CityWatch is published 24/7 with special e-news blasts on Monday and Thursday evening, with Extras as appropriate around special events such as elections or imp
This article originally appeared in Jacobin América Latina and is co-published in English with Jacobin.
On the evening of Sunday, January 31, a pickup truck carrying members of El Salvador’s main opposition party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), was intercepted. The truck had been traveling from a campaign event in the capital, San Salvador, when three assailants stopped the vehicle and opened fire. Two people were killed: Juan de Dios Tejada and Gloria Rogel del Cid, both veterans of the civil war between the FMLN and the US-backed military dictatorship. Three more were wounded.
Rather than condemn the violence, President Nayib Bukele responded by spreading conspiracy theories, reversing the roles between the assailants and their victims. Bukele, the 39-year-old millionaire who campaigned as an irreverent and rebellious political outsider, has waged a hate-filled crusade against the FMLN ever since his expulsion from the party in 2017. Using social netwo