El Salvador - Beans and Cheese in Corn, a Dictator Imprisons Many, but the people approve.

The cliffs on my left are in line with where we are in the water, with the shore still in sight in the distance. Joe's on a long board, and I'm on a medium one. "Okay let's paddle harder," I started thinking to myself. After paddling for a few more minutes, I look to my left. Those cliffs are still in the same spot.

The rip currents at Playa Las Flores were not only strong, but they were pulling into the rocks. Eventually I found the sand bottom of water with my desperate, outstretched toes. Boy, was I happy then.

Throughout our trip, we jetted around in a small rental car, nearly getting around the entirety of El Salvador's humble perimeter. My memories of it consist of mashing Pupusas in the morning, and mashing Pupusas late at night. Sniffing cups of coffee whether they were lined up for tasting at a bean plantation or out of plastic bags holding the boiling liquid inside on the streets. We swung back and forth on hammocks with the salty breeze wafting over us. We climbed up running waterfalls with a dog running by our side. We played billiards in old school boxing halls, with others onlooking as Joe shoots for the 8 ball with cigarette smoke and cat hair floating in the background.

Joe and I went on this trip on a whim, agreeing that he could take some time to come down to Central or South America while I was on my way back up North. How we decided on El Salvador seems to come from somewhere that we both had heard bits and pieces about El Salvador, its notorious reputation alongside its religious history, and found it intriguing.

Leading up to the trip, several people warned me about making it out there and safety issues. When we got there, however, it was a completely different feeling than I expected. Whether we talked to tourists form Guatemala, families from known crime areas, or Salvadorans who lived in America for a period and returned home, the sentiment was the same, "It's safe now." They all chalked it up to one person. Nayib Bukele.

At the height of power, the major Salvadoran gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, were estimated to be extorting 70% of all the businesses in El Salvador. In 2015, El Salvador had reached 103 homicides per 100,000 people, the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Surprising to many, MS-13 or Mara Salvatrucha originated in Los Angeles during the 1970s, spreading back to El Salvador following deportations from the United States. It is argued that before the deportations, there was no significant gang activity in El Salvador.

Having entered the presidency without being a candidate of one of the two major political parties in mid 2019, Nayib Bukele is known to be tough on crime and on gangs. As of writing, over 68 thousand people have been arrested over the last 13 months. That's over 1% of the population in a country with 6.3 million people. On his twitter page, one can see gang members being whipped in mega prisons the size of several football fields to contain all of the newly incarcerated. 68% of respondents support Bukele's re-election. If there were concerns abroad about the treatment of gang members, whether about the process of putting them away, or the treatment of them inside the prisons, it was not a sympathy shared by those who we encountered on the trip.

The country and the prisoner's fates are difficult to predict. I hope the best for the women slapping Pupusas back and forth in front of steaming hot grills, for the father shouting encouragement at his son as he shreds across the falling waves at sunset, for the family sharing an ice cream sundae at a highway pull out stop, and for the men and women sleeping in the gutters of San Salvador.