“The Bukele family that governs in El Salvador is spending multimillions of dollars – within Salvadoran borders and in the rest of the world – to face reality in the virtual world. To do this, it has armies of servers – never better called – dedicated to multiplying the versions that they write hour after hour in a central propaganda command. Photo: Marco Ugarte, Archive, AP
By Miguel Blandino*
With the term “the desired lie,” Humberto Eco was referring to what was happening within a growing crowd that was not interested in knowing the truth, but in hearing what their ears wanted to hear, reading what their minds wanted. They would like it to be a reality and attend spaces in which everyone would give their opinion on what they themselves believe. It is a need to reinforce personal beliefs above any evidence to the contrary.
Members of the cult can be shown evidence, even taken to the stratosphere to verify the roundness of the planet, and upon landing they will return to their coreligionists to reaffirm their conviction that the Earth is flat.
So sing with me that old bolero: “I’m already living off your lies / I know that your affection is not sincere / I know that you lie when you kiss and you lie when you say “I love you” / I resign myself because I know that I pay for my evil of yesterday / I was always carried away by evil / That is why I love you so much / But if you give me the joy to live with your fake love / Lie to me for an eternity that your evil makes me happy.”
With two guitars and a pair of maracas, the trios or soloists used to sing those verses in the streets of downtown San Salvador, whose lyrics everyone knew from the readings of the Picot Cancionero. Half a century before the famous Italian semiologist and philosopher wrote it down, knowledge about this pathological reality of the desired lie was already popular throughout. Of course, it is not the same for Lucho Gatica to recite it there in South America in one of his boleros as for an academic intellectual in Europe to write it.
Why do we like lies?
The academic Carolina Escobar Sarti, in her article Lie to me more: trademark, reflected a few years ago in the Guatemalan newspaper Free Press: “Do we not accept lies that come equally from lovers, rulers or certain religious leaders because their evil makes us happy? Is there not a persistent masochism in this?
Let’s go to the data, and today it is fashionable to say that “data kills story.” The Bukele family that governs El Salvador is spending multimillions of dollars – within Salvadoran borders and in the rest of the world – to face reality in the virtual world. To do this, it has armies of servers – never better called – dedicated to multiplying the versions that they write hour after hour in a central propaganda command.
This data was published in November 2022 by the Agency Reuters From great britain. Journalist Sarah Kinosian announced the results of a deep and extensive investigation, according to which hundreds of people work in Salvadoran Government facilities producing false notes to glorify the ruler and insult and attack his critics.
For a monthly salary of six hundred dollars, these employees dedicate their workday to gaining fictitious followers of the ruler through praising his false policies and works of fiction. Propaganda flows 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But these employees, in addition to keeping the propaganda machine running, also perform tasks such as “reporting and filing complaints against the publications of these critics with the purpose of having the platforms close their accounts,” according to the Reuters report.
Many of these tasks are carried out in government offices and are directly supervised by government officials, including a Minister who is not related to either the presidential communications or press team or the state media, according to the researcher. Likewise, Kinosian announced that there are troll farms whose only function is to create thousands of fake X accounts to support Bukele and his Nuevas Ideas party.
The document states that Nayib Bukele’s strategy consists of “flooding with propaganda, demonizing the institutions in charge of discrediting that propaganda – the free press and civil society…”, imposing the agenda, repressing dissent and establishing an atmosphere of terror permanent.
Imminent contagion
Upon learning of the British agency’s publication, the US administration expressed its concern about the danger of contagion of these strategies and that they would be “used by other actors in other regions.” That is exactly what has happened with Daniel Noboa in Ecuador and Javier Milei in Argentina, who have followed the same route and script inch by inch.
The success is due, in part, to the permanent use of the most modern communication resources that penetrate deeply and cover all spaces, including analogue ones. Another element has to do with people’s conviction that it is preferable to repeat official propaganda rather than expose oneself to brutal repression by agents of the regime who are absolutely unscrupulous and have presidential acquiescence and support, when they do not act directly in obedience to his express orders for murder and disappearance. Those are the ones oppressed by state terror.
And although many know that in Bukele’s kingdom neither the promised airports, satellites, nuclear plants, nor bullet trains are real, many also know that their salaries depend on the persistence of the tyrant in power. They are, for the most part, people who choose faith over morality, convinced that believing in God is enough to cleanse the soul.
But, a pathetic self-esteem defense mechanism also operates. No one is interested in assuming the error after having fanatically defended: “I am proudly nayiliber!”, especially if it is a proud university student. And the only government university is dying, strangled by Bukele’s hands. In March, UES administrators had to fire all assistant professors without notice and the electricity, Internet and water bills will no longer be able to be paid.
I bring to account the ordeal and agony of the University of El Salvador because it was there where Bukele made the only public appearance as a presidential candidate in 2019, in which he presented an unforgettable list of offers. He promised to increase the UES budget until it became the university with the greatest financial resources in Central America. Nominally, the annual budget of the University of El Salvador is 130 million dollars, but for three years it has only been given around 70 million. That represents 102 million dollars less than what Daniel Ortega’s Government gives annually to UNAN, that is, less than half. Honduras budgets 560 million each year for its university and the Ticos allocate 18 times more resources to it annually.
Universities are supposed to bring together the most powerful minds and the most critical spirits of a society, but from the UES not a single criticism is heard of the regime that murders education, science, technology and culture. Like decades ago, in the streets of downtown San Salvador, this university goes through life singing “Lie to me for an eternity, your evil makes me happy.” Infamous university.
*Text originally published in El Independiente, El Salvador
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