El Salvador Country Profile

El Salvador is a small Central American country of roughly 6.5 million people, bordered by Guatemala to the northwest, Honduras to the northeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. For millennia, the region was occupied by indigenous peoples until it was conquered by the Spanish Empire at the beginning of the 16th century. It declared its independence from Spain in 1821 and was officially recognized as a sovereign nation 20 years later. Due to the long period of Spanish occupation, much of the indigenous traditions native to the region have been lost, and less than half a percent of the population is fully indigenous. The dominant group, making up roughly 90% of the population, is ‘Mesitzo’ (a mix between Spanish and indigenous ancestry). Spanish is the official language and is spoken by virtually all inhabitants. About 85% of the population is Christian, the majority of which are either Roman Catholic or Protestant.

El Salvador’s per capita GDP is just over $8,500, which ranks it around 150th of 200 countries, making it one of the poorest in the Americas. Astoundingly, about 20–25% of the economy is remittances from abroad, with about 1/3rd of all households reliant on remittances. Per capita, it has one of the highest personal remittance rates in the world. The majority of these remittances come from the 2.3 million Salvadorans living in the US.

The reasons for such high rates of Salvadorians living outside of the country are complex. Prior to the 1960s and 70s, immigration out of El Salvador was uncommon. However, the country was incredibly unequal, and disputes over land rights between the peasant class and the landowning elites shook the country with violence. Coffee, the cash crop of El Salvador that at certain points made up 90% of its exports, was the dominant source of income for the country throughout the late 19th and 20th century. However, this income was restricted to the 2% of the population who owned this land. This caused extreme poverty in the country, which boiled over in the formation of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of various left-wing groups demanding land redistribution. The FMLN formed a coup to try to take power in 1979. The government responded by forming a Revolutionary Government Junta to violently squash the protests, and this sparked a full-fledged civil war which ravaged the country for the next 12 years.

As this was in the midst of the Cold War, the United States viewed the left-wing FMLN as yet another threat in the region. To avoid El Salvador falling to communist powers as Nicaragua and Cuba had already, the US heavily backed the right-wing military dictatorship of El Salvador. They organized and trained military units, equipped the authoritarian regime with sophisticated weaponry, and provided millions of dollars in aid daily, which amounted to $4 billion throughout the decade. Armed with US support, the El Salvadoran government and death squads slaughtered civilians, as well as many prominent religious leaders. This included the famous martyr, Saint Archbishop Óscar Romero, who was murdered while saying Mass days after asking the US to halt military aid. According to a UN Truth Commission years later, 85% of the civilian violence was attributed to the US-backed government and death squads, while 5% was attributed to the FMLN.

In total, 75,000 people died and an estimated 20–35% of all citizens had been displaced by 1985. Essentially, almost an entire generation of young Salvadorian adults left during this period to search for opportunities abroad.

Of the generation of El Salvadorians who fled the country during the civil war, many ended up at the United States border. The vast majority were not granted asylum or refugee status despite their dire situation. Still, many crossed illegally and lived as undocumented immigrants in the US’s southern cities, namely Los Angeles. The gang violence in Los Angeles during the 80s and 90s was rampant, with the city starkly divided into racial groups. With little economic opportunity as undocumented immigrants, many El Salvadorians fell into the gang life and were arrested. In fact, it was in Los Angeles that MS-13 was born, originally set up to protect El Salvadorian neighborhoods from the other gangs in the city.

When Bill Clinton passed his immigration reform act in 1996, entire prisons of MS-13 El Salvadorian gang members were loaded up into planes and dropped back into El Salvador. The economic opportunity there was no better, as not only the civil war but also a series of brutal natural disasters had wiped out all out. The gang members once in LA’s prisons were now in El Salvador’s streets, and by the mid 2010s El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world.

Politically, even after the military junta lost its stranglehold on the country, El Salvador has endured poor governance and corruption from both of its two main parties. It has been an ugly power struggle between the far-left FMLN who started the coup which erupted the country into violence, and the far-right ARENA, who was founded in 1981 to combat this insurgent influence and whose leaders included the man who ordered the murder of Archbishop Óscar Romero. That struggle continued futilely, until 2019 when the Salvadoran people decided they had had enough. In a complete shock to the country and the rest of the world, an obscure new party, Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas), took power with 53% of the vote, compared to the ARENA’s 32% and FMLN’s 14%. The New Ideas’ candidate was sworn into the presidency on June 1st, 2019 at the age of 37, making him one of the youngest leaders in the world. He wears his hat backwards, is wildly popular on Twitter, and has little respect for convention. His name is Nayib Bukele, and he claims to be on a mission to turn his country around.

In just two short years in office, Bukele has made national headlines for his provocative statements, bold maneuvers, and well…new ideas. For many, he is a refreshing new political outsider in a country that has suffered so much at the hands of its government. His plan to stop crime is to “outcompete” the gangs by giving them a better alternative than violence: economic opportunity. By attracting foreign investment and growing the economy, Bukele hopes to bring the millions of Salvadorians living around the world back home so that they can further develop their country. By many measures, he is already succeeding. Homicide rates have already hit historic lows, El Salvador’s pandemic response and vaccine rollout have been faster than any other country in the region, and the decision to free El Salvador from US monetary policy through the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender is seen by many as a huge opportunity for foreign investment and economic growth.

Only time will tell if Buekle’s leadership can truly turn this tiny Central American country around. But regardless, many Salvadorans have hope for the first time. However, outside of El Salvador, Bukele has many vocal critics who believe his tactics are anti-democratic and increasingly authoritarian. This topic will be discussed further in the following blog.