The man behind Trump's Salvadoran gulags

This week we’re asking an important question: Who is really inspiring the “vibe” of Trump 2.0? No, it's not Elon Musk. We’re talking about President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. Joining us is Ricardo Avelar, to explain how this club promoter, hustle bro, and LinkedIn influencer grew up to become a dictator whose playbook President Trump is now stealing from. Aside from being a massive blink-182 fan, our guest Ricardo Avelar is a journalist and political analyst. You can find him and his work on X/Twitter @docavelar. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: http://multitude.productions/ads. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:29Ryan Broderick?

  You know, if you wanted to rate Nayib Bukele at a 10 in terms of how cool he is, do you think he's the coolest, which would be a 10? Or do you think like, he's not that cool?

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Do you remember when kids go out and play in a neighborhood and there's one kid who's rich and he owns the ball, but he's really bad at sports? But he's just like, he throws tantrums and he's so uncool that he will take the ball whenever like you beat him or something? That's him.

• 1:12Ryan Broderick?

  Today, we're going to be asking a very important question. Who is really inspiring the vibe of Trump 2.0? This is an episode all about Central America's coolest guy, Nayib Bukele, the head of America's new network of Gulags and extradition prisons and the president of El Salvador. This is Panic World. I'm Ryan Broderick. Sometimes you'll be hearing from our producer, Grant Irving. Panic World is a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And this week, we're going to be talking about the hustle bro, the LinkedIn influencer, the dictator, Bukele. He has used the internet to warp reality in El Salvador, and he has led to the rise of an extremely annoying millennial brand of fascism, one that might just be coming

• 1:55Ryan Broderick?

  to a country near you sometime soon. And joining me today is journalist, massive LinkedIn A2 fan.

• 2:04Ryan Broderick?

  Ricardo Avelar, welcome. How are you?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm good. All things considered, I, I'm good.

• 2:10Ryan Broderick?

  We, I think we need to start adding that to the introductions for all of our guests is, is what is their favorite band? I think that's important. So I want to run, I want to run through Boucle's entire career because I think for many Americans, he just sort of appeared out of nowhere, but I think you could argue he's the most influential man in the world right now, or at least one of them. He caught my attention when I was covering cryptocurrency during the, like the, the post-COVID boom. But what is your earliest impression of, of Mr. Boucle? Where did he come from for you?

• 2:40Speaker 02

  So my first impression of Nabil Boukela is when I was like 15 or 16 and El Salvador has never been big on like IDing people to come into bars or clubs. And Nabil Boukela ran a club, one of the most famous clubs in El Salvador. And if you were lucky enough to look old enough, which was never my case, but I finally met him in 2014. I met him personally. I was in an event and I approached him. I was running a little NGO at the time. And I wanted to have him over to have a little debate, you know, with like college students. And the first thing I noticed, I approached him is that he doesn't look in the eye. And then when I, when I shook his hand, it was like dead fish.

• 3:19Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  And that was, that was horrible. That was, that was cringey. And it got me to think that it's so weird that you see this character and he looks so like, you know, uh, bold. Everywhere he goes, but he's a really awkward guy.

• 3:33Ryan Broderick?

  That is weird.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  It's weird until it's not, until you think about it and it makes total sense, you know, like it's, he's a typical like internet guy who behind a lot, like a screen.

• 3:44Ryan Broderick?

  Closer JD Vance than he is Trump.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  A little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

• 3:49Ryan Broderick?

  I did not know that he started his life as like a club promoter and I feel like that makes so much sense.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Do you remember Night at the Roxbury?

• 3:56Ryan Broderick?

  I do remember Night at the Roxbury.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Kind of like that, like trying too hard, like Abu Tabi, brother.

• 4:01Ryan Broderick?

  Exactly. To go back before the nightclub, so you know, I do want to run through a bit of his childhood because it is important, I think, to understanding him. So dad is Muslim, opened the first McDonald's franchise in El Salvador. He was a polygamist with six wives and Nayib Bouklay is the fifth of 10 children. You know, he started as sort of the rich kid in the area, but in 2012, he's running an ad agency and import business and he's elected to mayor. And that is the beginning of his political career. And he, he kind of runs on like, almost like a Macronian, and I think he still does to a degree, sort of paints himself as like

• 4:44Ryan Broderick?

  a liberal with a capital L, like I'm all for business kind of thing. And this is what Time Magazine writes about his early political days. "He wielded his social media machine effectively bragging that while his opponents traveled the country, he could campaign from his phone and his media team created viral Twitter challenges and emotive ads." So do you have any kind of memory of like the early internet content that Bouklay was putting up online?

• 5:08Speaker 02

  There was an article in 2012, before the mayors and Congress elections in 2012, of like which candidates were big on Twitter. And there was a chart of, you know, like ranking all the candidates. So there was this guy, the mayor of El Salvador at the time, had like a thousand followers. This is 2012. And Nayib Bouklay was like sixth place and he had 324 followers in 2012.

• 5:31Ryan Broderick?

  That's crazy.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  And he was promising to launch a satellite and promising to attract a billion dollars in investment for this like little town. That was his brand. He started with 300 followers 13 years ago. He was trying to like salute Hugo Chavez and like he even saluted at some point Nicolas Maduro. So he's, he's that kind of guy who's like showing people that he's one, a lefty, two, that he's modern looking, like he's criticizing his party, which was at the time a leftist party for being too orthodox.

• 6:05Ryan Broderick?

  That is so interesting. It is, it is not exactly the same as sort of the American far right, starting with Occupy, but it's not not. It's like, there's, there's clearly this moment in 2012 happening in politics around the world where

• 6:22Ryan Broderick?

  Millennials, I think, are becoming politically conscious and they're saying, "The world is sort of atrophied and like we can shake things up and we can use the internet to do it." Do you have any sense of like when he went viral for the first time? Like, when did he become, when, when did he stop being the guy with 300 followers who was lying? And became like the guy who actually knows how to use the internet? If you think he even does know how to use the internet?

• 6:46Speaker 02

  There's a funny moment in the lead up to the 2015 election for like Mayor of El Salvador, when there's this old guy, old establishment politician, gray looking dude, and he said to Bukele, in Spanish, "Vos estás muy jovencito," you're, you're too young. But the word he used, jovencito, was like a little dismissive.

• 7:04Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, it's like a diminutive of young, right?

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So it was really dismissive, really like-

• 7:10Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that's really bitchy. That's funny.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's, so Nayib Bukele always see, always saw himself, I think, as like, millennials against boomers, you know? Because there's also a problem in El Salvador that we had a civil war, which meant that the elites in the seventies and eighties left the country. And they all grew up in Miami. Which means that there was, there's a big void, so there's nothing in between boomers and millennials. There's no Gen X, there's no like leadership there, there was a big void. So there was a massive jump from like, you know, these gray looking people to Bukele, who dares to show up without a tie. So Nayib Bukele is effectively the first politician in a long time

• 7:54Speaker 02

  who was allowed to criticize the leftist party from within, without being expelled. And that made him, that made him special, sort of. You know, he was, when he was still part of his party, he had a fight with the vice president at the time, the vice president of El Salvador. The vice president replied a tweet saying like, "I don't know, this is inappropriate. We, we can find a better way to discuss this."

• 8:17Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  And Nayib Bukele replied with a, with an image of a Snickers bar. He remember those ads, like, "If you're hungry, grab a Snickers, because if you're hungry, you're a lunatic."

• 8:25Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  So he just replied with a Snickers, and that's it. And that, you know, it's a, like, the brattiest way-

• 8:30Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  -to end an argument. But that, that was him. That was like, he was, he was playful, he was, sort of not taking himself or politics too seriously.

• 8:40Ryan Broderick?

  And that's why he became a sensation with young people. So you That's why young people wanted him. You talked about like how cool quote unquote he is and we have this great New Yorker description of a young Bukele. So this, so in 2015, he is elected the mayor of San Salvador, as you mentioned. He of course hires all his family members to positions of power. Um, yeah. And then this is how the New Yorker described him. Bukele, who wears leather jackets and backward baseball caps and has a beard, has a beard. Invoked, invokes Alexander the Great and Steve Jobs and his brand is meant to be a bit of both. A potentate with an anti-establishment streak. How, how incel is that? I mean, there is this kind of guy though, that he absolutely is.

• 9:25Ryan Broderick?

  And I do love that this kind of guy transcends borders and cultures, that there is just like this absolute piece of shit asshole who like is obsessed with how great he is and he doesn't seem to understand the functional difference between Alexander the Great and Steve Jobs. Cause they're all just inspirational quotes on his Instagram feed. But so this is, this is how the New Yorker describes his governing. Social media, he once said, has shown us what people really are, which is not true. That is just absolutely not true. Before, everybody was pretending. The public heard from him constantly on Twitter and Facebook. As the mayor of San Salvador, he cleaned up the parts of the city's ramshackle downtown, renovated a trio of historic plazas, opened a high-end market.

• 10:08Ryan Broderick?

  In addition to a library equipped with computers and players for children, he unveiled a $24 million public works project called 100% Illuminado to install lamps on every street corner. And then, then the quote he has here, he said this to the Virginia Quarterly Review in 2016. You can call it PR if you want to be a little cynical, but I'm talking about inspiration. I'm talking about something sublime. And it's just like. No, it is, you're doing things that are like very visible, like all of those things are just like, they're very hard to ignore, which I think is his whole deal.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  There are a couple of important things with what the New Yorker said at the time. They say a trio of public squares, it literally is three public squares that are clean and then the rest around is a mess. They are now starting to clean these, the surrounding squares, but it was literally three squares that were extremely gentrified with a Starbucks so people like more privileged, middle-class people could go and take selfies there. So it was that. And then, and then also that high, the, that high-end market they're mentioning. There was a report a couple of weeks ago, you know, there is an outlet in El Salvador called El Faro, and they interviewed a former gang member who was part of the negotiations between the Bukele government and gangs, something that Bukele now denies. And he said that the whole idea behind this market is that

• 11:28Speaker 02

  gang members were offered to operate some of the stalls in that market, so.

• 11:32Ryan Broderick?

  Well, I think that kind of confirms a thought I had had about the thing you said about him having, having about 300 Twitter followers at the beginning, which is, you can have a million followers, but if you have 500 of the richest people following you, that is way more powerful. I've seen this in like, particularly in Latin American countries, like they will have like, the influencer that everyone kind of follows, but nobody really cares about. And then you have the guy with like half the following, who can do like whatever he wants and everything he tweets matters. And it feels very much like that's what Bukele is leaning into in the beginning of his career, which is like doing things for the upper middle class, so that they talk about it, and just assuming that like the influence trickles down.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  And that, that was his thing. In the very beginning, Bukele had a great opportunity to be something different, you know, like and among millennials, some millennials, he was even seen as, you know, an interesting choice. Yes, a little questionable, yes, that kind of guy who wears, I don't know, like leather jackets in a, in a country that's 30 degrees Celsius, whatever that's in Fahrenheit. But uh, yeah, a little questionable, but, but at the same time, like, there's an opportunity here.

• 12:41Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Finally, someone who's not speaking in like cold word terms. And, and he just, he just, you know, rebranded authoritarianism for us. So, so yeah, he wasted that opportunity.

• 12:50Ryan Broderick?

  Well, so we're gonna start talking about his shift, but uh, our producer Grant uh, pointed out a couple of interesting posts in 2017 uh, that seemed to foreshadow like the direction he's going in and I want to share them with you. So first, there's this one from 2017. Can you talk, can you, can you describe to the audience what you're seeing here?

• 13:12Speaker 02

  So it's, it's like an AI-generated picture of Bukele being really like kawaii, really blushy with big like anime eyes. That is.

• 13:22Ryan Broderick?

  And, and what?

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Okay, so this is.

• 13:24Ryan Broderick?

  What does the caption say?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  It's important, what's, it, it says uh, how members of Congress think they look like after being photoshopped. So this is one year before the legislative elections and something that was really funny is that El Salvador was like a, we had like, our Congress was like um, you know, a collection of old politicians. They were all in their sixties, some in their seventies, people who went through the Cold War, people who would recite Bible verses in Congress and, and stuff like that. So for like, they obviously looked really old, but during uh, electoral season, they would all go through like several layers of Photoshop.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  So he was making part of like, th- this became viral in El Salvador, people taking photos of like candidates not looking anything like they are in real life. So that, that was him, that was him trolling them.

• 14:16Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. And yeah, this is one other one, which I think is much more indicative of where he's headed.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  All right. So it says, so it says, "Naibukele in, in uh, 2017, he's a mayor of San Salvador." And the caption says, "Mayor of San Salvador, leader of the six districts, uh, renovator of the historical downtown."

• 14:38Ryan Broderick?

  The three plazas, yep.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, three plazas, exactly. Uh, the maker of "Una hora por día", which was his flagship thing that. They were going to do like one massive public work a day, which only lasted for like 20 days.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, Poppy Rescuere, he bears colorful socks and he is the daddy of all Areneros. Areneros is Arena was a right wing party. So he's a daddy of Arena and protector of people in the Capitol. So yeah, and he's sitting in like sort of a Game of Thrones.

• 15:08Ryan Broderick?

  He's on the Iron Throne, yeah. Wait, so in this caption, there's a reference to something that like I could not figure out in our research. And we, we were trying to figure out this. In a lot of his posts, he talks about like saving dogs. What does that mean?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. That, that means he understands the internet. He understands what people want to see.

• 15:29Ryan Broderick?

  Is he saving dogs?

• 15:31Speaker 02

  He says he's been saving dogs.

• 15:33Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, is there no evidence that he saved any dogs? Cause, okay, wait, just for the listener, for the, for the listener, for the listener. So we, we like went through all, a lot of his stuff, right? And like, there's a drumbeat of like, maybe like once a month, once every couple of months, he will just be like, I've saved a lot of dogs.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  He's tried to launch a few like initiatives to have like, like a veterinary clinic or something. And then when, when he brought Bitcoin to El Salvador and his bro.

• 16:03Ryan Broderick?

  Which we'll get to, we'll get there.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  He started like a pet hospital.

• 16:07Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  That's called Chivo Pet. Chivo's in the, the ATMs.

• 16:12Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, it's like, like it's an ATM brand that he's like Nate?

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Chivo, so the Chivo Wallet was the, like the digital wallet and the Chivo ATMs were all over the country. Nobody used them. They were used to like dry clothes. Uh, there are photos of people literally drying clothes in the ATM.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  And then he called the hospital Chivo Pits. So yeah, and it was supposed to be funded by the earnings of Bitcoin. But obviously Bitcoin has set us back on like 450 million dollars. So.

• 16:41Ryan Broderick?

  I see, I see that. So he's, okay, okay. So he's just like constantly saying like, all of the money that I'm making by like being like, you know, an exploitative capitalist, I'm using to rescue dogs as like an internet thing that like as a PR thing.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Exactly, but but but then you need to understand what like go into go into the political psyche of Latin Americans. We want a good dictator who is bad to those we're bad, but really charming to those we're nice.

• 17:15Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  So like

• 17:16Ryan Broderick?

  That's just a you guys thing. That's not a us thing for eat. Absolutely not an us thing.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  You guys are learning it now.

• 17:22Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  We're teaching you that. Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  But you know, I was I I I've been watching the la- the latest season of You and it's the same thing, you know, like a really violent guy with a romantic side.

• 17:38Ryan Broderick?

  Yep.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  That is that is what Bukele is trying to offer people like

• 17:42Ryan Broderick?

  But I love dogs.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Will be like, oh, my God, he's he's so nice.

• 17:45Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, so we'll we'll get there, but but so these two posts I showed you

• 17:50Ryan Broderick?

  happened right before he's kicked out of his political party.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  And I don't I don't know if he if this appeared in the research, but so he was a mayor of San Salvador and he's running the council sessions. And there is one councilwoman who is defying him and he doesn't tolerate that. And apparently he threw an apple at her and called her a witch and that and that was like the tipping point. That's when they kicked him out.

• 18:14Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, constant inner party criticism and then actually throwing a fruit is the last straw for this party. But like any good dictator in waiting, he just decides to start a new party. That's surprise, surprise, completely centered around him, which is nuevos ideas or new ideas.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:34Ryan Broderick?

  And he becomes a lot more aggressive online.

• 18:41Ryan Broderick?

  One of the uh, one of the issues with starting the new ideas party is a law that prevents donations to candidates that aren't officially recognized parties. So on Twitter, he jokes multiple times about taking donations in Bitcoin instead. And this is in 2017, which I think is really interesting that he's like, he's that early to it. So I'm gonna show you a couple of posts here. So you can kind of explain to our audience what's going on here. So um, so this one is from November 2017.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  I'm gonna need therapy for doing this again. So, this is November 2017 and he's saying, "When they don't know how to stop a movement and they use the entire state machinery to achieve it, to stop it." Like, he's criticizing a government of his own party, but he's saying like, "They're using the entire state to stop us from using Bitcoin."

• 19:34Ryan Broderick?

  Right, okay.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  So, he's, he's starting, and there's, there's a reply there that's really important. There's a Silvio Aquino, he was part of his network of like pseudo-intellectuals. He was sent to, he was sent to Europe to be like a diplomat or something. And he, he replies to Bukele saying, "It is important to know that we are, that they are only, they are only warming up their engines, but they will throw everything they have against us. We will win anyway. Wink."

• 20:06Ryan Broderick?

  And it's so funny that they're, they're talking exactly like the freaks in America. Like, they're just saying this, it's the same, it's the same pattern too of just like, "There are these technologies that allow us to be anti-establishment. They exist. No one knows how to use them. We don't really know how to use them, but we know they exist." And, like, us being annoying and like throwing apples at people and wanting to take like illegal donations is actually an entire conspiracy theory, and it's a conspiracy against us and Bitcoin can help it.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  When you establish a dictatorship, dictatorships, almost by definition, they require some sort of bubble, you know, like, no one, like, they, like, the world is what we tell you what the world is. They are, so if you read Bukele's newspaper now, he, they, they publish a lot of articles about like great things that China is doing.

• 20:56Ryan Broderick?

  Sure.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  And, it's, it's a very like fringy newspaper, talking about like, they never, even now that they're good friends with Trump, they won't publish many things about like flattering things about the US, but they will keep publishing about China. So, it's really interesting, this dichotomy of like, one Bukele that's outward looking and he's like tapping into trends, he knows about Game of Thrones, he knows about like Bitcoin and stuff like that, but at the same time, for his own people, like, this is his public persona, but when he governs, he governs, like, trying to create a bubble.

• 21:27Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  This is not, this is not the world I've been telling you that exists.

• 21:32Ryan Broderick?

  So, here in America, everyone can just log into their Truth Social account to get a sense of what kind of, you know? Filter bubble Trump might be living in. But I assume that the further that bubble expands, the better things get for the citizens living inside of it, right? Like, in fact, we're going to find out exactly what happens when you get subsumed by the president's filter bubble on a national level, right after an ad break from our newest sponsor, Truth Social.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  When you shop Kroger delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger, fresh for everyone.

• 23:02Ryan Broderick?

  Before we cover like how dark things have gotten under Bukele's regime, we have to sort of talk about how stupid they were when it started. And I feel like the moment Bukele gets known internationally is for the Bitcoin stuff, which, you know, happens around COVID. But before that, February 2019, he's elected president of El Salvador, he takes office in June. He announces that he's the world's coolest president. And he immediately gets in a Twitter fight with Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former president of Mexico,

• 23:42Ryan Broderick?

  which honestly, I would do. Like, I'd pick a fight with Ombalo, for sure. Yeah. And that is when American media immediately zeroes in on his Trumpiness. Foreign policy calls him El Salvador's Trump. He's tough on crime, as he says. But he also rules via Twitter. He fires hundreds of government employees, not with an organization called Doge, but it might as well have been called El Doge. And he appoints family members to his cabinet again.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 24:18Ryan Broderick?

  Because-

• 24:18Speaker 02

  But he says they're not, they're not, they don't have a salary, so that's it. I mean, as if that is the main problem. Obviously, that is one problem, but the other problem is you're giving your family members influence over public decisions.

• 24:30Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  And, but yeah, he does that. He starts firing people. He starts announcing things late at night on Twitter.

• 24:37Ryan Broderick?

  Classic, but it's, that's it, right? I mean, he immediately

• 24:45Ryan Broderick?

  kind of seizes on a project from a Christian missionary named Mike Peterson called Bitcoin Beach in El Zante, a small beach town in El Salvador. And the idea is to revitalize the small town with Bitcoin. And it sort of starts as like a UBI, universal basic income concept where everyone's going to get 50 American dollars a week. This money is coming from an anonymous donor, which is still anonymous. I have some suspicions of who it is, but the people that I think it might be are extremely litigious, so let's just say, I wouldn't be surprised if they were South African. I just wouldn't be surprised if they happened to be a South African apartheidist.

• 25:28Ryan Broderick?

  Bouklay eventually takes credit for being the anonymous donor, but once again, I'm pretty sure it's one of the handful of South African apartheidists that now run Silicon Valley. That is my theory.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Does he wear many hats?

• 25:42Ryan Broderick?

  No. I think, I think he's maybe one of the boy blood purveyors, if I had to guess. So, in 2021, Naye Bouklay goes to Bitcoin Miami, where I was also there with my dad, and he announces there that Bitcoin is going to become legal tender in El Salvador, and then he posts the famous laser eyes picture to mark that decision. The law passes, the country puts 150 million into Bitcoin, and the law goes into effect in September, and seems like, great, right? Everyone's, everything went fine?

• 26:24Speaker 02

  There was a massive protest the day the law came into effect.

• 26:27Ryan Broderick?

  I think every American listener is now primed to understand how a dictator, you know, screwing with the basis of an economy could, you know, wreck everything while also it's still sort of runs. So now there's people turning against Bukele, but I'm guessing he handles this in a very chill way and doesn't do anything, you know, wildly unhinged or illegal or anything, right?

• 26:47Speaker 02

  You know, sort of in like Scooby Doo terms, who he really was. He pulled his mask out. Again, remember I've said that there are two people within him. There's the sophisticated and worldly guy, and there's the authoritarian guy. So 2019, you sort of see moments of this authoritarian guy, but he's still trying to show us that he's this, this like cool precedent, that he's a millennial, that wherever he goes, whoever he meets, he's not going to wear a tie.

• 27:14Ryan Broderick?

  He's Obama. He's Salvadoran Obama. Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  He's, he's trying to show us that. But then there's this thing in 2020, early 2020, he's trying to get a loan approved for his security program. He desperately wanted a loan, but he also wanted to portray, another thing to consider is El Salvador doesn't have synchronized elections. So we elect presidents every five years, but we elect Congress every three years, which means that a president will govern with different legislatures. And not just like midterms like you have in the states, but we have like, depending on when you win, you may govern with two or three different legislatures.

• 27:54Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  So when Bukele got to the presidency, Congress was still in hands of the opposition. So the first two years of his presidency were a little difficult because he had to negotiate with people he hated, people he despised and people he was constantly attacking. So February 2020, he's trying to get a loan approved and Congress is saying, well, we can approve it only if you come and explain where you're going to like take this money to, what you're going to do with this money. And Bukele is getting desperate. He doesn't like that. He doesn't like those terms. So he brings the military into Congress.

• 28:28Ryan Broderick?

  This is during what they call his auto coup.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So it's February 9th, 2020. Nayib Bukele brings the military into Congress. Suddenly Nayib Bukele is doing something that many people must have dreamed of, but never did, which is use the police and the military as a political tool.

• 28:49Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  And so-

• 28:51Ryan Broderick?

  I can't even imagine what that would be like. I have no ability to imagine what that would be like.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  I think if that happened here, we would all, like, everything would shut down. Like, we would have reacted really appropriately if that happened.

• 29:04Ryan Broderick?

  I think Americans would be super freaked out if, like, there was some sort of secret police roaming the streets. I think they'd be, Americans would be really upset about it, yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  It's a bit like, like, January 6th, just led by the, wait, that's actually what happened, right? It was, it was inspired by the president. He wasn't personally there. He tried.

• 29:21Ryan Broderick?

  Are you, is your military made up of, like, chiropractors and landlords as well? Like, is that your thing, or?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  The guy with the horns and the-

• 29:28Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, like, ski instructors that flew in with-

• 29:30Speaker 02

  They were a little more disciplined with their uniforms that day.

• 29:32Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. But, um, so anyway, yeah, he, he did that. He started threatening Congress for a week. And then he said, "If you don't meet on Sunday, we are going to force you to meet and approve this, this, uh, loan." So obviously, people in Congress said, "We're not meeting. We're not showing up to Congress to approve it." But Bukele brought the military anyway. And so they stormed Congress. They, they forced the doors open. Bukele sits on the Speaker, Speaker of the House's chair, so to say, which is something symbolic, but at the same time, it's a ma- major transgression, you know, to our Constitution, to our, to our, uh, separation of, of powers. He sits on that chair,

• 30:16Speaker 02

  and then, for some strange reason, he starts praying.

• 30:20Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, this guy's such a psycho.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  And then, he starts praying, and then he just says, "Now it's obvious who had, who's in control. If we wanted to push the button, we would have pushed the button. But God asked me for patience."

• 30:36Ryan Broderick?

  That's so-

• 30:37Speaker 02

  That's literally what he says. There's, there's a stage right outside Congress. They, they brought people in buses from all over the country to support him and support his rally, his, his self-coup rally. And people were upset when he said, "God wanted me to have patience." People were like, "No!"

• 30:53Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Like, throw them out now. But, like, people are demanding a self-coup. He doesn't do it. And then covid comes. So you know, there's like this whole cloud dissipates.

• 31:03Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, so that it kind of like freezes the standoff a bit.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:07Ryan Broderick?

  Right? It lets him experiment with putting people into camps and detention during the next congressional election cycle, his party wins big and he becomes fully in control of the government. So, so, so what does he do with all that power?

• 31:19Speaker 02

  In 2021, there is a legislative election. Remember, there's not a synchronized calendar.

• 31:24Ryan Broderick?

  You have another round of it. Yep.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  And Bukele wins a super majority.

• 31:28Ryan Broderick?

  So the autocue doesn't even need to happen now. He's, he's now in control. Okay.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  He's now in control. So on May 1st, it's the first day of the new people in Congress and on the first day, they do a coup. They carry out a coup.

• 31:41Ryan Broderick?

  Just do it. Yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Against the Supreme Court. So imagine like Trump and Republicans in Congress suddenly removing by force all four justices that are not with them. Is it four or three? I didn't, the, the liberal justices, but imagine that.

• 31:57Ryan Broderick?

  But yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  It doesn't matter. But imagine, imagine them like, like taking out all of Supreme Court justices and putting their own people there.

• 32:06Ryan Broderick?

  I couldn't imagine that. I could never imagine that in a million years, but that sounds scary.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:10Ryan Broderick?

  He brought the military into Congress. He gets rid of oppositional Supreme Court justices. He's doing all this for a lot of reasons, but the big one is his fantasy to have El Salvador run on crypto and have all the crypto bros around the world flock to the country and live up their techno libertarian dreams. Here's the punchline though to all of this. This is all happening across like 2021 into 2022. As he's doing this.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:34Ryan Broderick?

  He's like working towards his dream of Bitcoin, like powering El Salvador. And by the time he is finally like consolidated power, and as you said, he's sort of like completed his autocue. We hit the Bitcoin winter.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 32:50Ryan Broderick?

  And the entire thing goes down. And I wanna, I wanna sort of run through this really quickly, because I think this is a really important piece of this. So, the Bitcoin Beach experiment, obviously, it's a massive failure. 60% of the, of people who were polled said they only ever used the wallet that they, the Chivo wallet, and the Chivo ATMs, because they were giving them free money. It was hacked multiple times, obviously. And Buchele then says he's gonna buy the dip. This is like, early 2022. He decides that he wants to start a Bitcoin City, which is a tax haven, which is obviously gonna be at the base of an active volcano, because that's what you would do if you're a really cool guy, is you start a Bitcoin

• 33:33Ryan Broderick?

  City inside of a volcano. And this is how he pitches it to Silicon Valley. "The Oceanside Bitcoin City will get its revenue from a value-added tax, and the city will have no income, property, or capital gains taxes. Invest here and earn all the money you want." If, all he really needed to add there was tariffs, and you would basically have like, a almost identical economic policy to the one that is destroying America right now. And if you're curious, dear listener of like, what this amounted to, it amounted to a lot of destroyed forest land and people's homes, which were demolished for a city that still does not really exist.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a frisbee. Like, there was a, there was a photo of Buchele presenting it with an architect, and it's literally a golden frisbee with like, some, some like, mounds and stuff. So, people were making fun of him for, for presenting literally like, a golden tortilla, as his proposed city. But like, yeah, it's, that, that was Bitcoin City.

• 34:32Ryan Broderick?

  That is a crazy, crazy thing. Bitcoin fluctuates essentially, now it's almost like one-to-one with like, the S and P 500 or something, but it is constantly going up and down. It is, it is useless as legal tender, because its value is constantly changing.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's that's what we were trying to explain at the time. I was working for a newspaper and we were trying to say to people, okay, there's at least three things that you require in money. One, that's universally accepted. Two, that it can be divisible, so you cannot use a cow because you cannot split a cow by half. And three, that is that you can predict it.

• 35:05Ryan Broderick?

  Right. Have you ever tried to buy anything with with a crypto coin before?

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Uh, yes, I tried and it was not possible. I tried it at McDonald's once and I had a colleague who went to government offices to try to try to pay um her water bill and her electric bill with Bitcoin. In El Salvador and she's she was told that they never even brought the machines.

• 35:25Ryan Broderick?

  That's so funny.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  To for them to like, so yeah, they it wasn't possible. It was, uh, I think I tried her supermarket once and they say they they they didn't know how to use it. So this is all like, you're going to accept it tomorrow. They didn't tell people how to do it. Uh, they did not explain how it worked. I remember, uh, at the time I was at working at the newspapers and one of the one of the people in the cleaning staff came up to me and said that she was really worried because she wanted her salary in dollars. And that she was afraid that the president was going to make everyone receive her salary in in Bitcoin.

• 35:58Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, so just a hugely arrogant misstep. And now he needs something to reassert control. Do you feel like his blunder with Bitcoin leads him to pivot really hard into the state of emergency and start dealing with the gangs? Do you do you feel like those things are connected?

• 36:14Speaker 02

  I think, I mean, the the the the beginning of the state of emergency stems from breaking the pact with gangs. But it's not it's not a separate thing. In on September 15th, 2021. All right. So this is another important thing to consider. El Salvador celebrated its bicentennial, like of the independence declaration in 2021. And I think Bakula was planning something massive for that day. You know, the the the city hall in El Salvador and the the main square, one of the three that he that he renovated. And that day, it was Independence Day, 15th of September. There was a massive protest and the things people were protesting against were Bitcoin,

• 36:56Speaker 02

  human rights violations, and uh, the removal of Supreme Court justices.

• 37:01Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Almost 40,000 people marched the streets.

• 37:04Ryan Broderick?

  Wow.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  That day.

• 37:05Ryan Broderick?

  This is hugely embarrassing for the PR president, I imagine, as well.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  To the point that he had to cancel every public event.

• 37:13Ryan Broderick?

  Rips. That's so sick. That rips.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Get fucked. His bicentennial celebration ended up being him inviting all of the diplomats in El Salvador to the presidential palace, and he started scolding them. For the first time, he looked weak. This is only a week after Bitcoin is in full effect as legal tender in El Salvador.

• 37:39Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, so this is like chaos for him.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  It's chaos for him. He lost it. There's um, there's this colleague of mine in El Salvador, Carlos Martinez, who once said to me, "Bukele flees forward." You know, like when you flee a situation, you go, you go, you go where you were coming from. He flees forward. And that, that, I think, is a good way of explaining how Bukele solves his problems. He's like, "Let's go to the next thing, then."

• 38:03Ryan Broderick?

  And in this case, that fleeing is cracking down on gangs, which really means cracking down on everyone's basic rights.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:11Ryan Broderick?

  But this is also the moment around 2023, when he opens a massive prison called the Centro del Confinamiento de Terrorismo, or C-COT. And this is part of a policy that he calls Manodora, iron fist.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:28Ryan Broderick?

  And this is how, this is how Time Magazine, this is how the New York Times describes it. "Bukele's policy of Manodora, iron fist, drove an aggressive crackdown on vicious gangs that has jailed 81,000 people and led to a precipitous drop in homicides. After decades of violence, fear, and extortion, citizens can move freely in former gang-controlled red zones, lounge in parks, go to those three plazas that he renovated." And that's my addition there. "And go out at night." And right after the break, we're going to talk about what happens when you build a gigantic prison and you start throwing lots and lots of people in there, which is the Trump administration comes calling.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed Sponsored Jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  When you shop Kroger Delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger. Fresh for everyone.

• 40:15Ryan Broderick?

  A lot of what we've been covering has been how Boukela has kind of followed and updated the playbook of how to install a dictatorship. Take advantage of a new technology, install a government that operates on loyalty, not ideology, care more about image than reality. But now, let's talk about his dark new twist. Instead of hiding his crimes against humanity, he turned them into propaganda, which I do think is extremely novel.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Way before Saqqat started as a prison, way before it even began building it, he published pictures that were taken by a lot of outlets in the world of like hundreds of prisoners semi-naked, all really tight with each other. And that was his way of showing people like, I'm tough on crime, I'm tough on gangs. And remember, El Salvador has been deeply scarred by gangs. He's speaking to the emotions of an entire country that hates gangs and wouldn't be bothered if tomorrow one prison mysteriously set on fire and people die. Like, people want revenge. And Boukela understands this. The problem is, Boukela

• 41:22Speaker 02

  negotiated with gangs for the first time of his, for the first part of his government. The first half, up until March 2022, there were open negotiations with gangs that involved reducing homicide rates in exchange for financial benefits for gangs, in exchange for businesses for them to run. These deals continued until March 2022, when the government failed to comply with some of those conditions. And then the gangs launched the bloodiest massacre. One of the gangs launched a bloodiest massacre. that we've seen since the end of the civil war. So eighty seven people were murdered, and this is not gang members. It's what we call civilians.

• 41:57Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Regular people were killed, eighty seven of them, sixty two people in one day. This is a tiny country. There's six million people in El Salvador and it just you had sixty two people murdered on one day. Horrible day. And then they called Congress, they called a Congress session. And they declared a state of exception, state of emergency, which is effectively the state of emergency means that Salvadorans are forfeiting three basic fundamental rights. You lose your right to privacy. You lose the right to be informed of what like the charges when they arrest you.

• 42:33Ryan Broderick?

  Oh.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  And you are not entitled to have a lawyer with you immediately.

• 42:38Ryan Broderick?

  Those, that's bad. Those are all bad.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  And they increase the period in which you can be arrested before they present you in front of a judge. Then, you know, we start seeing pictures of like five hundred people arrested in one community and massive raids and sweeping up entire neighborhoods. Nothing in middle class areas, nothing.

• 42:58Ryan Broderick?

  Straight up Starship Trooper shit. This is like, this is like, I'm doing my part and they're just like in detaining. I mean, are these, I imagine these are just like random people getting swept up in this stuff.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah. So there are estimates that up to thirty thousand could be innocent. So like forty percent of the people Bukele has arrested in the last three years under state of exception have nothing to do with gangs. Over ninety percent of people have been accused of illicit associations.

• 43:30Ryan Broderick?

  Just knowing, knowing people.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  It's not murder, it's not rape, it's not extortion. It's just people who are accused of being part of an association that's illicit.

• 43:39Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  They have taken environmental activists. They have taken people from the opposition. They have taken a lot of people that have nothing to do with gangs and had zero affiliation. And now you see an image that you saw in the civil war. So in the civil war, something that was very typical is seeing mothers outside the Human Rights Commission at five AM waiting to be the first ones in to find out where their children are. If they are still alive, if they are being held in a prison, if they are, whatever they are. This is happening again.

• 44:09Ryan Broderick?

  So the gangs are sort of like. I mean, obviously, like, some are clearly getting swept up and thrown in C-Cup, but there is some sort of collaboration with who is being swept up.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Well, that's what we think. Like, we haven't seen prominent gang leaders. We have seen young people, we have seen people who work in the fields, we have seen a lot of workers being arrested. We have seen people, if you're unlucky enough to have tattoos and have dark skin and live in a poor community, you are under risk of being arrested. So that is what we're seeing in El Salvador at the moment.

• 44:44Ryan Broderick?

  Well, that's a perfect transition to what we're seeing now in America. When the reality of governing is more complicated than making promises, these guys will always turn to demonstrations of force and the effectiveness doesn't matter because appearing strong is the whole point. And now Trump and Bukele are closely connected, something Bukele has wanted for a really long time. When COVID happened, Bukele was taking hydroxychloroquine to please, he's on the horse paste. But now in Trump 2.0, with only sycophants around both of them, their fascist bromance could really get started, you know? Obviously, the Trump administration loves demonizing poor people and brown people and gay people and queer people

• 45:28Ryan Broderick?

  and enemies of the state that they come up with. And they saw a great opportunity with Naib Bukele and his network of gulags. You talked about the image of sort of the mothers trying to go to the station to figure out like where their children are, where their sons are, and that is now something that is happening here. Where people are being detained and disappearing into a system, and many of them are innocent, or at least not guilty of any kind of crime that would warrant being sent to a foreign country's prison. But just for people who may have been sort of...

• 46:04Ryan Broderick?

  Swarmed by the news of all this in the last few months, here's the timeline here. February, Bukele meets with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and they sign the agreement to put American prisoners in CECOT and they pay El Salvador $6 million for the privilege. Rubio tells reporters at the time, "In an act of extraordinary friendship to our country, El Salvador has agreed to the most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world." Then he says, "Bukele has offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals in custody in our country, including those of U.S. citizenship and legal residence," which is one of the most horrifying statements that any American politician has ever said out loud, I think.

• 46:46Ryan Broderick?

  In March 2025, a month later, the U.S. deports 200 people to CECOT without trial, saying they're gang members. They're using our own version of sort of a state of emergency. We're not quite there yet, but they did find... Do you know about this? Do you know about how old the laws they're using?

• 47:02Speaker 02

  1798, right?

• 47:03Ryan Broderick?

  The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify it. Judges are trying to stop it. They're not listening to the judges. And like you said, if you now are brown, if you have tattoos, if you live in low-income areas in America, you are at risk here. The person who's probably gotten the most attention from all of this is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is detained on March 12th due to an administrative error. The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court order to return him. He is still not returned. And then, do you know about the margarita thing?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. He met Chris Van Hollen, right? The Maryland senator. This is a typical Bukele stunt, you know? Typical Bukele gimmick.

• 47:51Ryan Broderick?

  Talk us through the margarita thing, because I think this is a very important sort of portrait of Bukele's psychology.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Picture's taken at a hotel, the poolside area in a hotel, was probably staying there. And they brought Kilmar Abrego there to finally meet the senator of the state he was living in Maryland, sort of having a really serious conversation. Apparently, he said that he's heavily traumatized by the time he spent in CECOT. At some point in the middle of the Meeting, there's a waiter that comes with a few glasses that are like, they have like, you know, salt on the rim. Then they take pictures, people from the government take pictures and they post it and Bukele says, "Well, here's a senator and the gang leader having," because obviously he's a terrorist in the eyes of, of the propagandists and everything. And they're saying, "Well, they're having margaritas poolside in a hotel."

• 48:33Ryan Broderick?

  Son of a goddamn bitch.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  That's a thing. Like when you're, when you, when you, when you're not, when your intentions are not bad, you don't think of all of these optics. But the Bukele government is always trying to see how to shift the optics. And that's, that's the thing. Like if you're, they are more invested in the communications than all the, the rest of the people are. So that's why they're good at these things.

• 48:55Ryan Broderick?

  I, I wanna, I wanna read one final quote from Bukele about this before I sort of get your final thoughts here. And by final, I mean like, the story is still going, but uh, you know, so Bukele was asked about, you know, what to do with uh, Abrego Garcia. And he told NBC, "How can I return him to the United States? Like if I smuggle him into the United States?" And he's saying this in the Oval Office next to Trump, by the way. Who is just like, I don't know, sitting there, kind of like, he does that little waddle thing, you know, like, you know, um, "Of course I'm not gonna do it. The question is preposterous."

• 49:33Ryan Broderick?

  And then he asked if he would release Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. And he said, "We're not very fond of releasing terrorists." The question I want to sort of end on here is like, is this the future? Like, like, is it like, because to me, I, I, I look at this stuff and I, and I, and I listen to you sort of talk about his rise in El Salvador and it's so one-to-one. Not so much with Trump 1.0, but Trump 2.0, it feels so linked to me. And I am.

• 50:09Ryan Broderick?

  I think you've done to me what I typically do to our guests on this show because now I'm completely totally freaked out and feel insane. So if you want to talk me off the ledge, that's totally fine. If you want to talk me off the ledge, that's also fine. But what do you like? Is this the future of of democracy in this part of the world? Like, is this where we're? Is this it? Like, I don't know. I don't know what to make of this.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  I think it is. I think that it's weaponizing frustration. I think it's it's weaponizing frustration.

• 50:40Ryan Broderick?

  There was no hesitation was the worst part. No, he didn't even. Yeah, guys, listeners, when you hear that, there will be no edit. That is an immediate. Yes.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're weaponizing the frustration of people. They are. They understand that you need to paint an enemy. They need to create a perfect enemy at all times, someone who is perfectly evil and has no good side to it. And that's terrorists, you know, and that's why like gangs have been. I feel like COVID and gang violence have been like gifts that Bukele has received because because these are problems that have very little nuance. People are always ready to combat an evil virus or, you know, terrorism. And it's very easy to say at any given point that if you have questions against the war on terrorism,

• 51:34Speaker 02

  you're enabling or you're protecting or you're defending terrorists. The vice president of El Salvador said in the beginning of the state of exception, when people started questioning the arbitrary arrests, he said that in times of war, any sort of questioning is treason. And and that is that is what you're doing. They are creating overly simplified scenarios. Bukele and Trump, they they present themselves as like the the people who are vindicating, you know, people a nation that has been heavily attacked, heavily, you know, disrespected. So if you criticize them, you're not criticizing Trump or Bukele, you're criticizing the idea of a prosperous America or of a prosperous El Salvador. But the way I see

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Kelly, I don't know if you remember that cartoon Freakazoid, but Freakazoid in the 90s was the guy that consumed all of the internet.

• 52:26Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  And you know, the internet in the 90s was very benign. So what it, what he, what happens when you consume all of the internet? Well, you become Freakazoid in the 90s, you know, this weird character who believes he's fighting crime, but he's just so strange. What happens when you consume all of the internet? All of its trends and all of its dark sides in a more dangerous era? Nay, Bukel.

• 52:50Ryan Broderick?

  Are you personally afraid to go back to El Salvador? Does it concern you?

• 52:54Speaker 02

  I, I, I am, I'm not planning to go back. No, no, I've, I've, I've told my family like they, they, they come a couple of times, but I'm, I'm not going back. Because at the same time, the, the nature of this is very unexpected and erratic. You don't know if there, we used to think that there were some outlets and some targets too big to fail. But they've gone, Bukel went after one of his top advisors and tortured him and have, and had him die in prison. So there's, there's no too big to fail here. And I, I don't want, and, and, and I'm also not too big in El Salvador. I could easily be like, or anyone could easily be arrested and, and thrown into a prison, see them die there. And no one would do, no one would, you know, do much about it. So.

• 53:37Ryan Broderick?

  Well, dear listener, I want you to take everything you've heard today. Imagine that you are Ricardo 10 years from now, and every time he said El Salvador, he was saying the United States of America. And then I want you to think about that. Because I do think our two countries are now linked in what I think is one of the, the greatest shames in, in Amer- in human history. CICOT is a nightmare. CICOT is a, is a genuine nightmare and our countries are now linked in that shame. And I want to thank you for coming on and talking about this and like being willing to sort of.

• 54:16Ryan Broderick?

  Not humanize Bucolé, but sort of help us understand where he comes from and what this means and why we have found our two countries connected like this, because there will be history books, they won't be published in El Salvador or America, but they'll be published elsewhere and they'll be pretty goddamn damning. So, yeah, once again, thank you, thank you for coming on. If people want to follow you online, where can they do that?

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Well, thanks for having me. Just one more thing. Everyone's talking about Ciclot and how horrible it is, and it is horrible.

• 54:44Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, no, is there a worse thing?

• 54:45Speaker 02

  It is not the worst.

• 54:47Ryan Broderick?

  Goddamn it, what are you talking about?

• 54:48Speaker 02

  I, I would dare say it's probably one of the best prisons in El Salvador.

• 54:55Ryan Broderick?

  What are you talking about?

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're seeing, it's the vanilla. It's a, yeah, it's a vanilla of prisons. Sorry about that, guys.

• 55:03Ryan Broderick?

  Um, but yeah, so if people want to follow you, where can they follow you?

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Uh, so they can follow me on, uh, mainly on Twitter is where I post most things. Uh, it's DOC A V E L A R. So Doc, because I'm a fake Doc, uh, Velar, my last name. So DOC A V E L A R.

• 55:21Ryan Broderick?

  Thank you again. This was, this was as delightful a conversation as something like this could be about what we talked about.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Like a shooting in an elevator. Thanks, guys.

• 55:30Ryan Broderick?

  Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at garbage day dot email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our Durange logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com/panicworld. Please give us products to sell by contacting multitude at multitude dot production slash ads. For any other way you would like to give us money or work with us or promote us or become financially entangled with us, you can reach out to our fixer, our wonderful bag man, Josh Fielstad, and you can reach him at [email protected]. And one piece

• 56:14Ryan Broderick?

  of advice from me to you, chill out, touch grass while you still can.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger: Fresh for Everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.