Bukele Justifies Layoffs by Vilifying LGBTQI+ Population
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HAVANA TIMES – The historically marginalized LGBTQI+ population in El Salvador now risks further violations of their rights, due to the declarations and actions of President Nayib Bukele. Bukele’s words have been viewed as part of the hate speech commonly used against this community.
His hate slurs also seek to justify the firing of State employees by linking them to “an agenda that is incompatible with the government vision. Although he didn’t specify this vision, he indirectly linked it to the LGBTQI+ movement, according to activists from those organizations.
“While hate has always been tangible in the country, today the hate talk coming from the government worsens the situation,” Rigoberto Perez, a young gay activist, told the IPS news service. Perez, 25, is a native of Zaragoza in the southern Salvadoran department of La Libertad.
His remarks referred to certain statements by the Salvadoran leader which appeared to be an indirect attack on the LGBTQI+ population, although the leader had the discretion to avoid naming them directly.
On June 28, Bukele posted on his social media a justification for firing 300 workers for the Ministry of Culture. According to his words, it was because they promote actions incompatible with the government’s vision. The context of his words linked them to a Drag theater production called “Immoral.”
The 300 dismissed employees represent 27% of the Ministry of Culture’s payroll; another 200 had been fired in March, spokespersons for the union movement stated. The workers will receive severance pay based on the years worked, with a ceiling of US $20,000.
The show “Immoral” was presented on June 15 in San Salvador’s National Theater, which is administered by the Ministry of Culture. A second presentation scheduled for the following day was cancelled by the Ministry authorities, alleging that the content presented “wasn’t appropriate for Salvadoran families.”
The play was a production of the “Inari Queer Project” Collective, and portrayed the violence and rejection from families and government agencies suffered by those in the gay community. It was a drag presentation, where the male performers wore women’s clothes and make-up.
The performance brought angry reactions on the social networks of conservative groups, and among Bukele’s followers, demanding the show be cancelled.
“It’s important that we express ourselves now, during the Pride Parade, because even though the President didn’t mention us directly, people undoubtedly grasped the meaning of his hate speech. That has negative repercussions for us in the LGBTQI+ population,” noted Perez, all the while fending off the rain with a rainbow-colored umbrella.
The activist was participating in the Pride March held in San Salvador on the weekend of June 29, so as to attract more people. The actual International Day of LGBTQI+ Pride is June 28.
Bukele’s message had included the words: “The people chose a path, and that’s the path we’ll take. Bitter-tasting medicine.”
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Layoffs with a moralistic smell
The allusion to bitter-tasting medicine came during the June 1st inauguration speech of El Salvador’s populist and authoritarian leader, as he began his second five-year term as president. The new mandate came amid strong controversy, because Bukele ran for a second consecutive term even though there are articles in the country’s constitution forbidding it. His first term, begun in June 2019, was set to expire in May 2024.
Nonetheless, Bukele won a decisive victory in the February 2024 presidential elections, with 85% of the valid vote. At his inauguration on June 1st, the 42-year-old Bukele emphasized his government’s principal achievement: dismantling the feared Mara gangs that had seeded terror and death in the country since the beginning of the 90s. Although El Salvador is Central America’s smallest country in terms of land area, it has a population of some 6.7 million.
Bukele’s anti-gang strategy has earned him undeniable mass popular support. However, it’s also brought strong criticism of the human rights violations associated with his crackdown.
During his second period in office, the president stated that he aimed at improving the economy of the country and its families. To do so, he warned, he was going to have to apply some unspecified “bitter-tasting medicine.” In light of the current sacking of workers in the Ministry of Culture, it could well involve massive layoffs, among other economic measures that would hit the population hard.
“I believe that the economic blows are now beginning, and he wants to disguise reality [by invoking the LGBTQI+ theme]. As a movement, we’ve never had that many allies in the Ministry of Culture, for them to kick out such a large bunch of people,” affirmed William Hernandez who directs the Asociacion Entre Amigos [“Between Friends Association], one of the oldest gay collectives in the country. He added: “In any case, if they wanted to take it out on someone, they should have done so with the official in charge of authorizing the play to be shown in the theater – not on 300 people.”
Obviously, among the 300 discharged workers there were probably people from the LGBTQI+ community, but that’s not the reason given for their being fired, Hernandez pointed out, because direct layoffs of that type it would imply an act of direct persecution. Instead, the government finds itself facing strong financial pressures, so in effect, it seems that firing government employees is a measure they’re going to put in to practice.
Bukele and his government “need money, but don’t have anywhere to get it from,” Hernandez stressed. They needed to justify the firing, and get the people to approve, “because that’s their priority – their image in the media, maintaining their popularity.” That’s why [Bukele] must have wanted to connect the action with the drag show.
At the beginning of the Pride Parade in San Salvador, the LGBTQI collectives issued a joint statement indicating that the firings from the Ministry of Culture were intended to: “Disguise as conservatism, drastic economic measures” that the President intends to push forward.
The Bukele government faces severe difficulties fulfilling their commitments. Its financial deficit surpasses US $1.7 billion dollars, equivalent to 5% of the Gross National Product. The crisis comes in a context where the government has few options in the international markets, analyst Mauricio Choussy explained in a local interview program.
Chief among the obstacles is El Salvador’s high external debt, and the country’s consequently high risk of defaulting. Adding to this is the lack of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund. This panorama weakens El Salvador’s access to credit in the financial markets, including the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.
The government hasn’t succeeded in finalizing an agreement with the IMF that would provide it with a loan worth US $1.3 billion, divided into three sections, the first a $600 million dollar credit for this year, which could in part alleviate the huge present fiscal hole.
However, among other things, the FMI demands that the government void the law approved by the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly in September 2021, allowing the use of Bitcoin as legal tender. The multilateral organization has been insisting since 2022 that this brings serious financial risks.
Pushing cryptocurrency as legal tender has perhaps been Bukele’s most spectacular misstep. The measure never achieved its proposed objectives, among them that it become the preferred mechanism for Salvadorans outside the country to send their remittances. This hasn’t occurred. However, Bukele doesn’t like to concede defeat, and refuses to abandon his bet on Bitcoin, although it remains a currency rarely used by the population.
The IMF also demands that the country undergo a 3% fiscal adjustment, reducing spending and increasing revenue. The latter is the only part of this that has been fulfilled.
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Setbacks for the LGBTQI community
By trying to hide the layoffs under a mantle of almost religious morality and linking them to the Drag show and hence to those in the LGBTQI+ community, Bukele has made the situation of the latter more vulnerable and precarious. El Salvador is already an extremely homophobic society with a double standard, those interviewed declared.
Many of those in the LGBTQI+ population suffer discrimination; many people with the capabilities and the aptitudes are left with limited options in the labor market, for example, due to their gender identity,” explained Cindy Moreno, head of communications of the Alejandria collective. Moreno was also present at the Pride March. She noted that this segment of the population has suffered setbacks in the last few years, for example in health care.
Previously, she commented, when signing up for the HIV test, the paperwork included boxes for noting those who identified as trans, gay or lesbian, bisexual, etc. Now, even if the person states they’re gay or trans, they’re noted only as male or female, without the appropriate subcategorizing. Hence, there’s no way to adequately monitor the spread of HIV among that population group.
“It’s an effort to make the LGBTQI+ community invisible,” Moreno highlighted.
An study carried out in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador by the international organization Human Rights Watch revealed that discrimination in education and employment due to gender identity or sexual orientation sharpens the economic marginalization of this population. In time, it leaves many LGBTQI+ individuals with no stable means of making a living.
Another report on the LGBTQI+ community’s access to Social Security in San Salvador showed that half of this population suffered labor exclusion, with trans women the ones most affected: two out of three were excluded from the labor market.
The report, caried out by the Women’s Economic and Labor Observatory, added that, as a result, 60% of that community wasn’t covered by the Salvadoran Social Security Institute, which offers government health care. In comparison, among the rest of the population, the percent of those not covered was 40%, a gap of nearly 20 percentage points.