El Salvador
Pipil resistance, coffee oligarchy, 1932 massacre (30,000 dead), 1980s civil war (75,000 dead); now Bukele's gang crackdown arrests 81,000, eliminating term limits as homicides drop 70%.
El Salvador is Central America's smallest country and its most densely populated—a pressure cooker where land scarcity, oligarchic control, and foreign intervention have produced repeated explosions. The Fourteen Families who built coffee wealth in the 19th century created conditions that led to massacre in 1932, civil war in the 1980s, gang domination in the 2000s, and now an experiment in concentrated executive power that confounds both critics and admirers.
The Pipil people, Nahua-speaking descendants of Mexican migrants, dominated western El Salvador when Pedro de Alvarado arrived in 1524. Unlike weaker indigenous groups elsewhere, the Pipil resisted: King Atlácatl and Prince Atonal defeated Alvarado's first expedition at the Battle of Acajutla. Spanish conquest succeeded the following year, but the Pipil's warrior reputation echoed forward. Under colonial rule, El Salvador became part of the Captaincy General of Guatemala; indigo (añil) dominated the economy, cultivated through the encomienda forced-labor system that devastated indigenous populations.
Independence in 1821 brought new masters, not liberation. The late 19th century coffee boom created the oligarchy that would rule for the next century. The Fourteen Families—de Sola, Llach, Hill, Meza-Ayau, Dueñas, and others—accumulated land through an 1882 decree abolishing communal ownership. Indigenous communities lost holdings their ancestors had farmed for centuries; they became laborers on coffee plantations that consumed 2% of profits while 98% went to the elite. This land concentration created a society where, as Archbishop Óscar Romero would later observe, "political power is in the hands of the armed forces... who know only how to repress the people and defend the interests of the Salvadoran oligarchy."
The 1929 stock market crash devastated coffee prices. In 1932, socialist activist Farabundo Martí led an indigenous and peasant uprising. The military response—La Matanza, "The Massacre"—killed an estimated 30,000 people in weeks, erasing indigenous identity so thoroughly that El Salvador is now classified as mestizo. Military dictatorships ruled for the next fifty years, subservient to the coffee oligarchy and, increasingly, to Washington.
The Salvadoran Civil War (1979-1992) killed 75,000, displaced one million (20% of the population), and destroyed 40% of displaced persons' homes. The United States sent $6 billion to a government responsible for most civilian deaths; Archbishop Romero was assassinated in 1980, the day after he asked Salvadoran soldiers to disobey orders to kill civilians. The war ended with negotiated peace accords, but created the conditions for what followed: Salvadorans deported from Los Angeles brought MS-13 and Barrio 18 gang culture back to a devastated country lacking institutions to absorb them.
By the 2010s, El Salvador had become one of the world's most violent countries—a failed state in all but name, where gangs controlled territory, extorted businesses, and murdered with impunity. Into this void stepped Nayib Bukele, elected in 2019, who launched a dual experiment: adopting Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021 and declaring a state of emergency against gangs in March 2022. The Bitcoin gamble attracted global attention and IMF skepticism; in December 2024, facing a $1.4 billion loan requirement, El Salvador removed Bitcoin's mandatory acceptance and legal tender status while continuing to accumulate the cryptocurrency (now holding approximately 6,248 BTC worth over $740 million).
The gang crackdown proved more consequential. Some 81,000 suspected gang members have been arrested, giving El Salvador the world's highest incarceration rate—one in 57 citizens behind bars. Homicide rates dropped over 70%; the former "murder capital" is now statistically safer than Canada. Bukele's approval ratings soared. In August 2025, the Legislative Assembly eliminated presidential term limits, allowing Bukele to seek re-election indefinitely. Human rights groups document arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances, and torture; critics warn of authoritarianism. Yet Salvadorans, traumatized by decades of violence, largely support the transformation.
Remittances from the US diaspora (24% of GDP, 98% from America) remain the economy's foundation. Through 2026, El Salvador tests whether concentrated force can break cycles that democracy, foreign aid, and peace accords could not. The experiment continues; the verdict awaits.