Carlos Dada: freedom of the press under El Salvador authoritarianism

An award-winning journalist in El Salvador says the country’s authoritarian president Nayib Bukele is one step away from becoming a dictator.

Despite his sky-high approval ratings, Bukele's re-election would make El Salvador a dictatorship, Carlos Dada tells Saturday Morning.

Dada is the co-founder and director of Salvadorian online news outlet El Faro, renowned for its coverage of human rights violations, corruption and inequality.

This month he was named an IPI World Press Freedom Hero.

Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora, a previous recipient, has been charged with financial crimes and is currently in detention. Dada tells Saturday Morning he is very worried about the fate of journalism in Central America.

“I think I am in a much better position than a lot of [my fellow journalists there]. I'm not particularly worried about myself. I am worried about my colleagues, about the political situation in Central America where we tried to develop a democracy. It's a very nascent democracy. It was born in El Salvador in 1992. After decades of dictatorship, and that democracy is being dismantled at fast pace in all of Central America.”

Nayib Bukele recently announced plans to seek re-election in 2024, despite a constitutional ban on doing so.

Bukele has sky-high approval ratings, but now controls all arms of the state and has incarcerated more than 50,000 people in the last four months, Dada says.

After establishing his own political party Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas), The former publicist was seen as representing a fresh start for El Salvador.

For over 20 years, the FMLA (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) and Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) dominated the country's political landscape, presiding over violence and mass emigration.

The FMLA had long been at war with the US-backed El Salvadorian government and an estimated 75,000 civilians were killed during the 1980s.

Nayib Bukele presented himself as an anti-corruption reformer and his approach to crime accounts for much of his popularity, Dada says.

He was personally accused by the El Salvadorian president of money laundering - a charge that sees the accused facing years in jail on remand while the legal process takes its course.

There were signs of authoritarianism before Bukele was elected president, Dada says.

“He was a mayor of San Salvador before that, and you could already see some of his character that will basically explode when he grabbed all the power he has now.

“And the way he's grabbed the power is by taking over the judiciary, and the formerly independent voices."

Two laws passed by El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly in August 2021 allow authorities to dismiss all judges and prosecutors who are 60 or older.

Ousted judges can be replaced by others appointed by the Supreme Court, which has recently been packed with Bukele’s allies.

The "social-network savvy" president shuns mainstream media and instead communicates directly to the public via social media, Dada says.

“He's very good at imposing a narrative through a well-greased propaganda machine that spreads messages, fake news, or through several platforms on the internet and through social media. He is still right now, as we speak, the most popular president in Latin America."

Bukele’s intention to run for president again is a pattern we’re seeing in other countries all around the globe, he says.

His use of the army to back up his agenda is a gross violation of the country’s constitution.

“I would call it a crisis of democracy where autocrats and populace are taking advantage to concentrate power to grab by force, certain institutions, and in the case of El Salvador, which is not an isolated case, also by making the army and the police, basically, his personnel guards, which is a huge violation of the peace agreements that put end to our Civil War.

“In 1992, one of the biggest achievements from those agreements were that the army was separated for good from our political life. Now, clearly, President Bukele has brought the army back to our political life by making it his personnel guard."

The El Faro investigation that prompted state surveillance of Dada and his colleagues involved Bukele’s secret agreement with the country's gangs, he says.

“We discovered that the government has negotiated a deal with the gangs.

“Gangs are responsible, in my country, for most of the violence. Gangs or criminal organisations have kept El Salvador for a long time among the most violent countries in the world, with the highest homicide rates.”

After Bukele came to power, the homicide rate dropped dramatically and he claimed this was due to the efficiency of his security measures.

“We found out that the homicide rates had descended because he got a deal with the gangs – he liberated some of the gang leaders that were imprisoned. And we still have a lot of questions around that deal. But to publish those findings, made us basically public enemy in the eyes of the president.”

Dealing with gangs was not good for the democratic process in the country, Dada says, as gangs use violent acts as negotiating chips.

Five months ago, after 87 murders during one weekend, the El Salvador government arrested more than 600 gang suspects and called a ‘state of exception’.

“Some gang leaders were arrested by the police, which basically was interpreted by the gangs as the breaking of the deal they had with the government."

The arrest of suspected gang members without due process amounts to the criminalisation of the poor, Dada says.

“Gangs live in poor neighbourhoods. So, the police acting in poor neighbourhoods basically arrest anyone passing by, without needing to prove links to gangs, without needing a detention order from a judge. And without any of the legal provisions for a fair and just process. That's what's happening right now.”

Dada is currently living outside of El Salvador, wary of returning in case he is arrested.

“One of the particularities of money laundering is that you have to face trial in prison - you can't face trial [while] free. So, before anyone proves if you're guilty or not, you are already in prison. And these processes take years.”

Bukele move to make Bitcoin El Salvador’s legal currency has been a disaster, Dada says.

Although everyone in the country has a Bitcoin wallet, not many people know what it is or how to use it and Bukele failed to acknowledge that the cryptocurrency is more of an investment than a practical way to buy and sell.

“We all know what happened with Bitcoin in the last month – its price went down. So, the country has lost hundreds of millions of dollars that Bukele invested buying bitcoins.

“Bitcoin has not been accepted by the Salvadoran population, no-one uses Bitcoin… When the price of Bitcoin went down, Bukele said, ‘If you don't sell you don't lose. So you should be patient and keep your bitcoins until the prices go up’.

“I don't know if he realised that what he was basically saying is that we should see Bitcoin as an investment, therefore, is not a legal currency that you use to buy things and sell things on a daily basis. It is an investment and it is a speculation.”

Despite these failings, Bukele remains wildly popular and Dada doesn’t blame the public for supporting him.

“I think that we learned a long time ago that you can't blame a desperate and poor population for their political decisions or their political sympathies. Poor and desperate people have just one obligation, which is to survive. They are eager to find hope in the message of a political leader and Bukele is very good at that."

Most El Salvadorians don’t support Dada's efforts to scrutinise Bukele and hold him to account, he says, but his mission as a journalist is to expose the truth for the sake of democracy.

“We don't owe ourselves to our readership or our public. We owe ourselves to the principles of journalism, even when it goes against the will of most of your public. We are not in a popularity contest.”

Dada believes Bukele will be re-elected as president if he stands. Yet if he wins, he’ll be nothing more than an elected dictator.

“He's just one step from becoming one. Why? Because he is still a constitutionally elected president. But his re-election is unconstitutional. In that moment, he will become a dictator, because all the other elements required to call a dictator as such, are already in place.”