Bukele’s utopia: remilitarize and imprison, betraying the Peace Agreements

Abstract

This article explores, from a historical perspective, the trajectory of militarization in the Salvadoran State to interpret the militarization that is occurring today. The 1992 Peace Accords were an attempt to break with militarism, but successive governments gradually eroded these agreements. Nayib Bukele continues that trend and deepened it. In an attempt to shore up power by providing a definitive solution to the confrontation between the gangs and the Salvadoran State, Bukele’s main strategies reinforce militarism with the number of troops, budget, armed forces in charge of citizen security, suspension of rights through a State of exception, and the highest rate of incarceration on the world.

ECA Estudios Centroamericanos, Vol. 77, No. 770, 2022 : 129-150.