The poverty surrounding the new “first world” prison in El Salvador

TECOLUCA, EL SALVADOR — The burning firewood has finished cooking the day’s lunch. The children wash their hands with the yellowish water from the pitchers. The table on which the food is served is a wooden wheel that once wrapped high-voltage wiring covering a new prison in El Salvador.

If God could grant one wish to María Luisa Cruz, she would ask him for electricity for her house. Or a well that gives you water during the day. Today, the 47-year-old is not worried about living half a kilometer from the Terrorism Confinement Center, El Salvador’s new maximum-security prison. Although if she thinks about it twice, she would like to live in a brick house like the ones she has seen in San Salvador, the capital of the Central American country.

“This Terrorism Containment Center has been built in an isolated area. An attempt has been made to guarantee that the entire supply of electricity and drinking water is totally independent so as not to affect the communities and surrounding areas”, said the Minister of Public Works, Romeo Rodríguez, on February 1 when together with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, inaugurated the prison.

But approximately half a kilometer from the mega-prison there is a settlement that is the complete opposite of that prison: it lacks water, electricity and a septic tank. Technology is an unknown word for María Luisa, who lives there, along with other families.

His house is a small galley made of sheet metal. Some are rusty and others are new because the inhabitants assure that they collected them from the remains of the construction of the mega-prison. Like her, several families surround the flagship work of the Nayib Bukele government: the largest prison in America where at least 40,000 gang members will be held.

“We went to pick up the sheets that we have from the prison because they were thrown away. That time an engineer scolded us and kicked us out. In the end he told us to pick up what we could quickly. We took a few sheets with which we covered there, ”he told the voice of americaRoxana Karina Molina, inhabitant of the community “El buen amanecer”.

María Luisa, on the other hand, not only has pieces of new sheet metal in her house. Also a wooden wheel to wrap high voltage cables that serves as a dining room for her and her daughter.

Contrary to what the government of El Salvador has said about the isolation of the prison, there are several population settlements near the place: the “Angulo” canton, the “Cantarrana” hamlet and “El buen amanecer”, which is the closest to the prison.

“Here we are very poor. Without water and without light. In these years, life has suffocated us a lot,” added María Luisa Cruz.

In “The Good Dawn” there was never water. The clothes are washed in a nearby stream. And the water for consumption is bought at 10 dollars for three barrels. “We thought they were going to help us now, it hasn’t happened yet,” said María Luisa.

“This jail is first world”

On the night of January 31, in a stunning staging, El Salvador unveiled for the first time the Terrorism Confinement Center, a prison that Salvadoran officials called a “first world prison.”

The director of the prisons of El Salvador and that of Public Works showed President Bukele how the 43-hectare monster was raised in seven months; which has body and package scanners, and walls 2 kilometers wide by 11 meters high reinforced with electrified wires.

In it, Bukele plans to detain the most dangerous gang members after starting a war against the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 in March 2022 through an emergency regime.

For eleven months, El Salvador has captured more than 64,000 people accused of belonging to gangs. The government says that some 30,000 are missing, and that it will continue to extend the emergency regime until they are all captured.

Meanwhile, homicides reflect a historic drop to 7.8 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Which makes it the third country with the least homicidal violence in the region. Bukele has celebrated these results himself: “They tell me that I am brave because we are facing the terrorists…”, he said at the end of January.

Although terrorism is not a common word in El Salvador, since 2015, members of the Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18 are considered terrorists by the Constitutional Chamber of that time.

And despite the fact that Bukele’s measures are censored by some and applauded by others, the recent opinion poll published by the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA) has given him an 8.37 approval rating out of 10 .

Bukele assures that with the construction of the mega-prison there will be enough space to imprison the gang members who have murdered and extorted money in El Salvador in recent decades.

María Luisa hopes that this war against the gangs will alleviate her living conditions and that of a dozen people, including children, who live near the place.

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