Profs & Pints DC: El Salvador as Gang State

Profs and Pints DC presents: “El Salvador as Gang State,” a look at that nation’s crackdowns, corruption, and imprisonment of U.S. deportees, with Michael A. Paarlberg, associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, and leading expert on El Salvador’s politics and crime.

Much has been in the news about El Salvador and its mercurial strongman leader, President Nayib Bukele, as its notorious CECOT prison has become a destination for people deported at the behest of our own nation’s own president, Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, much of what the American public has been reading and hearing has been wrong. It glosses over how much Bukele’s government has jailed innocent people while cooperating with notorious gangs, and it distorts the truth about Bukele’s authoritarian rule, the operations of Salvadoran gangs, and the justifications for U.S. deportations to that country.

Get a more accurate picture of what is actually happening in El Salvador with Michael A. Paarlberg, a leading expert on that nation’s government and gangs who has advised Congress and federal agencies and published extensively in academic journals and media outlets such as The Washington Post.

Drawing upon extensive research in El Salvador, Professor Paarlberg will discuss Bukele’s authoritarian rule and how he compares to that nation’s previous leaders. We’ll look El Salvador’s “state of exception,” or suspension of the rule of law in response to a declaration of a crisis, and whether it is being regarded by the U.S. and other nations as a model.

Much of the talk will focus on understudied questions about the relationship between crime and authoritarianism. Professor Paarlberg will look at how gangs became entrenched in El Salvador, at the successes and failures of Bukele’s use of mano dura (“iron fist”) policing, and the relationship between Bukele’s government and criminals, which behind the scenes involves in significant corrupt dealings with gangs such as MS-13 and with money laundering networks.

We’ll also examine the role of U.S. immigration and deportation policy in transnationalizing crime, the nature of the U.S.-El Salvador deportation deal, and the conditions that our nation’s deportees face in El Salvador’s prisons. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: President Nayib Bukele tours El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison in 2023. (Casa Presidencial El Salvador photo.)