Notes From Underground (#7)
Or, The Story of How "The World's Coolest Dictator" Cozied Up To the Same El Salvador Gangs He Pretended To Crack Down On (And The Trump-Assisted Cover-Up).
Note: First, a happy Easter and/or a happy Passover season to all who celebrate! Second, this next post in the “Notes From Underground” series was originally going to be about a much different subject. However, this recent story really caught my eye, and has not received nearly the amount of media attention it deserves.
“They say that we imprisoned thousands,” President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador declared while sitting in the Oval Office, “I like to say that we actually liberated millions.”
Of course, what Bukele likes to say is his way of distorting what the actual reality is. In reality, El Salvador currently has the highest incarceration rate on the planet. In reality, El Salvador is the site of some of the most notorious prisons in the world—including one currently holding people deported from the United States.
But recent reports suggest that Bukele’s lies and misrepresentations run much deeper than that. In fact, they start with his biggest claim to fame: actually taking on street gangs like MS-13.
Let me explain. On March 11, the Trump Justice Department dropped its terrorism-related gang charges against a man named Carlos Humberto López Larios, also known as “Greñas de Stoners.”
Mr. Larios was one of three leaders of MS-13, who the indictment alleged was responsible for unleashing a reign of terror in communities across the United States.
To some Trump supporters, the Justice Department’s actions last March may seem like quite a surprise. Yet to Bukele, it must have been a great relief. You see, Mr. Larios—and 2 other MS-13 leaders in U.S. custody at the time—“reportedly knew the details of a secret, illegal agreement” which Bukele brokered with the gang during his early rise to power.
In 2019, Bukele’s prison director and his “director of social-fabric reconstruction” allegedly organized a series of meetings with a small circle of jailed gang leaders. Apparently, both the Salvadoran authorities and the gangs themselves went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret—even to the point of either wearing masks or presenting fake identification cards to hide their identities.
From those meetings, Bukele seems to have gotten his desired deal with the Devil. According to that deal, MS-13 would agree to kill fewer people, so that Bukele could claim that his government was lowering the sky-high murder rate. In exchange, Bukele promised that MS-13 would get certain “financial benefits,” greater control over territory, and more favorable changes to the laws and the justice system.
In addition to that, Bukele’s administration further promised to prevent any efforts to send gang leaders to the United States to be tried for their crimes here.
Originally, MS-13 stuck loyally to its end of the bargain. Over the course of the next 3 years, the murder rate in El Salvador plummeted. And, in what looked like a show of appreciation, the Bukele Administration effectively stalled any efforts to hand over MS-13 leaders to American authorities.
In 2021, Bukele and MS-13 made another agreement. This time, MS-13 vowed to use its muscle in the communities it controlled to create a turnout machine for Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas. It was a smashing success, and Bukele’s party won with an overwhelming supermajority.
Indeed, thanks to this supermajority, Bukele’s allies were able to fire the sitting Supreme Court justices. The party then appointed new ones so that the president could ignore El Salvador’s clear term limits and run again. At roughly the same time, Bukele’s allies fired the then-attorney general. As you might have guessed, the party quickly hired a new one, who just so happened to scuttle investigations relating to Bukele’s possible negotiations with the gangs.
Later on, when Bukele eventually turned on the same thugs who put him into power, his party’s supermajority allowed him to suspend his people’s rights to due process, start a wave of mass arrests, and haul about 85,000 Salvadorans into jail based on either flimsy evidence or no evidence at all.
In short, if the DOJ’s allegations are accurate, the gangs were arguably Bukele’s most important partners in destroying his country’s democracy. And if that ever got out to the people of El Salvador, then Bukele might face a real challenge to his iron grip on power.
Luckily for him, the Trump Administration seems to be doing its part to cover for “the world’s coolest dictator.” Shortly after the Trump DOJ dropped its case against Mr. Larios, the MS-13 gang leader, it sent him on a flight straight to—you guessed it—El Salvador.
In July 2020, Trump declared that “[m]y Administration will not rest until every member of MS-13 is brought to justice.” Welp, another promise made, and another promise broken.
And for what? So that Trump can “outsource” parts of our prison system to El Salvador? So that he can throw gay hairdressers, wrongly deported men, and maybe even U.S. citizens into some of the worst prisons in the world?
Like Bukele, Trump loves to distort reality. He likes to pretend he’s taking on the gangs and restoring “law & order” to America. But here’s the truth: he couldn’t care less about the gangs or the people they terrorize. All he cares about is power.
Which is why, in Trump’s America, Bukele is somehow the hero of this story, and migrants like Kilmar Abrego Garcia are the villains.