stay inside the country’s overcrowded prison system.
Many inmates spend anywhere from a few days to a few weeks inside El Penalito before being transferred to a maximum security facility. After the crackdown, relatives of detainees began to gather in the streets, waiting to see what would happen next.
On a recent Thursday, dozens of mothers, grandmothers, sisters and girlfriends huddled around rickety wooden tables across from the prison, hunched over bags stuffed with the documents they hoped. hope to prove the innocence of loved ones – government ID cards, school records, work badges.
Maria Elena Landaverde spent her days off and convinced a friend to drive her at dawn to try and catch a glimpse of a young boy being picked up while bringing the family breakfast. Morena Guadalupe de Sandoval ran to her son when her son called to say police officers had dragged him off the bus home from his job as a janitor in the city. Edith Amaya said she saw bruises on her son’s face before police took him away.
“We want to see him again,” said Madame de Sandoval, sobbing beside her biological mother, who helped raise her son, Jonathan González López. “We’re all crying mothers here.”
The question Madame de Sandoval always asked herself was whether anyone cared. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has acknowledged that innocent people are being caught up in the persecution, but insists they are a small part of the arrests. And the vast majority of Salvadorans – more than 80%, surveys show – support Mr Bukele and endorse the government’s extreme measures.
The hatred of the gangs runs so deep within El Salvador that many want them to be subdued by any means necessary. Local and international media have broadcast images of family members begging police for information about their sons and screaming as they are taken away. So far, nothing has turned the tide of public opinion against the mass arrest campaign or the president who led it.
But while women searching for their sons in Salvadoran prisons are by no means an organized political group, their anger should not be underestimated, experts say.
Mourning mothers have a history of sticking together in Latin America, posing more enduring challenges to autocratic governments.
For now, the women outside of El Penalito are focused on keeping their sons fed. Mr. Bukele has bragged about rationing food for prisoners during the crackdown, so many families have opted to buy meals for their loved ones from a government-mandated kitchen with a small outpost. open outside the prison.
Previously there was only one meal supplier, but after numerous arrests in recent weeks, another outfit next door has been allowed to start serving food and delivering essentials. such as toothpaste and shorts.
“It was because of the whole exclusivity thing,” said one of the women who worked in the original kitchen, who declined to be named for fear of reprisal. In the past, relatives of prisoners have complained about giving a business the exclusive right to provide breakfast, lunch and dinner, local media reported.
Women outside the prison learn a lot from the staff at two meal providers, who are often the first to know when prisoners are being moved out of their cells and into another prison. . Family members get out of prison much less often, where there is a small window to answer questions but give very few answers.
“We don’t know anything,” Ms. de Sandoval said. She held up a Burger King badge that featured her baby-faced son, Jonathan. “He doesn’t belong to any gang,” she insisted. Before his arrest, the 21-year-old worked at another restaurant in the capital, his mother said, as a janitor.
Mr. González’s girlfriend, sitting next to Madame de Sandoval, is now caring for their toddler without help from his income. “What is she going to do?” Madame de Sandoval asked. “We are poor. Who will help us?”
It is difficult to determine how the Salvadoran police identified their targets, because the arrests were so rapid and widespread. The government will not allow interviews with the head of the national police, but relatives of those arrested during the state of emergency have said in interviews that many have been targeted if they had ever clashed. with the police.
However, relatives of those arrested during the emergency said in interviews that many people have been targeted if they ever clashed with police.
Irvin Antonio Hernández was arrested when he ran out in pursuit of his little sister, who had learned to follow the family dogs. Mr. Hernández, topless and without shoes, was eventually handcuffed.
“The only thing they said was ‘baby, come here,’” said Noemí Hernández, his older sister. “”Put on your shoes and shirt and we’ll go”.”
Mr. Hernández was arrested a few years ago, his mother said, when she said two gang members ran from the police into their home. The boy was also taken away, although she said her son had nothing to do with the gang.
“He went to ninth grade, and now he’s gone to work,” she said, tears seeping through her mask. “He sells fruits and vegetables and has his own house.”
Hearing from the curb, Liliana Aquino spat out.
“We the poor put him there!” she said, referring to the president. “But we the poor are suffering now.”
In 2019, Ms. Aquino, 30, was disgusted with the political class in El Salvador and happily voted for young Mr. Bukele. She called him “my president” and said it was absurd to be worried about respecting the rights of gang members.
“A gangster doesn’t respect anything, he doesn’t think of me,” she said. Her mother used to sell bread at a local market, and plunged into the business to earn money and cover the extortion fees charged by a gang. Aquino said later that year the gangs demanded that her mother give them a Christmas treat.
“If you don’t pay, they’ll kill you,” Aquino said. Even if you pay, she says, you’re not safe in El Salvador. Innocent bystanders are always killed in gunfire from gang shootings, she said.
She was outside the facility that day because her brother was recently arrested on suspicion of being a gang member, she said. But she insists on asking him to fix things, and goes to work every day.
Aquino remains behind the president and believes he has made the country a better place to live. However, the arbitrariness of his brand of justice begins to stalk her.
“He was a big help,” Ms. Aquino said. “But that help has come at the expense of many mothers’ tears.”
