El Salvador’s President Bukele is cracking down on gangs

IThere is something grotesque about their tattooed faces. Their bare torsos are covered with pictures and inscriptions. Their hands and feet are handcuffed and chained. Their shaved heads touch the backs of the man in front, they are crammed so tightly together. Armed guards guard the prisoners. They will then be loaded onto buses, heads bowed, and transported in a helicopter-escorted convoy to the new “Centre for Containment of Terrorism,” where they will move into cramped communal cells where they will sleep on metal bunks without mattresses.

These scenes took place in El Salvador and were recorded during the transfer of the first 2,000 detainees at the end of February. Since then, Nayib Bukele, the 41-year-old president of the Central American country, has been feeding his digital networks with videos of the prisoner transfers.