El Salvador

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The Cost of Control

With rare access to El Salvador’s most secure prisons, we explore the dark side of President Bukele’s gang crackdown.

History Illustrated: El Salvador, CECOT prison and the US’s School of the Americas

Critics of the US military’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) often call it the ‘School of Assassins’. The facility trains Latin American forces, some known for human rights abuses, from places like El Salvador, home to the infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.

WHINSEC began as the School of the Americas (SOA), a Cold War institution created by the US in 1946, based in Panama. It trained Latin American military personnel to fight communists. In 1984, due in part to public anger in Panama, the SOA relocated to Fort Benning in the US state of Georgia.

Five years later, in 1989, the Salvadoran army’s Atlacatl Battalion killed six Jesuit priests, as well as their housekeeper and her daughter, under orders to ‘leave no witnesses’. Of the 26 officers implicated, 19 had been trained by the SOA at one time or another.

Under public and congressional pressure in 1996, the Pentagon was forced to release Spanish-language, SOA training manuals that advocated extrajudicial killing and torture.

In 2001, the SOA changed its name to WHINSEC, but critics accuse the US of making no substantive change to the curriculum. WHINSEC has denied responsibility for perpetrating abuses.

Over the years, El Salvador has been in the top five of Latin American states to train security personnel at the SOA/WHINSEC. Today, the country is led by President Nayib Bukele. In 2023, he opened CECOT, a widely condemned mega-prison. As such, some rights groups criticise the SOA/WHINSEC for training security forces from countries like El Salvador.

Since 2022, Bukele has used a ‘state of exception’ to suspend constitutional rights, allowing him to crack down on gang violence, but also public dissent. CECOT is his crown jewel.

In March 2025, US President Donald Trump deported more than 230 alleged Venezuelan gang members to CECOT, even though at least 197 reportedly had no US criminal records. In CECOT, the men reportedly received frequent and severe beatings before being sent back to Venezuela in July.

Rights groups accuse the Salvadoran penal system of torture, killings and disappearing people. In this climate of terror, the SOA/WHINSEC has trained personnel from El Salvador and other suspect Latin American states, like Argentina, Panama and Guatemala. Today, El Salvador has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world.