Angelus News | April 21, 2023 | Vol. 8 No

into the car, wounding the husband,
who survived, and killing his client.
Stories like these help explain why The
Washington Post in 2016 declared El
Salvador “the murder capital of the
hemisphere.”
We can thank God that is no longer
true of the country. Violence has
dropped dramatically, earning president
Nayib Bukele popular support
around the country. Unfortunately, it
has taken something like the “state of
exception” for that to happen. Bukele’s
government has not been shy to admit
its suspension of legal rights for anyone
accused of being a gang member.
Under the “exceptional rules,” police
don’t have to inform arrestees of their
rights or what they’re being arrested for,
nor do those arrested have the right to
a lawyer. They can now be held for 15
days without seeing a judge (the period
used to be 72 hours).
Watchdog group Human Rights
Watch reported that the policies have
resulted in “mass arbitrary detention,
torture, and other forms of ill treatment
against detainees, deaths in custody,
and abuse-ridden prosecutions.”
Bukele’s government has produced
videos showing at least 4,000 “domestic
terrorists” being transferred to the
megaprison. The scenes of shirtless,
shoeless tattooed men in white boxer
shorts file into a courtyard and squat
with their heads touching the backs
of the men ahead of them resembles
something out of Hollywood science
fiction.
I don’t know what is more shocking:
the footage of these men or the fact
that many Salvadorans, especially those
who have immigrated to the U.S., are
not appalled by the sight of so many
young men entering an environment
that would have intimidated Dante
Alighieri.
“Abandon hope all ye who enter
here,” the Italian poet famously imagined
the sign welcoming new arrivals
to hell. The same words would seem
fitting for this mega-prison.
The government boasts that no one
can escape from it. “This will be their
new house, where they will live for
decades, all mixed, unable to do any
further harm to the population,” boasted
Bukele recently. The potential for
violence in prison in a country with no
death penalty, is part of the terror the
“state of exception” inspires.
One of Chavez’s concerns is the
many innocent young men who have
been detained mistakenly. Some 4,000
of the 70,000 arrested under the new
anti-terrorism protocols have since
been released, but I am told that this
takes some doing. Not all innocent
men and their families have recourse
to the lawyers and other resources
needed to apply pressure.
“How can you sleep at night, seeing
how the ‘exceptional’ has become the
rule, what is normal?” said Chavez, addressing
the government in his March
24 homily. “How is it that you can
accept as normal the people who suffer
cannot even express themselves publicly.
How is it that it can be regarded as
normal that all possibility of dialogue
is closed?”
I would go even further than the
cardinal in that I believe that even the
guilty deserve better treatment. Is the
possibility of redemption now totally
ruled out? What about the souls of
these men? Can we just lock the doors
and throw away the key?
During a recent visit to El Salvador,
some of those I talked to found the
treatment of the prisoners dehumanizing.
Others disagreed, saying that
the gang members deserved the brutal
treatment.
But what remains is a terrible situation,
an invoice of sorts for El Salvador’s
long history of injustice, oppression,
violence, and loss of faith. The
cruelty and viciousness of the gangs is
sinful, but it needs to be understood
in the context of a society at war with
its religious roots, overwhelmed by
a selfish materialism, and scarred by
generations of fratricidal conflict.
Charles Dickens once wrote this
about the excesses of the French Revolution:
“Crush humanity out of shape
once more, under similar hammers,
and it will twist itself into the same
tortured forms. Sow the same seeds of
rapacious license and oppression over
Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez of San Salvador, El Salvador, in a file photo. | CNS/ALESSANDRO BIANCHI, REUTERS
again, and it will surely yield the same
fruit according to its kind.” The gangs
are both producers and products of
violence.
The problem is not just that of the
present government of El Salvador.
This is something with international
and even metaphysical dimensions.
The desperation of the “state of exception”
represents the bankruptcy of a
civilization. The Confinement Center
said that only force can hold society together.
May God have mercy on us all.
And may other brave voices join with
that of Chavez in speaking for reason
and decency.
Msgr. Richard Antall is pastor of Holy
Name Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and
the author of several books. He served
as a missionary priest in El Salvador for
more than 20 years and was named a
“Noble Friend of El Salvador” in 2011
by the country’s National Assembly.
April 21, 2023 • ANGELUS • 23