Salvadorians take to the streets led by young people and women to protest against Nayib Bukele on Independence Day

Fátima Ortiz has been oscillating between meetings, video calls and her social networks since September 7 to push the call for marches convened to protest against the government of Nayib Bukele on September 15, the day that commemorates the 200 years of El Salvador’s independence from the Spanish crown. This is not the only one.

The calls to the marches this Wednesday – there are about 20 different – want unite in one event the rejection of Bukele and his most controversial and unpopular measures, like his intention to run for presidential re-election, a reform that would purge a third of the country’s judges or the entry into force of bitcoin as a legal circulating cryptocurrency.

The ruling party also has on the agenda for the day the presentation of a list of reforms to two-thirds of the articles of the Constitution, including those which relate to the possibility of the re-election of Bukele.

These will not be the opposition’s first marches to the president, but this, according to some of its organizers, It wants to be a turning point which marks the beginning of a more vigorous street protest and, for the more ambitious, the creation of a more vigorous opposition front in a country where Nayib Bukele and his followers have seized the power of the executive – the public forces included -, the legislature and the head of the judiciary.

It was on September 7, the day bitcoin came into effect, that Bukele witnessed the first big street call since he became president in June 2019. Holder of a record popularity rating, an unmistakable victory for his party in the legislative elections this year and barely disturbed by a tattered formal political opposition, civil society’s response to government actions was irrelevant. Until now.

“On September 7, there was a turning point in the street fights, discontent and exhaustion are already reaching unbearable levels for the population”says Ortiz, a feminist and digital activist who is part of the more public group of advocates called the Marches.

The expectation of the organizers is to fill Plaza Morazán with at least 5,000 people, in the center of San Salvador, a modest number compared to the great marches of the 70s and 80s in El Salvador of military dictatorships and the civil war, but relevant to the era of Bukelism, which had hardly seen concentrations of a few dozen when their deputies hit the Supreme Court and the Attorney General’s office to appoint similar officials to these institutions.

There is another thing that sets the organizers of these marches apart from previous leaders. Although the ruling party, through spokespersons such as the Minister of Labor, has insisted on outwitting the organization to the traditional left and right, the truth is that this time, there are no big political parties, unions or strong unions behind the protests. Leadership is rather horizontal, and feminists and young people stand out among the most visible organizers.

“It is women and young people who feel oppression most quickly… Young people do not find opportunities, there is no future for them. There is no hope. There is nothing. The first option can be frustration, but then comes the struggle, and women are the ones who suffer the most from gender violence, machismo, misogynism, which is multiplied by a thousand in oppressive regimes, ”explains Juan De la Cruz del Bloque Popular Youth. , one of the movements that will be in the steps of the 15.

The government’s previous response to the call for street protests, launched mostly on social media, followed almost every step in the Bukelism propaganda manual to distract attention.

President Bukele has not raised the subject so far and has attempted to divert the conversation to the supposed reactivation of the publicly funded “Chivo Wallet” digital app for bitcoin transactions, and even announced the opening of free vaccination against it. Covid-19 to children between 6 and 11 years old, which has already been objected by the Association of Pediatricians of El Salvador considering that “there is not enough efficacy data to support the presidential decision” (the States United, for example, has not yet approved vaccination in this age group).

Bukele even had time, the day before September 15, to confront a journalist on Twitter for legislative reform that will allow the purge in the judiciary.

The demonstrators, however, understand that the government has prepared and some already fear that the state apparatus is preparing infiltrations of intelligence or security agents in civilian clothes to try to violate the marches.

“There are people who are afraid of reprisals, the organizers talk about how to guide those who want to arrive and remain incognito in the march or those who face the police who want to arrest them or confiscate their phones”, specifies Andy Failer, member of the opposition party Nuestro Tiempo and who participates individually in the organization of the marches.

Failer and other organizers he spoke to Infobae It is said that on the eve of September 15, rumors that government agents would infiltrate the marches to “cause riots and damage to private property, to paint a bad image.” Another strategy would be to send the national civilian police to the access roads to San Salvador to prevent the protests from spreading from the interior of the country.

For now, the only official communication from the government is that the president will speak on a national radio and television channel at 8 p.m. local time.

An unprecedented coalition in recent times

Perhaps we have to go back to 1944 to find a synergy of social forces similar to that which, that year, helped push the downfall of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, the soldier who commanded El Salvador with an iron boot for 13 years old and led 1932, massacre of tens of thousands of natives.

This time, as has not happened since the signing of the peace accords that ended the civil war in 1992, the streets of San Salvador are preparing to receive members of different ideologies and beliefs with a common slogan: the rejection of Nayib Bukele and his politics.

The ruling party wanted to use this amalgamation of thoughts against the marches, describing them as a summons of the political left and right that ruled the country between 1989 and 2019 and whose decline contributed to Bukele’s rise to the to be able to.

Ernesto Sanabria, the presidential press secretary, referred to the protests in a thread of several tweets late on the night of September 14. “The so-called” marches “are not true expressions of citizenship, but rather a desperate attempt by the ARENA-FMLN pair (parties that ruled El Salvador) and… their satellites to take up the old manual of conflict and division” , wrote Sanabria. , himself a former right-wing ARENA activist and close advisor to Antonio Saca, former president of the Arena now imprisoned for corruption.

The organizers were quick to move away from traditional political directions and insist that this is a spontaneous convocation of citizens from disparate sectors, all tired of Bukélism.

“The biggest challenge has been to articulate such diverse people and organizations, so distant on certain issues and with different ideological agendas so that they can be seen as one front,” Failer said. “It is a diverse collective group which in the short term accepted these marches “he adds.

Fátima Ortiz, feminist, talks about the diversity of the convocation, which involved “building bridges to find minimums”. Carlos Clará, literary editor, had said Infobae in the previous one that these minima cluster around the rejection of presidential policies: “Outrage over the executive’s lack of respect for the rule of law.”

Roberto Dubón, a digital activist who participated in the organization of the protests, also insists that it is a citizen call: “This call deserves to be recognized as the first where the protagonist is society, without ideological connotation, but in response to a dictatorship that has led us to confrontation”, dice.

There are also absences. The most notable is that of the Salvadoran business community, whose main representatives remained close to Bukele and even publicly supported him. In recent weeks, the National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP) issued a statement saluting the protesters and urging the government to respect them on the streets. What ANEP does not do is call its members to march.

The leadership of the Catholic Church, still the most influential in the country, also issued an official statement on September 12 in which it condemned the attempted presidential re-election. The bishops did not advance their participation in the march, but some organizers assure that there are prelates who have expressed their intention to go there.

At the end of the day of September 15, which will end with Bukele’s message to the nation after the first real and public demonstration of opposition, we will know if the coalition born of the president’s repudiation has made noise in the streets.

Mario Gómez, a computer scientist who was arrested on September 1 by the Bukele police after criticizing the bitcoin policy, has faith: wants to leave. It is striking that people have a clear motivation to walk, whether it is the rejection of bitcoin, the question of re-election, ”he says.

Ruth López, lawyer, also sees, in the marches of the 15th, a spark, ignited by the policies of Nayib Bukele. “(The president) succeeded in bringing (these sectors) together, not uniting; unity cannot be circumstantial, it is not a day. There is one objective that can be unifying: to compete for power ”.

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