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On Sunday night, two weeks before Nayib Bukele reaches his June 1 six-year mark in power in El Salvador, the Attorney General’s Office announced the arrest of Ruth López, head of the Anti-Corruption and Justice Unit of Cristosal, a human rights organization documenting evidence of state crimes under the state of exception.
López was arrested by National Civil Police officers at around 11 p.m. on accusations of embezzlement, in a case file declared secret. Prosecutors claimed to have gathered information during raids carried out against Eugenio Chicas, a former president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal arrested in February, and who remains in custody.“
The only reason for this detention is that I am a human rights defender and work for an NGO uncomfortable for the government,” López said upon her arrest. She told the officers: “Have some decency; one day this will all end. You must not play into this.”
In 2024, the BBC named López in its list of 100 “most inspiring and influential women.” Cristosal reported early Monday that her family and lawyers had not learned of her whereabouts — a possible enforced disappearance and “blatant violation of due process, the right to legal defense, and international standards of judicial protection.”
Cristosal has denounced an array of state attacks against the organization, including police profiling and “arbitrary and illegal procedures” against the organization and employees and illegal Pegasus espionage. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Washington Office on Latin America condemned her arrest and the attacks on civil society.
In Washington, Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed his “concern” for the arrest “and what it means for El Salvador’s authoritarian trajectory.” He added, “The U.S. must support civil society and oppose all efforts —including “foreign agents” legislation— to weaken the rule of law in El Salvador.”
Reviving an old project
Last week, on May 13, de-facto President Nayib Bukele announced that he had sponsored a Foreign Agents Law that will impose a 30 percent tax on donations to civil society, whom he accused of responding to a “globalist” agenda and destabilizing the country — similar to the law imposed in 2020 by the Ortega-Murillo regime in Nicaragua, and in keeping with his push for the Trump administration to sever U.S. funding to civil society.
In contrast, since 2024, the Bukele-controlled legislature has decreed dozens of tax breaks across sectors, from which his own brothers benefitted in purchasing real estate in the Historic Center of San Salvador. Asked by one user on X whether he will tax all non-governmental organizations, Bukele responded by announcing selective enforcement: “Don’t worry, the real ones [NGOs] will get full waivers.”
Bukele’s legislators floated a previous version of the bill in 2021 but halted it, amid staunch international condemnation. The 2021 bill would have imposed a higher 40 percent tax on all transactions, disbursements, or transfers received from abroad. Minister of Governance Juan Carlos Bidegaín claimed it would “prevent foundations and front NGOs from disguising as donations what is clearly an intervention to sponsor political issues.”
On November 23, Legislative Assembly President Ernesto Castro said he would not put the new bill to a vote until there was “a consensus with the diplomatic corps, which are our donors, with many organizations, and with civil society as a whole.”
The context of international pressure that halted the law’s passage in 2021 has shifted under Donald Trump, who shares El Salvador’s rhetoric against civil society and suspended millions in foreign aid to El Salvador. “That fee should have existed for a long time,” said Salvadoran Ambassador Milena Mayorga. “At the time, they pressured us, especially in the United States, but if it will support vulnerable people, I applaud it,” she wrote on X.
Abraham Ábrego, director of strategic litigation at Cristosal, describes the new bill as repressive and threatening. “It is no longer just human rights defenders, but any person, community, or group expressing criticism or concerns about a public decision.”
Getting Bukele’s attention
Bukele announced the foreign-agents bill the day after campesinos from the El Bosque cooperative in Santa Tecla, near the capital, reached the entrance to his family residence to call on him to intervene to stop an eviction order against them issued by the Labor Court of Santa Tecla for alleged fraud, in a dispute over the land. Some 300 families would be affected by the order, which set May 22 as the deadline to vacate the site.
In response to the demonstration, the president deployed the riot-squad Unit for the Maintenance of Public Order (UMO) and, for the first time in three decades, the Special Military Security Brigade of the Military Police. Police arrested El Bosque leader and pastor Ángel Pérez and human rights defender and El Bosque lawyer Alejandro Henríquez.The eviction order has been reversed, but Pérez and Henríquez remain under arrest.
The detentions are the latest in a wave of criminalization of land defenders. On February 25, police and prosecutors accosted residents of Hacienda La Floresta, a plantation in San Juan Opico, who were trying to stop the eviction of another 250 families. Authorities detained human rights activist Fidel Zavala, who was accompanying La Floresta, and raided the offices of the organization UNIDEHC, where he was spokesperson.
Bukele brands the documentation of police repression as part of a destabilization strategy. In a live broadcast by the San Jacinto Collective, a dozen officers shoved two community leaders including Ángel Pérez and repelled elderly women trying to protect him. Nearby, riot police cornered families with children against a wall.
The demonstrators had gathered on Sunday, May 11, at the entrance to the Los Sueños condominium, where Bukele lives with his family and is building a new official residence. An armored military vehicle stationed there was sent to the entrance, along the route of the presidential motorcade. The following morning, police intercepted vehicles heading to the demonstration, so members of the cooperative were unable to leave at the time.
Bukele claimed “the protesters were not only manipulated, but were even taken there at night to protest in front of a private residence unrelated to the case.” A member of El Bosque, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, refutes this claim: “It is we, the community, who asked for support from many human rights institutions, for greater strength and guarantees.”
The El Bosque cooperative has been fighting for decades to remain on the land. Bukele claims the money he plans to collect from NGOs who voiced their concern will be used to prevent the families from losing their homes, “to pay off the cooperative’s debt.”
Handcuffs as crisis management
The repression of El Bosque compounded multiple public-image challenges early this month: First, in late April, rains caused landslides along the Los Chorros Highway, the main thoroughfare to the capital and site of major infrastructure work, forcing its closure. The government promised to resume traffic on May 5, but failed to meet the deadline. As hundreds of riders waited for their buses without knowing if they would reach their destinations or had to pay, Bukele announced free transportation from May 5 to 11.
Meanwhile, Salvadoran social media was abuzz with a May 1 video interview by El Faro with two 18th Street gang leaders discussing Bukele’s relationship with gangs, dating back to his 2014 bid for San Salvador mayor. On May 3, El Faro denounced that prosecutors had begun to spin up at least seven arrest warrants for members of the newsroom as retaliation, on the charges of apology for crime and illicit association. As the Washington Post reported, multiple staff members then left the country.
As for the transportation interruption, when the businessmen allegedly did not immediately cooperate, they were detained. As of May 10, the National Transportation Board reported that 16 business owners from the sector had been arrested on accusations of dereliction of duty, refusal to provide assistance, embezzlement, and extortion. One detainee, Roberto Jaco, died four days later from medical complications in custody.
According to Lucio Vásquez and Luis Regalado of the National Transportation Board, in a meeting held with the authorities on the night of the announcement, the government acknowledged that the highway closure had made trips longer and more expensive, but did not mention the new requirement of free transportation.
The following morning, Bukele announced that the government would cover companies’ expenses. But some owners, he said, did not pick up passengers or waive fares: “Nobody is above the law,” he wrote — rules which Bukele alone has written and rewritten for four years.
This article first appeared in the May 19 edition of the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here.