Reasons Not To Live In El Salvador
The news is full of the changes that President Nayib Bukele has made to El Salvador, changing it from the most dangerous to safest country in Latin America. Every day I read of people wanting to live there. Some are Salvadoreans returning to the country, others are bitcoiners thinking about making El Salvador their new home. While I do not deny the positive changes in El Salvador, there are still reasons why you may not want to live there.
The first reason is the climate. Like many countries in the region, El Salvador has wet and dry seasons. The wet season runs from mid-May until the end of October and the dry season is the rest of the year. Both are uncomfortable. The dry season is clear, but hot and humid. The wet season is marked by heavy storms, sometiimes causing flooding, The temperatur year round varies between a low of 60 degrees Fahrenheit at night and a high of 90 degrees during the day. In other words, it's like Atlantic Coast summer in the United States all year around.
The second reason is natural disasters. El Salvador has them all. Hurricanes and tropical storms with floods and landslides during the wet season and forest fires during the dry season. And all year there is the possibility of earthquakes. El Salvador also has active volcanoes. The most recent erruption was in October 2005. Two people were killed and seven injured. It was several months before locals could return to the area.
The third reason is that El Salvador is very conservative on sexual matters. If you are gay or otherwise sexually non-conforming, you had best keep your behavior private in El Salvador. Abortion is also illegal in El Salvador. One case that attracted the attention of the media was Sara Rogel. She was eight months pregnat and according to her family she was found lying unconscious after she slipped and fell while washing clothes. She was taken to hospital, where she was detained on suspicion of having had an abortion. She was convcted of aggravated homicide and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After 9 years in prison her sentence was commuted to 10 years and she was released on parole. Without international attention to the case she might still be in prison.
The last reason is aggressive policing. President Bukele's campaign to jail gang members has led the the police to jail young men on little evidence. If you are a gringo looking to retire to El Salvador, you will face no problem. But if you are a young latino, you had better carry proof of employment with you and not have any tatoos the police consider suspicious. One case involve two young Colombians, José Antonio Potes and his friend Manuel Castrillón, who travelled to El Salvador looking for work. The two were detained by soldiers acting as police and held in prison for three months.
Every country you might want to live in has its good and bad points. While El Salvador is a better place to live now than it was before President Bukele, it is not at the top of anyone's list of countries that Americans should move to. In this essay I tried to explain some of the reasons why.