Carlos Martínez peered over his brother Óscar’s shoulder as they proofread the investigation they were about to publish, a story they feared could change their lives forever — or perhaps even worse, change nothing at all.
Óscar
tapped his foot frantically, rattling the floorboards. Carlos heaved deep
sighs, as if steadying himself for a fight.
The
brothers, two of El Salvador's most celebrated journalists, had produced a
damming report exposing President Nayib Bukele's ties to the street gangs that
have long terrorized Central America.
The
report showed that a recent historic rise in homicides was the result of a
broken pact between the government and El Salvador's largest gang. The brothers
and their colleagues had previously reported the details of the secret deal, in
which Bukele aides gave jailed leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha gang special
treatment in exchange for their pledge to reduce violence on the streets.
It was
the kind of journalism that has distinguished the Salvadoran press. In the
three decades since peace accords ended the nation's bloody civil war, El
Salvador had become a beacon of media freedom in a region where journalists are
sometimes jailed and even killed for hard-hitting work exposing the powerful
and the corrupt.
But
everything had changed under Bukele, a young, image-obsessed autocrat who once
called himself "the world's coolest dictator."
He and
the Martínez brothers were from the same generation — all raised amid war by
politically minded parents — but they had taken starkly different paths. While
the brothers crusaded against power, convinced that strong checks on authority
were a precondition for El Salvador's fledgling democracy, Bukele was intent on
acquiring it.
Since
taking office in 2019, he has seized control of El Salvador's independent
institutions — purging judges, punishing critics and laying the groundwork to
remain in office despite a constitutional ban on consecutive reelection.
Bukele,
40, has maintained some of the highest approval ratings on the planet, thanks
in large part to his skill at controlling media narratives.
Bukele
has built a sprawling state-run media machine that is guided by daily opinion
polling while at the same time surveilling independent journalists with spyware
and drones, punishing government officials for leaking information, and lobbing
tax fraud and money-laundering accusations at El Faro, the investigative news
site where the Martínez brothers work.
In
April, Bukele approved a law that threatens any journalist who reports on gangs
with up to 15 years in prison.
As soon
as the Martínez brothers published their story, they would be vulnerable to arrest.
To
protect themselves, they had temporarily decamped with their families to Mexico
City.
Working
out of a friend's apartment on that warm evening in May, both had beers cracked
and cigarettes lit when Carlos finally clicked a button and the story went
online.
The
brothers embraced. “Let’s see,” Carlos said, “if we’ve just ruined our lives.”
Growing
up during the war, the Martínez brothers didn't have to look beyond their own
family to see the country’s bitter divisions.
Their
parents were ardent supporters of the left-wing guerrillas fighting the
nation's U.S.-backed military dictatorship. Their maternal uncle, Roberto
D'Aubuisson, was the leader of a right-wing death squad responsible for one of
the war’s most notorious acts: The assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero
while he was celebrating Mass.
The
family didn't shield Carlos, Óscar or their youngest brother, Juan, from the
horrors of the conflict, which stretched from 1979 to 1992 and killed 75,000
people.
“They never
told us that we lived in a country that was perfect," said Carlos, 42, who
laughs easily, wears a black hoop in one ear and is never without his pack of
cigarettes or asthma inhaler. “Since childhood, we understood that it was
impossible to understand our country without understanding violence.”
Carlos,
the eldest, was still a student when he joined El Faro in 2000.
The
site, whose name means "The Lighthouse," was Latin America's first
digital-only newspaper, and it aimed to hold the new postwar government
accountable.
"In
El Salvador, there really wasn't a tradition of journalism," said
co-founder Carlos Dada. "We basically had to invent it."
With aid
from international training programs, nonprofits and foreign governments
promoting democracy, El Faro soon became one of the most respected news outlets
in Latin America. Along with unflinching corruption investigations, the site
was known for its nuanced reporting on a fresh crisis of violence gripping El
Salvador.
Powerful
street gangs had seized control of parts of the country, trafficking drugs,
extorting cash from small businesses and killing with such abandon that El
Salvador ranked among the most murderous countries in the world. Gangsters
dictated where residents were allowed to work, worship and go to school.
Carlos
and Óscar, his intense, tattooed brother, who had joined El Faro in 2007, dived
into the criminal underworld, embedding in prisons and safe houses to
understand the new phenomenon.
They
exposed the origins of the gangs, which were formed by Salvadoran war refugees
in Los Angeles in the 1990s and later exported back to Central America through
deportations. And they revealed how gang members slain in what authorities
described as "confrontations" with police often turned out to be victims
of extrajudicial killings.
"We'd
finish work and would be sitting around drinking rum still talking about it
all," Carlos said. The conversations often included their brother Juan, an
anthropologist who specialized in gang culture.
In 2012
Carlos, Óscar and their El Faro colleagues stumbled onto their biggest story
yet: The gangs had discovered that their violence had a political value, which
they were wielding to glean favors from the government.
The
reporters showed how then-President Carlos Mauricio Funes transferred gang
leaders out of high-security prisons on the condition that their foot soldiers
put down their weapons.
The
resulting decline in homicides ensured that negotiations with the gangs would
be a part of Salvadoran political life for years to come: They had achieved
what no security strategy could.
In the
years since, El Faro has revealed evidence that both of the country's major
political parties negotiated with the gangs for electoral support. Political
leaders usually denied the stories, but while they were sometimes hostile, they
never sought to silence the journalists.
With
Bukele, that was no longer the case.
Before
he was president, Bukele was an advertising executive. Even those who have
criticized his authoritarian drift often acknowledge he has a certain genius
for self-marketing.
It's a
skill he seems to have inherited from his father, Armando, who was born to
Palestinian immigrants and became one of El Salvador's wealthiest businessmen
and the host of a television program where he held forth on history and
sympathized with leftist politics.
Nayib
Bukele was elected on a populist wave of anger at the two major political
parties that emerged after the war, both of which had been embroiled in major
corruption scandals.
He
presented himself as something different: a modern, forward-looking leader who
used Instagram and thought like a tech-disrupter even as he embraced the
power-grabbing tactics of Latin American caudillos before him.
He lured
popular journalists away from established media outlets to higher paying jobs
in the government and launched dozens of new media outlets that claim
independence but push government propaganda.
He
tweeted dozens of times a day — messages that technology analysts say were
amplified on social media by armies of bots — to craft a narrative of an
ascendant, prosperous country and of himself as an "instrument of
God" sent to lead it.
He went
to war with the journalists who dared to contradict him.
The
Martínez brothers knew something was deeply wrong last year when a colleague at
El Faro told them a source within El Salvador’s government had played her a
recording of a phone call between the brothers in which they discussed an
investigation.
Each had
been alone during the conversation, which they conducted on the encrypted
application Signal. They began to suspect that one or both of their phones had
somehow been listening in.
In
January of this year, their fears were confirmed: An analysis by the University
of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and digital rights group Access Now found that the
brothers and 20 of their El Faro colleagues — as well as at least 15
journalists from other outlets — were surveilled for more than a year with the
spyware Pegasus, whose Israeli developer sells exclusively to governments.
“They
know the details of my relationships with all the people I love,” said Carlos,
who was spied on for 269 days, more than anyone else.
“They
know the people who are important to me, and that makes them all vulnerable.”
In the
wake of the Pegasus scandal, human rights organizations called for an
investigation and Reporters Without Borders further downgraded El Salvador's
ranking on its annual press freedom index.
Officials
in El Salvador said nothing.
Members
of Bukele's party in congress quickly approved a reform legalizing
"undercover digital operations" by authorities.
The
Martínez brothers were growing more and more stressed. They worried, Carlos
said, that the Salvadoran government was "just getting started with
us."
They
were right.
Bukele
had touted a dramatic reduction in homicides as one of his crowing
achievements, celebrating each day that passed without a killing.
In slick
promotional videos, he credited the work of police and soldiers. "We
Salvadorans are taking control of our future," he told the Legislative
Assembly, as congress is formally known. "We did it without negotiating
with criminals."
But
investigations by Carlos, Óscar and their El Faro colleagues had revealed that
the government had been in talks with the gangs from the beginning.
They
cited hundreds of pages of prison reports that showed that Bukele had granted
MS-13 expansive concessions — from permitting fried chicken from a popular
restaurant to be sold inside prisons to moving guards that the gangs viewed as
aggressive — in exchange for reducing killings and supporting Bukele's
political party in 2021 congressional elections.
Then,
one weekend in March, the peace that had helped win Bukele wide support came to
an abrupt end.
El
Salvador's gangs went on a killing spree. On a single day, 62 people were
gunned down across the country, a level of violence not seen since the war
ended.
Humiliated
and furious, Bukele and his party declared emergency rule, suspending many
civil liberties and easing the conditions for make arrests.
Since
then authorities have imprisoned more than 35,000 people whom Bukele describes
as “terrorist” gang members. Nearly 2% of the adult population is currently in
jail.
Human
rights groups say the majority of detainees were arrested arbitrarily and have
not been given due process. Amnesty International says at least 18 people have
died in state custody — including from torture and other abuse.
Bukele
used the spike in killings to further target journalists — whom he equates with
gang members as fellow enemies of the state — starting with passage of the law
threatening prison time for those who "disseminate messages from
gangs."
His
government is accused of sending drones to spy on several El Faro reporters,
and he has launched online smear campaigns against multiple journalists,
including a freelance reporter for the New York Times who fled the country
after Bukele supporters claimed he was the sibling of an imprisoned gang
leader. Never mind that the reporter doesn't have a brother.
Juan,
the youngest Martínez brother, fled too, after Bukele called him
"trash" and tweeted a video interview in which he had said gangs
sometimes "fulfilled a necessary social function" in El Salvador.
For
Óscar and Carlos, the cause of the sudden explosion of violence in March seemed
clear: Bukele's truce with the gang had broken down. The brothers set out to
prove it, despite the risks.
“We’re
going to do what El Faro has always done,” Carlos said. “When we have
information, we publish. It doesn’t matter what happens next.”
Carlos
reached out to some of his gang sources, saying he was interested in speaking
to high-level Mara Salvatrucha leaders about what had happened. Finally, a gang
leader got in touch and turned over audio recordings in which a top Bukele aide
can be heard discussing the collapse of the agreement.
The aide
talked extensively about how he had won the gang's favor, once escorting a gang
member wanted in the U.S. out of El Salvador to safety in Guatemala. He
repeatedly referred to "Batman," which the gangsters said was
reference to Bukele.
Carlos
immediately called his brother. “I have everything,” he said.
The next
day, El Faro flew Carlos to Mexico City to continue reporting on the recordings
without fear of Salvadoran authorities interrupting him. Óscar later joined
him.
The
story that Carlos wrote and Óscar edited explains that the March gang massacre
was retribution for the arrest of a group of Mara Salvatrucha leaders who were
supposed to be protected by the government.
Shortly
after the story went live, the brothers' mother, Marisa, called.
"How
are you? Happy?” Marisa asked via video chat. "I’m so proud of you."
She, too, had left the country ahead of the publication date.
Soon,
friends started coming over to celebrate with beer and mezcal. They included
several other Salvadoran journalists who had recently gone into exile abroad.
As
drinks were poured and cigarettes were lit, Carlos called out to his brother,
who was still hunched over the laptop.
“How
many do we have?” Carlos asked, referring to readers.
"3,000,"
Óscar responded.
By June
that number would reach nearly 200,000.
As the
story made the rounds online, Batman memes proliferated, opposition leaders
expressed outrage, and the government remained silent.
In some
ways, that wasn't a surprise. Bukele does not always strike back immediately.
And he surely understood that if he acknowledged the piece, he would be giving
it more exposure.
Instead,
over the next few days, Bukele focused on his preferred agenda: He tweeted
about handing out digital tablets to schoolchildren and about the “bitcoin swag
bags” given to international bankers who had visited the country after Bukele
made the cryptocurrency legal tender in El Salvador.
He also
tweeted a sympathetic message to Elon Musk, currently embroiled in a bid to buy
Twitter. “Once you denounce the system, they will come after you with
everything they have," Bukele wrote. "They will smear, attack,
degrade, try to bankrupt you ... Luckily, we live in evolving times, and their
once 'all powerful' media outlets have lost their clout.”
More
disappointing to the brothers was the fact that some of the country's biggest
media outlets did not acknowledge the story, perhaps because they were afraid
of violating the new law threatening prison time for reporting on gangs.
Bukele's
government had not arrested anybody, yet it appeared that his law was having
its intended chilling effect.
A few
days after the article was published, Óscar returned to El Salvador. He knew he
could be detained, but as editor in chief of El Faro, he worried staying abroad
would send the wrong message to his newsroom.
There
were no police waiting for him as he stepped off his plane. Still, he said he's
watching "day by day" to determine whether he has to leave again.
Carlos
remains in Mexico for now. A life in exile is the last thing he wants. He loves
his country, and misses the verdant beach that is a short walk from his house.
It pains him to think that El Salvador's relatively new experiment with
democracy could end in failure.
Sometimes
he wonders: Are we condemned to live with violence?
He is
certain now of only two things.
Wherever
he is he will keep reporting. And whatever is coming will be harder than this.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/as-el-salvadors-president-tries-to-silence-free-press-journalist-brothers-expose-his-ties-to-street-gangs/ar-AAYfpdu