Cutting Through the Disinformation
If Bukele has 1 hater its me. If Bukele has 0 haters it means I have left this world.
Hola mis cheros,
I’m back! So, I’ve been wanting to address the massive amounts of misinformation in our community, especially amongst state-side Salvadoran diaspora who are uncritically praising President Nayib Bukele AKA Pupusa Mussolini. Thanks to him, El Salvador has the title of #1 most incarcerated country. Impressively beating the USA! (Though we couldn’t have done it without their help 😉).
El Salvador is not number one at education, health care, or even tourism. It’s number one at mass incarceration. [cerotes cheer in the distance]. Because it’s the year 2023, here’s a brief TikTok explaining why that’s bad:
Thank you to Madlines on TikTok. I could not have said it better!
However, I know some of you are craving a longer explanation. So, in late February a few Salvadoran abolitionist friends and I took to Twitter Spaces for a discussion titled “Bukele’s a Fascist: Dispelling Diaspora Misinfo” and around 2,000 Twitter users listened to this 2 hour talk. It was an intergenerational, transnational discussion that brought me some hope in these dark times. You can listen to the recording here:
And if you want to join the next Twitter Space, there’s one tonight Tuesday March 28 at 8PM ET/ 5PM PT:
Lastly, if you made it this far, thank you for your patience and support! More content is coming — because frankly not enough people are talking about this fucked up Salvadoran shit! If you want some insight into why I’ve been so inactive these past months, you can read about my mental health in NBCU Academy:
When Salvadoran American independent journalist Daniel Alvarenga got ill with what he assumed was Covid in February 2020, he was “expected to work through it.” His video work was often about rising antisemitism, school shootings and police violence. The situation at the border was especially hard on him — “children in cages, and the hateful rhetoric from the Trump administration, with people opening their eyes to the cruelty of the immigration system.” …
You can read the rest of my quotes, here.
Salú,
Daniel Alvarenga