El Salvador President Nayib Bukele Slams Western NGOs, Clinton Administration in New Speech

In a speech uploaded to X yesterday, President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele criticized the role that US President Bill Clinton and Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) played in the rise of gang violence in his country. He gives a brief account of the last 40 years of El Salvadoran history, explaining to an audience of high school students how proxy groups backed by the Soviet Union and the United States plunged El Salvador into a civil war from 1979 to 1992. Then, he details how international law groups later tied the hands of Salvadoran administrations, preventing them from curbing the violence and organized crime that arose from this break down in civil order—particularly the recruitment efforts of MS-13.

As Valuetainment previously reported, the Bukele administration’s security forces have reduced the country’s homicide rate 70 percent by jailing just one percent of the population. To accomplish this, Bukele and his government have declared an ongoing state of emergency, beginning in early 2022, which has suspended suspected gang members’ rights to a trial, lawyer, and court-approval for their detention. Despite the fact that he has won the support of more than 70 percent of the country, Bukele has attracted the ire of international human rights groups, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the Observatory of Human Rights at Central American University (UCA), which have condemned him for alleged abuses.

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The speech is a response to these threats, in which Bukele reframes the debate to make the NGOs appear as the oppressors and his regime as a noble force for Salvadoran sovereignty and order.

De ahora en adelante, construiremos nuestro propio destino.

From now on, we will build our own destiny. pic.twitter.com/e5cWpx6Nys

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) January 26, 2024

He began by going over the El Salvadoran Civil War:

“What we had here was a war funded by foreign powers. But the blood and suffering was from the Salvadoran people. And both sides, those from one group and the other—we’re not taking sides here, it’s simply an analysis of a reality in the country. That is undisputable. Or at least irrefutable. Both sides told us that this was the solution to our problems. The ones financing the war told us that it was the solution, that they were paying to help our country and that this was in our best interest. And many Salvadorans who joined the FMLN struggle went to kill, left their families, and took up arms: 10, 11, 12-year-olds went to kill.”

The FMLN (short for “Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación,” or Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) was a guerrilla militant rebel group backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. It still exists today as an official political party.

Bukele went on:

“They had no childhood. Many died in the war, but even those who survived had no childhood. Because at that young age, they went to kill instead of playing and learning, like the children in the first world did,” he pointed up above, motioning toward the north. “Their children played, while ours killed each other. Both sides of this international war sold us the idea that this was the best way toward a better life. Isn’t it true? It’s an irrefutable reality!” he said with sarcasm, smirking.

He continued:

“But history has shown that they tricked us, that it was war between two global systems, and El Salvador was just another battlefield. This process eventually led to the so-called Peace Accords. They were also sponsored by international powers. Strange, right? It’s the whole script. Our people experienced the fear and pain of losing their families. 80,000 Salvadorans died. And over 20,000 disappeared and over 1 million were displaced—mostly to the United States, and some to Canada and other countries. Our country was left in shambles: our development set back by 30 years. We became a country with no chance of a way forward. We didn’t develop as we might have. Millions were left with persistent traumas, and we are still paying the debts of the war. Or haven’t you seen the veterans demanding their rights? Still, to this day, we are paying the bills of the war.

So they sold us the idea that the best thing for our country was to sign a peace agreement. Of course, nobody is against ending a war that should never have existed in the first place. But there was no peace agreement, because there was no peace in El Salvador. It was just another ploy, another trick in the long list of times we have been deceived over the course of our history. In January 1992, when the fake peace was signed, people went to celebrate. There were two celebrations: one by the right and one by the left. The most symbolic and iconic celebration was the one from the left. They released white doves outside the metropolitan cathedral.

All of us thought at that moment that we had peace, that our country would improve. But none of that happened. There was never peace. In fact, there was more war. More Salvadorans have disappeared as victims of violence after the supposed peace accords. More Salvadorans have disappeared during peacetime than during the war, as victims of violence, this time at the hands of the gangs. Coincidentally, the gangs are also children of the war.”

He then directly addressed the audience, filled with young people who have no memory of these events, before heading into history of the gangs:

“For those of you who don’t know that part of history, it’s important that you know it. Although, thank God, you won’t live through it again. But it’s the history of our country. Of the million Salvadorans who had to emigrate to other countries, millions of displaced Salvadorans went to live in ghettos, in the United States.

In those ghettos they formed what we now know as the gangs: MS-13 and 18^th street. Those gangs were made up of Salvadorans and operated in the USA. Then President Clinton came along with a deportation plan: he deported the criminals back to El Salvador without telling us that they were criminals. Thousands of gang members were deported back from the United States and we couldn’t stop them. Simply because we didn’t know they were gang members. They recruited from the communities just like the guerrilla army, and got 12-, 13-, and 14-year-old children, so that they could go kill, so that they could go rob.

“The same recipe, but modernized. Just at that time, as if by perfect coincidence, international orders also brought us the Child Offender Law. Anyone under 18 was off limits. That’s precisely who the gangs were recruiting. They sent us the disease and they took away from us, at that very moment, the only medicine we had: putting the gang members behind the bars, when there were still few.

So, many people had to flee, once more. Not because of the civil war, but out of the fear of the gangs. That’s why more than three million Salvadorans, a third of our population, live outside of our borders. Some left because of the civil war, while another larger group, which fled over a longer period, was the postwar exodus.

We were sold a false peace. And then 30 years went by, selling us false security, false democracy, false institutions, and a false liberty. All of the recipes they gave us failed. In over two centuries of our history, Salvadorans never knew peace, nor liberty, nor sovereignty. And the population can testify.”

In a speech from April 2022—delivered on a soccer field with armed forces gathered around him to strike fear in the gangs, and with the video edited with footage of gang members running in fear from his soldiers—Bukele directly criticized “Western NGOs” for the destruction caused by their fake altruism.

“And of course, their friends in the “international community”—and I say it in quotes, because it’s not the majority of the international community—and their friends from the so-called “human rights NGOS,” and I say that in quotes too because they don’t defend human rights. They are against human rights. They said nothing when these criminals killed tens of Salvadoran men and women. But they leaped to attention when we began to arrest them, saying that we are violating their rights.

Poor criminals! But if we don’t do it now, then when? … [Western countries] punish their own criminals with penalties that aren’t at our disposal. Many of their countries have death penalty, we do not; they have life in prison, we do not. They are profiting from the bloodbath in El Salvador. How would they get donations to come to study crime in El Salvador if there is no crime in El Salvador? What would their NGOs do if we didn’t have problems? They need us to continue to have problems, so that they can continue to make their fat salaries. They need there to be a bloodbath, so they can analyze the bloodbath, because that’s their livelihood.”

Bukele refers to himself as a “Philosopher King” in his X bio. In a post, writing like such a Philosopher King, he said, “Power is either vested in kings or it inevitably ends up with the merchants.”

Power is either vested in kings or it inevitably ends up with the merchants.

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) January 15, 2024

Shane Devine is a writer covering politics, economics, and culture for Valuetainment. Follow Shane on X (Twitter).