It begins with a sentence on television. “Dictator,” says Enrique Anaya. “Despot.” He is referring to the president of his country, Nayib Bukele. A few days later, the police show up at Anaya’s home. He is taken away, silently. In chains. The man, a highly respected constitutional lawyer with a doctorate, is now in pre-trial detention. The accusation: money laundering - unproven. The real reasons: inconvenient, smart, outspoken. And: a thorn in the side of power. His lawyer, Jaime Quintanilla, stands outside the detention center in San Salvador with a plastic box. Some clothes, some food. And a worried look: Will Anaya ever be released? “They want to silence us,” he says. “All of us - intellectuals, journalists, human rights defenders. It’s a campaign of revenge.”
And with backing from Washington. Not merely through silence, but through demonstrative closeness. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Bukele feels untouchable. No rebuke, no diplomatic protest. Instead, admiration, joint migration agreements - and a symbolic alliance of authoritarians. For three years now, El Salvador has been under an uninterrupted state of emergency. Fundamental rights have been suspended. Arbitrary arrests have become routine. 87,000 people have been imprisoned - allegedly due to gang connections, often without trial, without evidence. Among them: government critics, opposition lawyers, activists. Many have disappeared, others have fled into exile.
Nayib Bukele, once celebrated as a political star, now governs unchecked - with full control over parliament, the judiciary, and the military. The Supreme Court? Newly filled with loyalists. The constitution? Reinterpreted to allow his re-election - a violation that Anaya also publicly denounced. Now he is one of many who pay for their criticism with their freedom.
“I don’t care if you call me a dictator,” Bukele said in early June. “Better that than more Salvadorans dead in the streets.” A rhetoric that doesn’t name the price of security: the collapse of democracy. The repression is spreading. At the end of May, the heads of several bus companies were arrested - because they refused to operate for free when Bukele ordered it. Shortly before that, the police broke up a protest in front of his private residence with force. The president remains silent. So do the United States.
That same day, parliament passed a so-called Foreign Agents Law. It bears a striking resemblance to the repressive tactics in Russia, Nicaragua, or China. Any organization receiving foreign funding can now be classified as hostile. The target: human rights groups, journalists, NGOs. And: a climate of permanent fear. Verónica Reyna of the Salvadoran network “Servicio Social Pasionista” reports that police vehicles regularly patrol outside her office. “It’s a signal,” she says. “We’re watching you. We know where you are.” Since Trump returned to power, Bukele has become more open, more direct, more aggressive. “He believes that no one will stop him anymore.”
The U.S. Embassy? Silent. Even under the Biden administration, criticism of Bukele grew quieter when he promised to curb migration to the north - a cynical trade-off at the expense of those with the least influence. The press is also in the crosshairs. El Faro, the country’s most well-known investigative outlet, has documented Bukele’s abuse of power for years. Corruption, secret gang deals, human rights violations. In May, the newsroom published an explosive interview with a former gang leader - shortly afterward, word spread that arrest warrants were being prepared. Five El Faro journalists, including editor-in-chief Óscar Martínez, have been abroad ever since. Their names - along with that of Enrique Anaya - appear on an internal list held by airport police under the title “priority targets.” When they attempted to return last weekend, the state beat them to it: police were already waiting at the airport.
Martínez is realistic: “If we return, they will arrest us. And I’m certain: we would be tortured. Maybe even killed.” What is happening in El Salvador is not a spontaneous loss of control. It is the construction of a repressive system that doesn’t fight political opponents but eliminates them. A system inspired by international authoritarian models - and that relies domestically on a climate of fear. Enrique Anaya is not an isolated case. He is a warning sign. A man who had the courage to stand up to a derailed state. Now he sits in a dark prison cell - without charges, without hope. His lawyer Quintanilla remains by his side. But even he knows: “They could hold him forever. Simply because they can.”
What El Salvador needs is not silence, but light. Not Trump’s applause, but international attention. And no longer the turning away of those democracies that once stood for human rights - and now sacrifice them to political opportunism. Because what is happening here is not domestic policy. It is an attack on the very principle of freedom itself.
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