On July 17, the Anglican-founded human rights organization CRISTOSAL announced that it was closing down operations and leaving the country.
Cristosal has unrelentingly denounced President Nayib Bukele and his government’s violations of basic human rights and disregard for the due process of law. Several Cristosal associates have disappeared into the hellish Salvadoran prison system, including its top lawyer, Ruth Lopez. For the past six months the entire organization has faced credible and increasingly powerful threats from El Salvador’s ruling forces.
Cristosal was founded in 2000 by the Rt. Rev. Martín Barahona, Bishop of El Salvador, with the support of the Episcopal Church in the United States. Episcopal congregations and church leaders have maintained a close relationship. Over the past 25 years Cristosal has become a significant independent presence in El Salvador, monitoring human rights, and protesting corruption and abuse.
Cristosal’s defense of victims of state violence became even more important since the 2019 election of populist president Nayib Bukele. The Bukele regime was initially very popular as it rounded up and jailed thousands of gang members. Gang violence had paralyzed El Salvador since the conclusion of the devastating civil war in 1992. Bukele’s promise to end the reign of the maras appealed to a population exhausted from gang-linked acts of violence and extortion.
In 2019 Bukele declared a “state of exception” that suspended due process and led to the mass arrest of tens of thousands of men, women, and even children. While initially excused as a full-frontal attack on the gangs, the liquidation of due process has also swept up innumerable innocent people — including anyone who would dare speak out against the regime.
In the past 40 months, community leaders, anti-mining activists, evangelical pastors defending their flocks, and journalists have all been made to disappear. For Cristosal the fatal blow came on May 18, when Ruth Lopez was taken from her home in the dark of night.
Noah Bullock, originally from Montana, has been Cristosal’s executive director for the last 15 years.
“We are deeply saddened that we have been forced to leave. It came down to two—or three—options: exile, disappearance, or death,” he told The Living Church.
Cristosal also has operations in the neighboring countries of Honduras and Guatemala, and its leadership has moved to these two countries. Twenty staff members have relocated, Bullock said. A few have remained in El Salvador, but at the request of their families have stopped their human-rights advocacy.
“We are heartbroken that the five human rights defenders, including our colleague Ruth Lopez, have been disappeared into the Salvadorean prison system,” Bullock said. “I am devastated.”
Bullock explained that a habeas corpus petition for Lopez was at first admitted, and the courts ordered the state to keep her in a known temporary holding center where she has some—very limited—access to communication with lawyers and family members and to medical attention that she needs to treat a delicate health condition.
But immediately after this decision, in a show of impunity and force, she was moved to another prison, and has remained out of contact. Four other Cristosal colleagues have also been apprehended. No contact is possible with any of the five.
Bullock compares El Salvador’s situation to the authoritarian regime that dominated the country during its 1972-99 civil war.
“It is how it was almost 25 years ago. The regime is controlled by a limited number of powerful family groups. There is no transparency, and zero dialogue. We know that democracy is imperfect. But we know the costs of the violent patterns of the past,” he said.
An estimated 100,000 people died in the civil war, including thousands of church leaders.
“Cardinal [Gregorio] Rosa Chaves has been outspoken in his demand for an end to the state of exception, and for the reintroduction of due process,” Bullock said. “The Archbishop [José Luis Escobar Alas of San Salvador] as well. And our friends in the United States, in the Episcopal Church, have spoken up in solidarity.”
Bullock added, “It is a moment for deep reflection. A time to stand up for the rights of all people. Be careful—when a government says it will suspend the rights of a certain group—everyone becomes a potential target. We all are vulnerable. Now is not the time to be naive—or indifferent.”
In the end, Bullock said, the situation is not hopeless. “History always swings,” he says. “There is persecution, but in the end it never succeeds in extinguishing the fight of good people for the rights of us all. We will carry on.”
The Rev. Emilie Smith is Guest Writer on Covenant. She is parish priest of St. Barnabas Anglican Church, New Westminster, Canada, and TLC’s Latin America correspondent.
