Within the first two months of the state of emergency in El Salvador imposed by President Nayib Bukele back in 2022, two of Gladis Álvarez’s sons were arrested and accused of being gang associates. Since then, the 53-year-old woman’s life has fallen apart. “There were eight of us in my family. Now, I’m the only one left,” Álvarez laments. “Since my sons were arrested, our lives have been destroyed in a terrible way,” she adds.
There’s a fair bit of vitriol in here for the more “deserving” prisoners, and I kinda get it but it reminds me of a quote I’m going to have to paraphrase. “You don’t judge a society by how it treats the best among them. You judge it by how it treats the least among them.” Who we are isn’t how we act in front of rich and/or powerful people. It’s how we act when we are the ones with wealth and/or power. While I fully understand and support condemning atrocious acts, the vitriol and the support of misery says more about us on the outside than it does them on the inside.
And then there’s all the people who don’t even have good evidence to support their arrest.