Greta and the Women of El Penalito

When Greta saw the busload of detainees arrive, she knew she had to make a run to Walmart.

It was Sunday, March 27, and hundreds of people had already been arrested under El Salvador’s state of exception. The majority of detentions took place in the departments where the weekend’s uptick in murders had been most noticeable: San Salvador and La Libertad. Everyone arrested that day, and in the days that followed, was transferred to the police holding cells in San Salvador —las bartolinas— located at the headquarters of the Extraordinary Services Section of the National Civil Police (PNC) and better known as El Penalito (“The Little Prison”). Greta, who runs a business providing meals to the people held inside, worried that if she didn’t scale up her provisions fast, she’d be swamped in the chaos.

Time would prove her right.

Greta is a thin, nervous woman who rushes around all day, without stopping, in a small office packed with rolls of toilet paper, sandals, boxers, T-shirts, and personal hygiene supplies. She wears striking, feline makeup that matches her extroverted personality. Four years ago, she won a bid for a public contract and her business became the only food-seller officially authorized to sell meals to the families of El Penalito’s detainees.

The National Civil Police do not have a budget to feed the people they arrest, meaning that if no-one pays Greta to provide an inmate with food, that inmate does not eat. These people —prisoners deprived of a warm meal to take their minds off their troubles— are known in prison slang as rusos, or “Russians.”

The first time I witnessed Greta in action was on Wednesday, March 30, but I didn’t dare approach her. Her office was a nuclear reactor: hundreds of women, young and old, alone and in groups, crowded in front of El Penalito, begging at the only service window for any information on their loved ones: mothers looking for their sons, daughters looking for their fathers, scores of young girls asking about their boyfriends and husbands. The crowd was almost entirely female: on the rare occasion a man appeared, it was usually a young boy holding a woman’s hand, or a disoriented elder, struggling to keep up with the crowd.

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When someone finally managed to confirm that the person they were looking for was being held inside, they would cross the street to buy a plate of food from Greta. By Wednesday, the number of detainees had surged from hundreds to thousands, and more women continued to arrive and crowd in front of the steel grate of Greta’s small service window. When they noticed there were journalists, some yelled out their grievances —“They’re telling us they won’t allow private lawyers,” or “They won’t give me any information”— while the rest of the crowd seconded their complaints with shouts of agreement. Others glared at us suspiciously and covered their faces, almost instinctively, before slipping back into the crowd. Everyone, in any case, had something in common: all of them, or at least all of the people I spoke with, insisted on the innocence of their loved ones, some with a sense of conviction and a story that was palpably credible and others with, let’s say, somewhat less persuasive claims.

A woman was sharing a plate of fried chicken with her three-year-old daughter. She said she had been on her way home, in the San José del Pino neighborhood of Santa Tecla, when she and her husband were detained by soldiers. The soldiers were going to take them both, but they didn’t know what to do with the little girl, so they decided to take only the husband. She showed me a collection of documents that she had tried to show the officer at the window: papers proving that her husband had a clean criminal record and a formal job, including a letter of recommendation from his boss — but the officer refused to even look at the documents. Even so, she was convinced that if she waited a bit longer, the authorities would realize they had made a mistake and her husband would emerge from the dark gates of El Penalito any second. She had been waiting for three days.

Another woman was also carrying around a folder of documents. She said her husband is a musician and that, on Saturday night, he had told her he was going to meet some friends at Willy’s, a bar on Juan Pablo II Avenue. She told him she thought it was a stupid idea, because that Saturday, March 26, had been a bloody day in the capital and a dark atmosphere hung over the city — not to mention that President Nayib Bukele had just ordered his legislative deputies to approve a state of exception. But he didn’t care: He promised her he wouldn’t drink a single beer, and left. That night, he was arrested during a police raid at Willy’s. When I met her, she had just paid for his plate of food, reluctantly, and was carrying around a stack of papers proving that he had a metal pin in his right leg — a reminder of a motorcycle accident he had had months earlier while drunk driving. She told me she hoped her husband would be released soon so she could kick him in his injured foot.

Another woman was outraged by the presence of journalists and despised us without exception, though she reserved her most intense contempt for those with cameras. She refused to speak to us, and our presence caused her to reflexively cover her face and turn her back muttering insults. That is, until she saw the vehicle of a forensic examiner arrive. Her son was inside, and the vehicle filled her with panic; then her attitude toward us changed: “Journalist, journalist, if you say you’re a journalist, go ask why Medicina Legal is here, go ask — there’s the car, see, they won’t tell us anything, go ask, journalist.” Then she covered her face back up with her small towel. I went over to the car to ask, and came back with the answer, but another woman, apparently more experienced in these matters, was already reassuring the crowd: “It’s normal for the forensic team to come, they always check everyone out before processing them.” And then the woman —her concerns now assuaged— didn’t want to hear my explanation, which in any case was the same, and she walked away, glaring at me from behind her little towel.

The woman who explained the situation to the crowd knew she had given herself away, being so well versed in these procedures, and without prompting, offered me an explanation: “My husband had a problem with the law in the past, but he already paid what he owed, and he’s never been in a gang. We were getting some tacos on Saturday at Plaza Mundo when they arrested him. They told me they were going to charge him with agrupaciones (associating with gangs) — just like that, for no reason.” Then she went to stand at the back of the line of women who were waiting their turn to pay for a plate of food at Greta’s window.

Every so often, a police patrol would arrive and unload a new group of detainees. Across the country, a total of 1,800 people were arrested that Wednesday. Soon, the number of daily arrests would rise to 2,000, then 3,000, then 4,000, then 5,000. All of them, President Bukele has asserted ad nauseam, are gang members or gang collaborators, and all of them, he has promised, will spend the next 30 years of their lives in prison. The Police themselves have also taken to Twitter to issue their verdicts. Every day since the state of exception began, the PNC post photos of detainees, announcing their sentences: “These individuals are accused of illicit association, a crime for which they will spend 30 years behind bars.” And so, just like that, the PNC’s social media team fires off sentences, like a machine gun. Some are condemned to 20 years, others to 25. Sometimes they decide to be more heavy-handed and announce that such-and-such person is a palabrero, or clique leader, of a certain gang —usually MS-13— and sentence them on the spot to 45 years. While the PNC is not a judge, it might not be too far off the mark, given that last year, Bukele ordered the dismissal of judges he didn’t like, and has recently suggested that judges who refuse to issue sentences to his liking should be removed from their posts and investigated by the Attorney General’s Office.

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By Monday, April 4, the Police were already reporting the arrests of 5,747 people. When my colleagues and I arrived at El Penalito, we expected to find pandemonium, with throngs of women seeking information and buying food from Greta. But no. The group of women that gathered that Monday numbered less than 20. A few were standing in line at the detention center service window; a few others were filing up in front of Greta’s small office.

A very small woman stood at the service window, waiting her turn. When she finally got the officer’s attention, she leaned in as best she could to hear that her son was not there, that she should return to the police station in the zone where he had been arrested. Next to the service window, the PNC had posted a warning: “Fathers and mothers: Let’s educate our children so we don’t have to suffer the pain of going from jail to jail and prison to prison, where others will try to adapt them to the life you couldn’t give them. If we justify their bad behavior, both of you will suffer, as will their victims.”

One particularly friendly officer explained to me, with relief, that El Penalito would no longer be receiving detainees from the departments of La Libertad and San Salvador, only people detained in the capital city. In an effort to decentralize detention and avoid chaos inside and outside las bartolinas, from that day on, each police station would have to deal with its own detainees. That Monday, there were only six people arrested on suspicion of gang involvement, despite that number at one point reaching 600. “These facilities are not designed to hold that many people,” the officer told me. When the number of inmates exceeded capacity, authorities would transfer the men to Izalco Prison’s Phase 1 sector, and the women to Ilopango Prison. The most recent of these transfers had happened the day before, so now, only the catch of the day remained in las bartolinas. When I asked the officer his name, he thought about it for a moment then replied: “El jefe.”

The chaos having subsided, I decided to try my luck with the women who were lining up to pay for plates of food. But that day, Greta came rushing out of her cage in a fit of rage, chasing me off like I was a dog. “Why do all you journalists only come here to take pictures? Aren’t there any other food-sellers you can bother!?” she shouted. “Ma’am,” I said, “maybe it’s because your sign says that this is the only kitchen authorized to sell meals to inmates? And besides, I’m not taking pictures.” But my excuse didn’t work: “And why do you all only say bad things and never talk about how I donate food and give inmates masks and have even donated fans?” she demanded. “I don’t know, señora, I haven’t written anything about you, ever, and I didn’t know those things because you didn’t tell me.” One of the women in the queue started getting impatient and shooting me angry looks. “I’ll tell one of you so everyone can hear!” Greta went on, looking openly at a Magnum photographer who had his camera hanging around his neck but had thought he had gone unnoticed. The woman in line gave a loud sigh and narrowed her eyes so that Greta would notice her desperation. “Look at the scolding I’m getting. If you want, we can talk later and I’ll explain what I’m doing, but right now they’re waiting and...” Greta went back into her office, shooting me a warning glance.

Another young woman —a girl, thin and frail, with round, black eyes— wore an expression of fear on her face. She seemed entirely inexperienced in these matters. She had barely turned 22, and was holding a baby girl a little over a year old in her arms. The child’s father was one of the six detainees in El Penalito that day. Earlier, the Police had kicked down their door, dragging the young man out. Now, his wife was left alone, not knowing what to expect. Was her husband involved with gangs? She shook her head timidly, never taking her eyes from the floor. Then her face collapsed into a pout, like a scared child, and she cried quietly, ashamed. The baby looked at her mother and traced the path of a tear down her face with her index finger.

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“¡Venga, pues!” “Come on then!” It was Greta, calling to me, and I readied myself for another public scolding. But no, she invited me into her office and offered me a seat. Then she told me that she had earned everything she had: “Compare my food with the food from the other stalls,” she said, proudly showing me a photo of that day’s menu: a green salad with rice and a generous portion of soy mince with chicken. Because Greta doesn’t shop at the market, of course, but at Walmart, where the food, she says, is guaranteed to be the best quality. When she won the contract, she rented a nearby space and converted it into a kitchen, where nine employees work tirelessly every day. So, when she saw the bus full of detainees arrive on Saturday the 26th, she knew that the next day she would have a crowd of women lining up to feed their husbands. And she also knew that she had to make a run to Walmart.

“We’ve worked our asses off to make all this happen! Look at her: She slept in the office.” A woman with dark bags under her eyes had fallen asleep at a desk, and she opened one eye to force a smile, then fell back asleep. Due to the increase in the cost of pretty much everything, Greta had to raise the price of her plates to $2.50. The head of the station has asked her to lower her prices, but she can’t if she wants to make ends meet.

Two dollars and fifty cents might seem like a pittance, but for one woman, whose two sons were arrested at a vending stall in the Central Market, this means shelling out $15 a day to provide them both with three meals. That’s $225 every 15 days: a fortune for the average Salvadoran household. And they’re the luckier ones: At least their detained loved ones have someone to support them. For others, the daily fare in las bartolinas is nothing. On days when she has food left over, Greta packages it up and donates it to the “rusos.” This is why some women would prefer that their loved ones be transferred to a prison, where then, at least, they would get two meals a day, with a menu specifically dictated by the president himself: two thin tortillas and a spoonful of beans, twice a day. But at least it’s free food. That is, of course, until Bukele decides to act on the oath he made in a speech delivered before God and over a thousand soldiers, prior to swearing them into their new public security duties that very day, April 4: If the gangs continue to kill, Bukele said, he would eliminate all access to food in gang prisons and would not serve them “as much as a grain of rice.” To make matters worse, Greta won’t be there to donate her leftovers to the growing ranks of Russians.

Before the people detained at El Penalito were transferred to Izalco, their families had paid for several meals in advance, but Greta, aware of this, had set up a refund service. The situation threatened to overwhelm her: I noticed a large clear plastic container filled with refund receipts. “Are all those refund tickets?” I asked. “Yeah,” she said. “I have three of those containers filled with them.”

The next day, the government announced that the number of arrests had risen to 6,312, and by Friday, April 8, more than 8,000 people had reportedly been detained in the 13 days since the declaration of the state of exception. During Operation Mano Dura, launched in 2003 by President Francisco Flores, a total of 19,000 alleged gang members were arrested over the course of an entire year.

In other words, Greta has a steady stream of customers guaranteed for some time. We shook hands and she made one last request: “Don’t use my real name. Find one you like and use that.” Said and done.

*Translated by Max Granger