“As soon as she thought she had something, life snatched it from her in one fell swipe.”
— Pedro Lemebel (Tengo miedo torero, 2001)
“I believe that the civil rights struggle of our time is the LGBT community. And I want to be on the right side of history,” said a young politician who had just appeared on the public scene of the Salvadoran Left, in a friendly voice. It was October 13, 2014. His was addressing a group of about twenty people, including transsexuals, gays, lesbians, and allies representing organizations that defend sexual diversity. “I’m not going to be on the side of those who discriminate,” Nayib Bukele added with a smile, wrapped in a blue jacket with a red lining over a white polo shirt that subtly matched the blue, red, and white stripes on his socks, making him look fresh, friendly, modern.
That meeting took place in a house located in the Flor Blanca neighborhood of San Salvador, convened for five in the afternoon, as part of a series of roundtables to build the municipal platform for Bukele’s campaign. He was a rising star in the FMLN party who had been mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán, a small municipality on the outskirts of the Salvadoran capital, and was now running for the flagship municipality: San Salvador. The politician had quickly made waves in the media as an outsider — not only because of his attire, but also because of his anti-establishment stance, progressive speeches, sharing of articles from the independent press on social media, criticism of his own party, and open defense of human rights.
Bukele won the 2015 elections and became mayor of San Salvador.
In recent years, a photograph taken after that meeting has been circulating on social media, with Bukele in the center, to the backdrop of a rainbow flag held by some of the participants that day. Although there were more people at the meeting, only 13 participants appear in the photograph.
According to the agenda prepared by the social organizations that convened the meeting, it was to last three and a half hours, beginning at 5:00 p.m. and ending at 7:30 p.m. At 6:35, Bukele was to present his commitment to “transforming the situation of exclusion” suffered by diverse groups in the municipality of San Salvador. It would end at 7:10 p.m. with the signing of a commitment by the candidate to reaffirm that these groups would be part of his political platform.
To reconstruct that conversation with Bukele, El Faro contacted a member of the FMLN campaign team and six of the participants, but only two agreed to speak on condition that their identities be protected, for fear of reprisals. One of the sources, despite currently residing in Sweden, said they preferred to stay away from the media because of their ongoing lawsuit against the Salvadoran state before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, out of fear that any public opinions could distort that process. Two others never responded to El Faro’s messages, and one of them refused to give an interview, although he documented his changing positions on Bukele on social media.
This is the story behind that photo and how a politician lied to a group of people.
* * *
“We were very excited. We had an image of hope. We believed that things would change if there was more openness toward us from the mayor’s office,” said Ander Rivera, recalling the feelings that followed that meeting with Bukele. Rivera is a trans man. “We were excited that we were going to have an ally in public service, someone we could ask for support because he was going to speak out for our rights,” he added. He has been a teacher in the public school system since 1995. He currently lives in hiding, keeping his trans identity secret from his colleagues and students because he fears being fired for it. “I have experienced discrimination as a student and as a teacher, and now I see how many students face discrimination in schools across the country. It’s a total disappointment. Things are happening that I never imagined could happen.” Ander imagined that one day he would be able to work in an inclusive school for LGBTQ people. That has been his dream since he entered public education.
In mid-2024, Rivera started working at another school in the capital. At his previous school, the principal did not respect his identity and called him by the female name he had before embracing his trans identity. In November 2021, Ander began a legal process to have his new name appear on his ID card, but it was not easy. “They made me undergo psychiatric and medical evaluations to verify whether I had undergone surgery or hormone treatments. They also assigned a social worker to investigate my background. She went to the area where I live and asked if people knew the person with the name my parents gave me, and then she asked if they knew Ander. It was a long process. After the evaluations, a judge ordered that I be transferred to a panel at the Family Court. I met with them and they asked me some questions about my identity. I had two hearings, one with witnesses, but I didn’t speak at either of them,” he said. Last year, he managed to untie the legal knot and certify his new name, but not his gender change. Ander said that, in many cases, changing gender can lead to more obstacles, such as city halls refusing to process this information on identity documents due to the legal vacuum that exists.
In El Salvador, there is currently no Gender Identity Law. On March 22, 2018, civil society organizations presented a bill to the Legislative Assembly, but it was never approved. When the new Assembly took office in 2021, made up mostly of deputies from Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party and its ally, GANA, at least 30 bills that were being studied by the previous legislature were shelved on the grounds that they were considered “obsolete and not in line with reality,” according to ruling party deputy Marcela Pineda. Among those 30 initiatives were the Gender Identity Law and the Law on Equality and Non-Discrimination.
In February 2022, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice gave lawmakers one year to create a law allowing transgender people to change their names on identity documents, but to date this has not been done. That same year, the Permanent Committee for a Gender Identity Law had filed eight lawsuits to enforce the change of some names, but only four were approved. There is no official count. According to the organization COMCAVIS TRANS, “being that it’s a personal process, like divorce, this information often remains only between the transgender person and their lawyer,” said a spokesperson for the organization who identified himself as Gabriel.
By that year, the Bukele administration was already beginning to show signs of moving toward a more conservative stance. In September 2022, the Ministry of Education announced on social media the dismissal of the director of the National Teacher Training Institute (INFOD) and the restructuring of the institution, following the broadcast of a segment on sex education on the public television program Aprendamos en casa (Let’s Learn at Home), which explained the concept of sexual orientation. The program, aimed at children and young people whose face-to-face education had been suspended due to the mandatory quarantine imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, used animated cartoons to explain that just as a boy or girl may like the opposite sex, it is also sometimes the case that boys may like boys and girls may like girls. And that there is nothing shameful about that. The ministry responded in a statement: “We are clear that we must always look after children, protect their mental health, and promote the family values that are the foundation of Salvadoran society.”
At the meeting where Ander was present and where that photo was taken, Bukele promised to eliminate discrimination in all municipal ordinances in San Salvador and in public institutions in the capital, as well as advance changes in the treatment of LGBTQ people in public spaces by the Metropolitan Police Force (CAM). For example, trans and transvestite people would be allowed to remain in squares and parks, where they were normally removed. He even promised to accompany the community during the Pride marches held every June. The latter, said Ander, never happened.
“When he became mayor, some ordinances were initially enacted, such as the treatment of trans women by police officers in public spaces, but over time they were not upheld. It became more difficult to access him. We only managed to speak to him once, prior to a march, but then we requested meetings with him and did not get them,” said Ander.
After that meeting with Bukele, many of those who participated checked the box for his candidacy, and he won the mayoral election in 2015 with 56.8 percent of the vote, compared to 47.11 for his main opponent, Norman Quijano of the ARENA party. A member of the FMLN campaign team who was involved in that election, whom we will refer to only as “Ye” for personal safety, told El Faro that one of the main challenges of that campaign strategy was working with the image of a party that was beginning to lose popularity. “Making the leap from a small municipality (Nuevo Cuscatlán), where the problems are there but the solutions are at hand, was going to be a challenge. The FMLN had also lost popularity and credibility since the last election, when candidate Violeta Menjívar lost due to inefficient services, mediocrity, and corruption,” he said.
Due to this lack of confidence, despite the existence of an FMLN team that would be in charge of the campaign, Bukele created a parallel team to handle communications and messaging, which included figures now in the Salvadoran government and the Nuevas Ideas party: Ernesto Castro (current president of the Legislative Assembly) as assistant, and his cousin Xavier Zablah Bukele, who would later become president of Bukele’s party; Sofía Medina (current Secretary of Communications for the Presidency) as communications manager, and Ernesto Sanabria (current Private Press Secretary for the Presidency), who joined when the campaign had already begun. Ye asserts that Bukele’s brother, Karim, was always there “making decisions, but not in person. When something was not decided, he was consulted,” he said.
“Bukele clearly asked to have communications, social media, and the campaign run by a separate team. All they asked the party for was money,” says Ye. “If there was someone from communications at campaign headquarters, it didn’t matter. Social media had an impact and the party team was not familiar with the technologies. In that regard, I was critical of the FMLN. The candidate said that his team was expert in advertising. They even made a brand manual with the data and ideas accumulated from the strategy used in Nuevo Cuscatlán.”
Ye mentioned that when electoral goal exercises were carried out from the campaign headquarters, priority was always given to the most populous sectors, and not so much to specific sociocultural groups: “I don’t think there were any in-depth discussions on this or other issues. The daily dynamic was very pragmatic. It was based on events: the event for the photo, the event for the video, or for communication on social media.”
Bukele’s outreach to certain populations previously marginalized in governance plans, such as youth or, in this case, the LGBTQ community, was key to instilling confidence in his campaign rhetoric. However, El Faro has documented that part of Bukele’s team’s strategy to come to power was to negotiate with gangs for electoral support, a reduction in homicides, and control of extortion. For Ye, that meeting where the photo was taken was just that: for the photo.
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Ana, an independent human rights activist, says that the 2014 meeting was called by Bukele’s campaign team, bringing together various civil society organizations working to protect the rights of the LGBTQ community. The house where the meeting took place, Ana says, was the campaign headquarters of the then-mayoral candidate for the leftist party.
Since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1992, Ana has been involved with various civil movements and human rights organizations, motivated in part by the forced disappearance of her mother in September 1982 at the hands of death squads during the military repression that plagued El Salvador during those years of armed conflict. Ana contacted some representatives of these LGBTQ organizations so that they could speak with Bukele and present their demands to the mayoral candidate.
“That meeting generated so much trust and hope that afterward we were invited to participate in the development of Nayib’s campaign platform, which was called New Ideas for New Times. On page 41, there was a section called ‘Inclusive City,’” Ana said. “At that meeting, we asked Nayib, in particular, not to exploit the LGBTQ population. But when we wanted to set up a monitoring committee for the Inclusive City section, we were unable to do so. When Nayib became mayor, he refused everything.”
El Faro obtained two versions of the draft campaign platform called New Ideas. In the first draft, which was shared for editing with the LGBTQ organizations that participated in the meeting where the photo was taken, some suggestions were made to change the terminology to better respond to the community’s demands. For example, in point one of the section entitled “Zero violence due to discrimination,” it was suggested that the phrase “prevent discrimination” be changed to “eradicate discrimination.” However, when the document was made official, the organizations’ suggestions did not appear.
“When a public official or politician says they are going to prevent discrimination, they are saying they are going to let us be discriminated against, but only a little bit,” said Ana, who asserted that many of the decisions made by Bukele's campaign team not to be radical in defending LGBTQ rights had to do with “not creating antibodies with other conservative groups, such as religious fundamentalists or pro-life groups, in order to get elected.”
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Karla Guevara is the current Secretary General of the Salvadoran LGBTQI Federation. In 2014, she was a university student, but she had links to human rights organizations and activists who were involved in the talks with Bukele’s campaign team. Guevara did not attend the meeting where the photograph was taken because she had classes.
However, she said it was a time full of promises in favor of transgender, gay, and lesbian people.
Guevara commented that, at the beginning of Bukele’s term as mayor, there were some positive developments, but then the promises were not kept. In 2017, she said, a crosswalk in San Salvador was painted with the colors of the rainbow flag, but it did not last long and was repainted white. She is referring to the intervention that took place on Los Andes Avenue, in an artistic-political act called “The Great Show in the Sky,” conceptualized by artist Daniel Ruiz. Dozens of people participated in the act, with rollers in hand and megaphones, chanting slogans in favor of the LGBTQ community.
Among the participants was Nicolás Rodríguez, who until a couple of years ago was one of the main organizers of the Pride march in San Salvador. Rodríguez was also at the meeting with Bukele and appears in the photograph holding the rainbow flag, but Rodríguez refused to speak to El Faro for this report. “I lived in the United States for a long time, where I saw these rainbow crosswalks and liked the symbolism, which was a mixture of promoting respect for sexual diversity and respect for pedestrians,” he told El Faro in a video report made at the time about the artistic intervention.
In El Salvador, most gestures in favor of sexual diversity have been merely symbolic. According to the international data compiler Statista, as of May 2025, nine countries in Latin America have legalized same-sex marriage. Of course, El Salvador is not among those nine. But this is not the most serious issue. Both Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights determined in 2020 that the life expectancy for transgender people in the country is 33 years, compared to the life expectancy for heterosexual people, which is 73 to 74 years, according to the latest demographic data update from the World Health Organization.
Central American Conservatives Look to Curb LGBTQ+ Education, Health
The figures vary depending on who you ask, but a 2017 report by the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman (PDDH) indicates that, between 1995 and 2016, more than 500 people from the LGBTQ community were murdered. Another report by the Regional Network Without Violence indicates that, between 2011 and 2022, there were 79 murders of people from this population. The bulletin Nuestra Mirada, produced by four social organizations in 2024, reported that, between October 2023 and August 2024, there were 109 acts of violence based on gender identity stigma, and 56.6 percent of cases that were reported ended up being shelved by the Attorney General’s Office. It was only in 2015 that the Legislative Assembly recognized the seriousness of hate crimes by amending the Penal Code to include crimes motivated by hatred toward a particular group or identity as aggravated homicides. “President Bukele has made the fight against crime a priority and boasts of the reduction in the number of homicides. However, his lack of strategy regarding LGBT hate crimes is disturbing,” wrote Cristian González Cabrera, senior researcher for the LGBTQ rights program at Human Rights Watch, in an institutional article.
Even the security model touted by government propaganda has been harmful to diversity. The organization AMATE has recorded that, from March 2022 to date, there have been at least 68 verified cases of human rights violations against people of diverse sexualities, due to violence inflicted by police or military personnel during the state of exception.
This is the country where a few brushstrokes on the ground are considered a sign of political openness toward human rights. Until they are erased.
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After Bukele was expelled from the FMLN in 2017 and formed his own political movement, Nuevas Ideas —a name he took from the platform developed by the Frente’s campaign team— and won the presidential elections in 2019, the rapprochement with LGBTQ populations faded to such an extent that, even in his second unconstitutional government, he has made them persona non grata in the nation. Bukele’s discourse has changed from ally to discriminator. Nothing remains of that photo.
However, this should come as no surprise. The young politician who, when he was in the ranks of the FMLN, presented himself as progressive and critical of the system, had the chameleon-like cunning to ally himself with other political parties to come to power while Nuevas Ideas was in the process of consolidation. On June 30, 2018, he announced an alliance with Cambio Democrático (CD), a small political institute that calls itself center-left, despite its known links to members of other right-wing parties. Bukele’s relationship with CD was short-lived, as the party was dissolved following a court ruling in July of that year ordering its cancellation, since it had failed to obtain the necessary number of votes in the previous election to continue existing. That same month, Bukele already had another political party as a lifeline for his plans. He joined the openly conservative Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA), a party whose members have publicly rejected any grounds for legalizing abortion (such as rape or endangerment of the mother’s life), same-sex marriage, and have even called for constitutional reform to allow the death penalty in El Salvador, as one of its most active members, Guillermo Gallegos, has insisted. That is why, with Bukele surrounded by hardline conservatives, the photograph he had taken years earlier with the rainbow flag seemed so out of place.
By the time he was running for president in 2018 under the banner of GANA, signs of a change in position began to emerge. During a presidential debate on October 31 at the Central American University (UCA), Bukele said he was against same-sex marriage in a speech in which he also reaffirmed his commitment to intolerance toward discrimination. He even proposed that people who discriminate should be criminally punished.
“We do not intend to change the law on marriage. We believe that the LGBTI community has rights... In fact, I have many friends and family members who are part of the LGBTI community... We believe that there can be no absolute discrimination. Has anyone suffered discrimination for any reason? For being a woman, for being young, for not having work experience, for racial reasons because they go to the United States and suddenly are called ‘this Latino’... It feels ugly, right? So we cannot discriminate against anyone because of who they are or how they think. So for us, absolute non-discrimination must be guaranteed, even with criminal penalties for those who discriminate, but on the issue of marriage, we believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman,” said Bukele. “That doesn’t take away anyone’s right to live their life as they choose. It’s simply the definition of marriage. I mean, this is a bottle of water. I can drink the water in a glass, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to call it a bottle. For us, there should be no discrimination and people can do what they want with their personal lives, and if there is discrimination, it should be punished by law, but the definition of marriage is the legal union between a man and a woman.”
In his first days as president, his government eliminated the Sexual Diversity Directorate, a government office that served as a liaison between the executive branch and LGBTQ civil society organizations. The Directorate was closed due to the elimination of the Secretariat for Social Inclusion. Theoretically, its functions were transferred to a unit within the Ministry of Culture. These first steps led various organizations to declare their discontent to the media in 2020, but the state paid little attention to their complaints. “We demand that the respective authorities grant job stability to transgender people and lesbian women employed in various government institutions, including those ministries that have been dissolved, as they are the ones who face the most barriers to entering the workforce due to prevailing social prejudice,” said a statement from the Salvadoran LGBTI Federation.
Nicolás Rodríguez, who refused to speak to El Faro, left public statements on his social media accounts revealing his position on the Salvadoran president and his dissatisfaction with unfulfilled promises.
In one of these messages, posted on Facebook on May 15, 2021, Rodríguez claimed that when Bukele left the leftist party there was “a change of course,” and he blamed him for the fact that, upon being named president in 2019, “the first thing he did was abolish the Sexual Diversity Directorate.” Rodríguez added: “In his Cuscatlán plan, he ‘includes’ us again with a rehash of Inclusive City, which he did not fulfill when he was mayor, and just when he wins the presidency, the acronym LGBTQ is NEVER, EVER heard from his mouth again. (…) Then he RADICALLY changed his discourse on EQUAL MARRIAGE, which hurts me deeply because today I face all the social and practical problems of not having my union legalized. We have been patient with him, just as we were with Suecy Callejas Estrada [vice president of the Legislative Assembly for Bukele's party], whom you delegated and who then left us as a deputy, and the first thing she did was to throw out a bill that did not come from the ‘dipurratas’ [“deputy-rats”] but from the people, YOUR PEOPLE; because yes, Mr. President, we put you THERE. What they shelved was the draft from the LGBTQ community. Analysis of a decade.”
Bukele’s conservative positions and actions as president have never been well received by international human rights organizations. In January 2021, Human Rights Watch reported that El Salvador does not have the necessary conditions in place for gay, trans, or lesbian people to carry out a Cooperation Agreement on Asylum with the United States government. A month earlier, on December 15, 2020, the government had agreed to implement the agreement, but the organization maintained that the country does not offer a safe haven from violence and discrimination. Human Rights Watch reported that between January 2007 and November 2017, more than 1,200 Salvadorans sought asylum in the United States for fear of persecution based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Entering his second unconstitutional term, after winning the 2024 elections in violation of four articles of the Constitution, Bukele moved closer to anti-rights and anti-diversity rhetoric. In February, he participated in the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which brings together far-right politicians and opinion leaders. There, he delivered a speech in which he lashed out against what he called “the globalist agenda,” a term often used by the conservative political class to discredit international human rights organizations, multilateral bodies, and agendas agreed upon between countries through the United Nations, the European Union, or regional organizations. In fact, in a space on social media that Bukele created at the beginning of his campaign for unconstitutional re-election, he expressed his distrust of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This position has been echoed by other officials such as Congresswoman Alexia Rivas, who said in a tweet on June 27: “El Salvador is pro-life, pro-traditional family, and the 2030 agenda has no place here.”
On August 12 of that same year, the Salvadoran government issued an agreement to create a new National Council for Development, thereby repealing the National Council for Sustainable Development, which monitored the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals included in the 2030 Agenda.
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) defines the United Nations 2030 Agenda as follows: “It is the reference guide for the work of the international community until 2030. The 2030 Agenda presents a historic opportunity for Latin America and the Caribbean, as it includes issues of high priority for the region, such as the eradication of extreme poverty, the reduction of inequality in all its dimensions, inclusive economic growth with decent work for all, sustainable cities, and climate change.”
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Bukele's anti-rights rhetoric has become public policy. During the CPAC conference in the United States, Bukele assured Catalina Stubbe, director of the conservative organization Moms for Liberty, that content related to sexual diversity would no longer be taught in El Salvador’s schools. No sooner said than done: Education Minister José Mauricio Pineda announced in a post on X that he had ordered all related content to be removed from school curricula.
But that was not all. Doctors and members of the public-health system reported changes to forms used to treat sexually transmitted diseases. Key information and terminology referring to sexual diversity had also been removed. Since late February and early March 2024, for example, registration and care forms for people with HIV/AIDS no longer accurately categorize the type of population receiving medical care.
A public sector doctor who agreed to speak to El Faro on condition of anonymity explained that key populations are those that, epidemiologically, have the highest prevalence of a disease, i.e., how likely they are to contract it. The three key populations used to be recorded as follows: men who have sex with men, transgender women, and female sex workers. “This is done based on the person’s risky sexual behavior, not on their identity,” the doctor said. The terminology has been changed, and now a man who has sex with another man is referred to as a “high-prevalence man.” A transgender woman is referred to as a “high-prevalence person.”
“In an ideal scenario, all these variables need to be visible, because in public health, in order to make a service accessible to the population, it has to be a safe place where people feel confident about disclosing their sexual orientation and gender identity, because these data are also international indicators. This is censorship, a step backwards, because users perceive the service they are receiving as hostile,” says the doctor. “The World Health Organization's Global Fund made the observation to the Ministry of Health that it had to revisit this because it was an achievement, but the political situation did not allow it.”
Nicola Chávez, secretary general of the LGBTQ rights organization AMATE, argues that Bukele’s rhetoric and policies are “a continuation of populism, to attract public support through moralism.” At his unconstitutional inauguration ceremony on June 1, 2024, he surrounded himself with an influential group of representatives from the most conservative wing of the United States, reaffirming his alignment with far-right currents incompatible with movements that defend sexual freedoms and the identity rights of racial or cultural minorities. Among the guests at the event were conservative leaders close to the Make America Great Again movement, such as Donald Trump Jr., Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, and social media influencers close to the current Republican president, such as former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and Eduardo Verástegui, a film producer and former far-right presidential candidate in Mexico.
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Chávez also pointed out that this is a broader phenomenon. “It’s not just about censorship, but an effort to shut down the visibility of the LGBTIQ population in general.” Since June 2024, there have been a series of incidents that have undermined the freedom of expression, association, and representation of this group in society, due to a lack of public policies that local and central governments can use to mediate. Here are some examples:
On June 16, 2024, the Ministry of Culture of El Salvador issued a statement on its social media announcing the cancellation of performances at the National Theater of San Salvador of a play by the Inari group, a stage project with an LGBTQ focus that includes drag characters. The Ministry stated that the first performance of one of their plays, on the 15th, “presented content not suitable for Salvadoran families” and alleged that “information was deliberately omitted in their rental application.” According to another statement published by the group, the play is based on a script that “has already been performed at the National Theater, with seasons in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022.” It also pointed out that “the content of the show is well known to the staff of the Ministry of Culture, as the lead actor has been performing at the institution for 12 years.”
On November 27, 2024, the Health Regulation Superintendency of the capital-city mayor’s office closed the oldest bar in the LGBTQ community, which had been operating since the years of the armed conflict, in downtown San Salvador, “El Hoyo Bar.” According to the authorities, the closure was due to “a lack of permits” and coincided with the reorganization of other areas of the Historic Center. The venue was located in the basement of the Central Plaza shopping mall on Delgado Street, one block from the National Theater. It survived earthquakes, gangs, and Covid-19. For many years, it was a refuge for diverse people living on the outskirts of the city. Days after it was closed, various people arrived to say goodbye and make a statement with signs that read: “LGBTQ people have the right to safe spaces.”
On June 22 of this year, cultural researcher Dylan Magaña announced on social media the demolition of the Izalco cinema, following the construction of the corridors of the current El Salvador Library (BINAES). Located on Calle de la Amargura, the Izalco cinema was one of the last old cinemas to maintain an active, albeit clandestine, program.
This space was known among some members of the LGBTQ community for showing erotic films with gay and lesbian content. Currently, says Magaña, this space is a parking lot. Midnight Delight is a young transvestite artist who, since 2018, has performed in different public and private spaces and designed costumes that challenge Salvadoran popular culture.
One example is a piece presented in June 2024, which consists of a dress made from scraps of Alianza Fútbol Club T-shirts, a Salvadoran soccer team, and gathered pieces of women’s aprons. In the world of transvestism, Delight has managed to establish a personal brand through his designs. Many of his pieces have been exhibited by Nessa Saldaña-Sosa, a trans model who has been on the cover of the New York fashion magazine Blanc.
Due to the nature of his work, Delight is one of the people who knows best the cultural spaces in San Salvador. Although many of his presentations have been held in private venues, such as the French Alliance and the Cultural Center of Spain, or the Nave Cine Metro of the Asociación Cultural Azoro, the artist laments that other alternative venues with deeper roots in the LGBTQ community are gradually closing.
“The best way to make a population that is politically inconvenient disappear is to make it invisible and remove it from public spaces. They started with institutions, then they went after culture, and now they are targeting physical spaces that serve as meeting places. It’s a way of making the general population believe that LGBT people are disappearing, that there is no longer any space for us here. It’s also a way of making us believe that we are separated, that there is no longer any way for us to organize and raise our voices,” he told El Faro.
Within the LGBTQ community, there have been critical voices that have made public their discontent with the government. One of them is Marvin Pleitez, better known as Lady Drag, a character who has participated in almost all the protests against Bukele since 2021, against the takeover of the judiciary, the Bitcoin Law, the militarization of the country, and the approval of the General Law on Metals Mining. On July 9, 2022, Lady Drag’s brother, Héctor Antonio Canales Mercado, was arrested under the state of exception on charges of illicit association. Earlier that year, on January 10, Lady Drag appeared before the Legislative Assembly with a proposal to reform the Penal Code to include prison sentences for those who promote presidential reelection in El Salvador. Héctor allegedly died on October 27 in the Izalco Prison, but according to newspaper El Diario de Hoy, the family was not immediately notified.
According to press reports, the medical report from the Forensic Medicine Institute stated that he died of pulmonary edema, as has happened in hundreds of cases of people who have died in state custody. His body, his relatives told the media, showed signs of beatings and torture. “I was someone who voted for him [Bukele]. I was at the polling stations fighting with a woman from the Frente [FMLN] to get the votes cast for him validated. I stood there like an idiot in front of the National Theater at the end of the campaign. On my social media, I said, ‘Yes, let’s bring about change. We have to get rid of those dinosaurs of the old politics.’ And then suddenly, nothing... I feel mocked, betrayed. Because I voted for him, I feel even more responsible for doing what I’m doing now,” Pleitez said in an interview published on October 19, 2022, in the media outlet Focos.
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That afternoon in October 2014, when Bukele finished talking with the participants of the meeting with whom he took the photo, he was asked to sign a letter of commitment. “That photo was also taken because the participants wanted there to be a record,” Ye told me. On the other hand, Ana assured me that Bukele was given the rainbow flag he is holding in the photo. It was like a gift for his promises. Those who were there signed it and asked him to display it in his office once he won the mayoral election. Now Bukele is president of El Salvador for the second consecutive term, despite the fact that the Constitution of the Republic prohibits it. And the country has been militarized for more than three years under the state of exception.
Looking back over the last two years, both Ander and Ana said they felt disappointed in the young politician who once told them he would not discriminate. “With so many arbitrary arrests, we are afraid, but we will continue to speak out with marches, sit-ins, and whatever else we have to do to be visible,” said Ander. As a human rights advocate, Ana believes that the LGBTQ population should not be alone in its struggle: “It has to join the social movement and demand its own space. But it must also join the many other struggles, such as the fight against mining and the persecution of environmental leaders, even though I know that we live under a regime that makes it difficult for radical people to exist on a daily basis,” she said.
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At noon on June 28, 2025, one year after the modifications to educational content on sexual diversity, the censorship of epidemiological forms for HIV/AIDS testing, and Bukele’s speech at CPAC, hundreds of people gathered near the Divino Salvador del Mundo monument in San Salvador to commemorate LGBTQ Pride Day.
The afternoon was marked by storms that caused minor flooding in many parts of the capital. Despite the threat of bad weather, the march continued, coloring the streets with rainbow flags, bright costumes, music, dancing, drumming, orchestras, trans batons, and posters calling for love, freedom of expression, and human rights.
Before the march began, members of the El Salvador LGBTI Federation read a statement that began: “The LGBTIQ+ population continues to exist, even though statistics say we don’t, living in El Salvador, a country where today, after decades of progress, defending human rights is once again a persecuted cause.”
The Federation’s statement refers to the increase in the criminalization of human rights defenders in recent months. During May and June, El Salvador experienced its most serious spiral of authoritarianism. The arrest of lawyers Ruth López and Alejandro Henríquez and pastor and community leader José Ángel Pérez, considered prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, as well as the arrest of constitutionalist Enrique Anaya and the departure of at least 40 journalists, has set off international alarms and national fear. “Demanding rights for ourselves, that our names and gender be recognized, that we be allowed to study or work with dignity, makes us as much defenders of human rights as those who protest against metal mining and the serious rollback of social and political guarantees that we are now experiencing,” the statement said.
Seven years after a young, purportedly leftist Bukele posed smiling surrounded by representatives of LGBTQ organizations, behind a rainbow flag that he himself signed as a commitment to defending their rights, no one in that march —no gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or non-binary person— saw Bukele as an ally or defender of their civil liberties. “Without freedom there is no diversity!” read one sign. “Silence is also repression,” read another. No-one in that march in the rain that day thought that El Salvador is today a progressive country.