Carlos Dada, director of 'El Faro': "Moving to Costa Rica means saving the newspaper, taking it away from Bukele's clutches"

Carlos Dada, director and founder of the newspaper 'El Faro'. Victor Peña

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, tries to turn off the lights of El Faro, one of the most prominent digital newspapers in Latin America. The journalists and the director of the publication, Carlos Dada, know this very well and that is why in April they decided to move their administrative operation to Costa Rica. The transfer does not mean that El Faro and its reporters will stop or will stop being and writing about El Salvador, despite having been victims of espionage with the Pegasus software, defamatory propaganda, harassment by the Treasury and accusations of all kinds of crimes. In recent months, however, they have uncovered cases of corruption and the response of the ruling party has been the only one given by those who cannot refute the facts proven by good journalism: silence and disqualification on behalf of their unofficial spokesmen.

In this interview with EL PAÍS, Dada, one of the most respected and experienced journalists in the region, delves into the attacks that journalism has suffered by the Bukele administration. He also warns about the squandering of the little democracy that remains in his country before the eventual re-election of the popular president, an eagerness that violates the Salvadoran Constitution and that is entrenched on the so-called regime of exception, a strategy of "iron fist" that has managed to "dismantle" the violence of the maras.

Question. According to the government, the emergency regime has been effective and even El Faro, at the time, spoke of dismantling gangs, something that has been welcomed by Salvadorans. Do you think it's the ultimate antidote to gang violence?

Answer. No.

Q. Why?

A. The gangs didn't get off a spaceship. They are the most violent expression of a rotten society. I will quote Monsignor Romero: "As long as the structural causes of violence are not solved, violence will not be solved." This statement by Romero, which is from the context of the civil war, is universally applicable. What we publish in El Faro is a photograph of the moment. Right now, the emergency regime has dismantled the gangs. But again, it's a photo of the moment. We don't know if this is a new reality, because the state has not yet filled the vacuum left by the gangs. Nor has it addressed the serious economic and social causes that gave rise to them. On the other hand, the Bukele government has used two distinct strategies to deal with gangs. One, during the first three years, was to negotiate with them to lower the homicide rate and give electoral returns to their party, in exchange for benefits for leaders in prison. For example, denying their extradition to the United States and even releasing some, as happened. The next, when that negotiation broke down, has been the repressive strategy. We have already seen both with previous governments: negotiation and repression. In all cases we were told that this was the end of the gangs. However, what we saw was exactly the opposite.

Q. The other side of the emergency regime is the human rights violations that have been denounced, but for now, at least for the majority of the population, that does not seem to matter. Do you see any risks in that?

A. Of course! Bukele is a populist very popular for the following: there is a good part of the Salvadoran population that has lived for years with a gun to the head that the gangs have put it on. The biggest concern of all these people has been to take that gun off their heads. That is, that they stop charging extortion, that they do not kill their sons, that they do not rape their daughters ... Everything else is secondary. Respect for human rights, democracy, all of that is absolutely secondary to people who live in that level of despair. And it's normal. It's natural. Bukele is a teacher as there is, I believe, no other politician in Latin America: he connects directly with the emotions and fears of Salvadorans and presents himself as the solution. There are tremendous human rights violations and also a strategy of repression that has canceled all the rights of Salvadorans. It has allowed the concentration of power in a single person who, moreover, is at the head of a very corrupt Government. It's not the healthiest recipe.

Q. On May 3, the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES) denounced a "growing and systematic repression" against press freedom and journalism in El Salvador. How would you describe the daily work of the trade at this time?

A. We have many years covered organized crime, violence and corruption. Never before has journalism been so complicated in the face of harassment and persecution by a regime that needs to silence us. It needs it because a fundamental part of its political strategy is to impose a single narrative. It needs to silence all narratives beyond its control. Public lynching campaigns increase the risks of reporting on the street. The interventions with Pegasus scared away all our sources. Fiscal harassment has forced us to take the newspaper legally out of El Salvador, and above all it has forced us to spend a lot of hours defending ourselves or denouncing the attacks against us. And these are hours that we should be investing in investigating public administration.

Q.El Faro is one of the most prominent media in Ibero-America and they have decided to move administratively to Costa Rica. Apart from these attacks, what other causes that are not so visible compels them to make this decision?

A. The regime's harassment or attacks on journalism in El Salvador have been going on for quite some time. We've been accused of money laundering, we've been accused of sex crimes, we've been accused of deliberate tax evasion. In the audits of the Treasury we have been asked for the personal data of our subscribers. We are appealing to all that, but we are doing it in a judicial system that offers no guarantees, that is absolutely controlled by the regime... Therefore, we cannot expect justice in El Salvador under these conditions. Moving to Costa Rica means saving the newspaper, taking it away from the clutches of a regime that has shown all its will to paralyze and silence us. Registering in Costa Rica already prevents us from advancing against El Faro. We, from El Salvador, will continue to face and pursue the processes initiated by the State against us, but the newspaper is already out of reach.

Q. It is a panorama that already closely resembles that of Nicaragua: APES speaks of 11 journalists who had to leave the country as a preventive measure, that is, from the prelude to exile. What is your situation and how do you deal with it?

A. Several journalists from El Faro have left preventively. Some returned, others have stayed away longer. In addition, this harassment is accompanied by a series of other measures, such as the approval of an anti-gang law that provides for up to 15 years in prison for journalists and for legal representatives of media in which gang phrases or symbols are published... Or anything, says the law, that puts the population in anxiety, with an ambiguity that allows them to apply it at their discretion. This law is made in practice to prevent us from continuing to publish the details of the Bukele government's negotiations with the gangs. They want to prevent us from continuing to publish that government officials released gang leaders and to prevent the rot inside the government from being known about negotiating with the gangs. We have made a decision: we will not stop publishing, because this is in the utmost public interest and is part of our obligation. Therefore, this has forced us to have to take another series of measures to be able to do so. Among them, the temporary departures of some of our journalists. This is the problem of trying to do journalism in a country where there is no longer access to justice and where we have lost all our constitutional guarantees.

Q. Are these systematic attacks that you are suffering comparable to the past administrations of ARENA and the FMLN?

A. No! They are unparalleled. And I'll tell you why: it's not necessarily that the previous ones didn't have so bad faith. That is not the reason. The reason is that they had counterweights and this government no longer has them. The most convincing proof, which has nothing to do with journalism, is that in February Mr. Bukele will be re-elected despite the fact that the Constitution expressly prohibits it in seven articles and it is not his first constitutional violation. He gave a coup d'état to the Supreme Court of Justice and it had no consequence because there was no longer a constitutional counterweight. When he decides or the regime decides to attack the press, it no longer has any limit to the exercise of that power. That is why the attacks against us have no precedent in this dimension.

Q. And there is a well-marked anger against El Faro...

A. I think the president is uncomfortable that, despite his tremendous popularity, outside El Salvador El Faro continues to enjoy great prestige and credibility. He accuses us of having been the architects of the deterioration of his diplomatic relations with other States. But here's something important: Why do we continue to maintain, I think, prestige and credibility? Because we have not yielded to temptations to lower public discourse to the level to which officials want to take it. On the contrary, we have tried as a reaction to this to make our editorial processes more rigorous, to be more demanding journalistically. I believe that it is the only way for journalism to respond to this type of attack: more editorial rigor.

Q. Is the emergency regime the ideal fuel for Bukele to be re-elected?

A. Yes. The regime of exception serves not only to be re-elected, but its figure as a Latin American political reference is cemented. Not only is he a populist, but he is also popular. And this is the dream of all these autocratic populists who abound so much in Latin America. This is going to leave a very painful mark on the country. The dimensions of what has happened in these 14 months are of this size: 70,000 Salvadoran citizens have been arrested. That's what the government says, we don't really know because there is no longer access to public information. That's more than the official figures for the number of gang members in El Salvador. The government inaugurated, and that image went around the world, a new prison. They say, the largest in the world. It has capacity for 40,000 prisoners, which does not even reach 66% of Salvadorans captured in a year. They are being subjected to summary trials, people are dead in prisons. We are documenting systematic torture in prisons based on the testimonies of some of the survivors. Every person who has managed to get out of these prisons speaks of people who have died from beatings, whether from police or gang members. Outside the prisons there are lines of mothers who have not been allowed to see their children in months. Without a single piece of evidence, a judge's order is no longer needed to detain a Salvadoran. It is enough that a policeman or a soldier sees you as suspicious.

Q. And in terms of curtailment of freedoms, how does the regime of exception conflict with them?

A. It curtails all our political and civil liberties and allows us to enjoy them to the extent that the Government is willing to allow it. At any moment a policeman can capture anyone on the streets. This arbitrariness is not called justice, it is called revenge. In other words, if President Bukele really wanted to fight the gangs, he would not have negotiated with them. He made them his political partners by making pacts with the gangs to favor his party in the legislative election. That has been proven. He seeks revenge because the gangs broke the agreement 14 months ago and dumped 87 bodies on the streets. And he's going to try to maneuver to stay on the wave until he's re-elected. History shows us that this popularity is impossible to maintain forever, especially when there are economic crises or when people begin to demand again that their political rights be restored.

Q. But once re-elected, it's going to be very difficult to stop him, don't you think?

A. Yes, of course. I think they are also preparing for it. Bukele promised two years ago to double the number of army officers. They have managed to close ranks in both the army and the police, in such a way that they have sworn allegiance to the president above the Constitution. Unfortunately, when popularity declines, the repressive path will begin.

Q. What is your assessment of the moment that Central America is going through in terms of freedoms? Do you have any hope?

A. History gives us reason to be hopeful. These periods end. My hope is not only that these periods end, but that Central American journalism, which today is proving to be going through its best moment, arrives just as robust, but with many more guarantees at the end of these periods. The situation in Central America is terrible, among other things because democracy is an absolutely abstract concept for the neediest or most urgent populations. This is the golden moment for autocrats and the corrupt. There is not even a political project, there is no political utopia in any country. In Nicaragua, the Ortega-Murillo marriage has not had a political utopia for a long time; What he has is an ambition and a need to keep accumulating power. It is the same case of Bukele, in Guatemala and in Honduras. With the departure of Juan Orlando Hernández we are waiting for President Xiomara Castro to fulfill her promises. Unfortunately, the messages that are coming out of Tegucigalpa come in the opposite direction. Democracies are in retreat in Central America and populism is on the rise. But that, too, is going to end.

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