(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . El Salvador: Bukele’s dream of a Bitcoin bonanza brings misery to those in poverty [1] [] Date: 2024-03 MORAZÁN, EL SALVADOR — Salvadoran street vendor Maria* earned just $10 selling sweets and handicrafts today – a particularly bad day. It’s half of what she usually gets: $20 on average; $25 if she’s lucky. “Sales are not good. There is tourism in the area, but people don’t come to the village,” she tells openDemocracy in the square of Osicala, a small municipality in Morazán, eastern El Salvador. It’s a four-hour drive from San Salvador, the capital, on a winding road interspersed with volcanoes and fruit stands. It’s also 110 kilometres from the slopes of the Conchagua volcano, where president Nayib Bukele has promised to create Bitcoin City – a tax-free, smart city bonanza. If his ambitious project is realised, that distance could soon feel like a million miles. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now The economy, María says, is getting worse. The cost of the basic food basket (a monthly set of essential food items for four people), has risen by about $50 in the last four years and accounts for almost three-quarters ($258) of the minimum wage ($365 – the US dollar has been the official currency of El Salvador since 2001). “Everyone says so: prices are too high,” she says. María voted for the re-election of Bukele – the self-styled “coolest dictator in the world” – on Sunday 4 February. He won with 84.6% of the vote – though 48% of the electorate didn’t vote – and his New Ideas party won 54 of the 60 seats in Congress, sweeping away the opposition. The result was challenged – albeit unsuccessfully – because Bukele was allowed to stand despite El Salvador’s constitution prohibiting re-election and also because of irregularities in the counting, which came to an abrupt halt on election night and triggered complaints of miscounted votes. But his re-election came as no surprise. While it’s not uncommon to hear Bukele voters complaining about officials and deputies, blaming them for the poor shape of the economy, the president himself seems to be shielded. “Nobody is at Bukele's level. He has brought purely good ideas, but they don’t always get him”, a taxi driver told me the day before the election. Bukele’s greatest achievement is having dismantled the gang structure that reigned in the country for decades. According to official data, murders have fallen by over 60% on his watch, and in 2023 the country had the lowest rate in its history (2.4 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants). “The president has done well,” Maria says. “Before, you couldn’t go out. Now you feel more comfortable, you can walk safely, go to the parks.” These responses are repeated in both urban and rural areas of the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America, which is home to 6.3 million people. There’s always a personal story of what it was like to live with the gangs and what has changed – the streets and roads no longer blocked, the weekly “rents” (extortions) no longer paid. Bukele’s security policy, which imprisoned more than 75,000 people and imposed a never ending state of emergency that enables arbitrary detentions and extends judicial terms indefinitely, has become famous in Latin America, where it is gaining more and more imitators. “We see Bukele as a redeemer, someone God sent us to save us from this criminal catastrophe,” one of his supporters told me outside a polling station. The president’s popularity is reinforced by a powerful propaganda machine on social networks, where his image is that of an influencer. But as criminality seems to be curbed, other concerns surface. Growth has been weak, extreme poverty has swallowed up some 80,000 new families (it now affects almost 9% of the population, while 30% are classed as poor) and half the country suffers from food insecurity. Behind the Bitcoin dream Back in 2021, the Bitcoin Law made the cryptocurrency legal. A few months later, it was already clear that its impact on Salvadorans’ daily life was going to be negligible. As the government embraced the cryptocurrency and spent an estimated $100m plus to purchase bitcoins using confidential funds, Bukele announced a series of megaprojects in the eastern La Unión department: the Pacific Train, the Pacific Airport and, finally, the Bitcoin City, a tax-free settlement sustained with cryptocurrencies that would tap power from the Conchagua Volcano’s geothermal energy. None of these projects have been realised, nor do they have an estimated deadline, but they are threatening entire communities with displacement. Far from the capital, and the public gaze, hundreds of families are preparing for a decades-long battle over the land – a battle the government is brushing under the carpet, focusing instead on the utopia it says bitcoin will create. “Since the Bitcoin Law entered into force, we have seen how real estate speculation has skyrocketed”, César Artiga, a human rights defender and representative of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), told openDemocracy. “The government has announced several mega-projects aimed at land grabbing. There is an alliance between the so-called bitcoiners, foreigners who land here lured by tax benefits and the freedom to not disclose the sources of their capital, and the sugar cane growers [who are the historical owners of the land].” For some, the impacts are already being felt. People living in La Unión say the government is trying to displace them right now. 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