Relatives of detainees during a state of emergency in El Salvador wait for their release

A group of women with a month-old baby improvise a space with plastic to cover themselves from the sun, from the rain, rest and sleep on the sidewalk, in front of a prison in The Savior. They, like hundreds of people, are waiting for their relatives, arrested under the emergency regime decreed since March 27, to be released.

On the outskirts of the Esperanza Penal Center, near San Salvador and known as Marina, there is vehicular chaos and many people with an uncertain face. The same situation is experienced in the Preventive and Sentence Compliance Center for Women, located in the populous city of Ilopango, and in the Izalco Penal Center (west).

To these three prisons, according to information from local media, people arrested for allegedly belonging to a gang or having some kind of link with said gangs have been taken, to whom the Government attributes the majority of homicides that are registered in the country. Central American and have more than 70,000 members.

From the La Esperanza prison, in which only men are imprisoned, some detainees are released sporadically, so people wait to see if their relative is among them.

El Salvador has been under an emergency regime since March 27 and its term was extended until the end of May, but the Legislative Assembly, at the request of President Nayib Bukele, is expected to extend it once again this week.

The number of people arrested between March 27 and May 23 amounts to 34,216, according to data from the National Civil Police (PNC).

The costs of detention

A woman, whose 23-year-old son is in the La Esperanza prison, told Efe that she invested approximately 40 dollars in the so-called prison package, which represents a mismatch in her family economy.

The Salvadoran woman traveled more than 73 kilometers from the western department of Sonsonate to said prison to leave her son with cleaning supplies, food and medicine.

She assured that her son “has nothing to do with gangs” and that she trusts God that “he will soon be free.”

The authorities of the penal center ask the relatives of the detainees for specific articles.

At the prison entrance there is a notice posted where you can read the required items: toothpaste, bathroom soap, toilet paper, detergent, toothbrush, razors, masks, cereal flakes, oatmeal, powdered milk, sugar, among others. .

In addition, family members are asked to buy a shirt, shorts, socks, towels and a sheet, all white.

“Note: at the discretion of the economic situation of each family, it is not an obligation to bring all the items,” it is indicated at the bottom of the notice.

On average, each person invests between 10 and 15 dollars in the required garments, to which is added what is invested in food and medicine.

In El Salvador for some years now, prisoners -men and women- have been wearing a T-shirt, shorts and white socks as a uniform, which must be bought by their relatives.

Before delivering the package, people make a long line – in which they can wait hours to advance – so they can go to a place set up to give information about the inmates.

There a person provides the cell number, pavilion letter and a code to each family member.

The situation has a woman’s face

There are hundreds of women who remain outside some prisons in the Central American country awaiting the release of a relative.

Mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, life partners or guardians have spent days or weeks on the street in front of the La Esperanza prison.

On stage you can also see young mothers carrying months-old babies, and others changing their children’s diapers or feeding them.

“If they take them out (the detainees) and there is no family member to answer for them, they put them back (in jail),” commented an adult woman who was accompanied by two minors.

To while away the time, some women read the Bible or the New Testament, while among the sea of ​​people one hears “first God is going to get him out”, “we must ask God that this situation ends” or “we must have hope in God”.

The exceptional regime, implemented after an escalation of murders at the end of March and with which it seeks to curb the violence generated by the gangs, suspends -among other things- the right to defense and administrative detention goes from a maximum term of 3 days to 15 days.

In other words, detained persons spend up to 15 days in detention, then face an initial hearing in which, in most cases, they are accompanied by a public attorney assigned by the Attorney General’s Office.

In the judicial hearings, numerous groups of detainees are presented and provisional detention is generally decreed so that the Prosecutor’s Office continues investigating and those captured must wait for the next hearing in a prison cell.

Chaos in the zones

La Esperanza Prison and Women’s Prison are located in areas with high vehicular flow. At times when the agglomeration of people increases, the traffic becomes heavy and queues of vehicles are generated.

The vacant lots near these places have become places where people throw garbage and, due to the lack of toilets, they are also used as bathrooms.

Locals who live near La Esperanza rent their toilets or showers to people who can pay up to two dollars to shower and others have taken advantage of the situation to sell food or drinks. (YO)