NEWS & BLOG

El Salvador often stirs narratives surrounding crime, gangs, or asylum statistics. What is rarely considered sufficiently within mainstream discourse is how centuries of outside interference and inequality have created the conditions that still drive Salvadorans to flee their homes today, including to places as far away as the United Kingdom.

This region was home to diverse Indigenous communities, most prominently the Pipil in the west and central valleys and the Lenca in the east. The Pipil (a Nahuat-speaking people) had established a thriving polity known as Cuscatlán, centred on intensive maize agriculture and cacao cultivation (Fowler, 1989). The Lenca, among the oldest groups in the region, lived in smaller, dispersed communities, practising subsistence farming and maintaining distinctive religious and cultural traditions tied to the land (Larde y Larín, 1957). Together, these peoples shaped a complex landscape of farming, trade, and ritual life. Their societies were marked by social hierarchies, strong ties to sacred geographies, and cultural practices that endured for centuries before colonisation.

The colonisers extracted wealth, imposed European social hierarchies, and suppressed Indigenous cultures and autonomy. In the 19th century, production was structured to serve external markets, and land was seized from peasants and Indigenous communities to make way for plantations. A tiny group of elites consolidated immense wealth and political control (Larde y Larín, 1957). These elites remained aligned with foreign interests, perpetuating patterns of dependency. The resulting inequalities formed the backdrop for recurring unrest, repression, and cycles of violence. 

Although formal colonialism ended from the late 19th century, informal, external control deepened. The United States viewed Central America, including El Salvador, as in its “sphere of influence” and positioned itself as a regional hegemon (Grandin 2006). The US intervened repeatedly – economically, politically, and militarily – to protect its corporate interests, ensure favourable regimes, and counter perceived ideological threats (USIP, 2022).

The civil war (1979–1992) was a crucible of these dynamics. With over 75,000 deaths and countless displaced, the conflict drew heavy US involvement, including billions of dollars in military aid, training, and political support to the Salvadoran government and security forces, despite reports of grave human-rights abuses (UNHCR 2020; Grandin 2006). The US framed its involvement as a battle against “communism”, but many scholars argue the motive was also to safeguard US economic and strategic influence and protect elites in El Salvador (Kashani, 2020). The consequences were immense. Thousands of civilians, especially campesinos, Indigenous communities, union activists, leftists, and journalists, were killed, disappeared, tortured, or forced into exile. The El Mozote massacre (December 1981) remains one of the worst single incidents: around 1,200 civilians were killed by the Salvadoran army in a rural area (Human Rights Watch, 2024). The war intensified land dispossession, social fragmentation, destruction of infrastructure, and the spread of paramilitary forces. The resulting social trauma, distrust, and structural inequalities created a weak state post-war, with limited capacity to redress deep rural inequalities (UNHCR, 2020).

The 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accords formally ended the war. The FMLN transitioned into a political party, yet the postwar era also saw strong neoliberal policies. Privatisation, deregulation, opening to global markets, and austerity in public spending became common, often under external pressure from the IMF and World Bank (IMF; World Bank; Kashani 2020). Public services remained underfunded, and inequality persisted. In turn, gang violence and insecurity rose (Rosen, Cutrona, and Lindquist 2022). Thus, the long shadow of colonial extraction, external intervention, and structural inequality carried into the twenty-first century.

Gender-based violence (GBV) also remains deeply pervasive in El Salvador, encompassing domestic, sexual, and intrafamilial violence, as well as trafficking for sexual exploitation. The widespread occurrence of GBV and femicide is matched by the high level of impunity enjoyed by perpetrators. Between 2007 and 2012, El Salvador recorded the highest femicide rate in the world (Geneva Declaration Secretariat 2015). These levels of violence cannot be understood without considering the enduring effects of colonialism and structural violence (Musalo 2018). Centuries of inequality, conflict, and entrenched gender norms have shaped a social order in which patriarchal systems and machismo remain central. Many scholars trace these attitudes back to the Spanish conquest, where sexuality was woven into systems of control (Bayona 2013; Velásquez 1986; Hardin 2002). Colonisers exploited Indigenous people for both labour and sex, creating a violent, gendered hierarchy that became part of the region’s social fabric (Musalo 2018).

When the US deported gang members in the 1990s, structures like MS-13 and Barrio 18 took root in El Salvador, fuelling spirals of violence (USIP, 2022). By the mid-2010s, the country had one of the world’s highest homicide rates (World Bank 2025). Since 2019, President Nayib Bukele’s “state of exception” has cut crime sharply, but at the cost of mass arrests and widespread reports of abuse (Amnesty International 2022; Human Rights Watch 2024; Guardian 2024). Despite some reforms, the police and military were involved in extrajudicial killings and torture of suspected gang members. In some cases, police units acted as death squads responsible for homicides (New York Times, 2023). While homicides have considerably declined since 2015, the rise in forced disappearances is deeply concerning (Amnesty International, 2022). Bukele’s populist agenda has given the police and military broad powers with little accountability and growing concentration of power in the hands of the executive (BBC News, 2024). For many, especially young people in gang-controlled neighbourhoods, flight remains the only path to safety.

Most Salvadorans on the move head north toward the United States or Mexico, but smaller numbers reach Europe, including the United Kingdom. It is estimated that 2.6 million Salvadorans live abroad, representing about 41 percent of the population; approximately 4.4 percent live in the European Union (UNHCR Refugee Data Finder, 2025). The UK Home Office recognises that Salvadorans may face persecution through gang violence, gender-based attacks, or lack of state protection (UK Home Office 2022; 2023; 2025). However, in May 2022, the UK abruptly introduced a visa requirement for Salvadoran nationals, adding El Salvador to the visa-national list through a rapid Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules (UK Home Office 2022a). The Home Office justified the change by citing a sharp rise in Salvadorans arriving as visitors and immediately claiming asylum, noting that they had become one of the largest groups of non-visa-nationals seeking protection on arrival (UK Home Office, 2022b; UK Government, 2022).

It is essential to understand that asylum claims and displacement are not random nor isolated crises. People do not simply “choose” to migrate; they are pushed by legacies of empire, external manipulation, and crises that others helped to create (Grandin, 2006; CFR, 2021). For the UK, recognising their claims is about more than asylum law; it is an act of global solidarity – an acknowledgment that the roots of today’s displacement stretch back through a shared history.

The story of El Salvador is not one of pure victimhood. Despite extraction, violence, and displacement, Salvadorans have remade their lives, preserved cultural memory, and attempted structural transformation at home and abroad. Salvadorans make up one of the top 7 nationalities of our community members at West London Welcome (4%). It is important we prioritise the voices of our community members. To read Ernesto’s Story and understand his experience see our latest Humans of West London Welcome Story. 

Image credits: Ernesto- WLW Salvadoran community member.

Bibliography 

Amnesty International. El Salvador 2022. Amnesty International, 2022.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/americas/el-salvador/report-el-salvador/ 

BBC News. “El Salvador: Bukele Declares Victory in Landslide Re-election.” BBC News, February 5, 2024.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68295829

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “El Salvador: History.” Encyclopædia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/place/El-Salvador/History

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Captaincy General of Guatemala.” Encyclopædia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Captaincy-General-of-Guatemala

Council on Foreign Relations. “El Salvador’s Politics and U.S. Policy.” Council on Foreign Relations, Backgrounder, May 2021.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/el-salvador-politics-and-us-policy 

Guardian, The. “Nayib Bukele Secures Re-election in El Salvador Landslide.” The Guardian, February 5, 2024.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/05/el-salvador-nayib-bukele-election-landslide

Human Rights Watch. World Report 2024: El Salvador. Human Rights Watch, 2024.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/el-salvador 

New York Times. “Inside El Salvador’s Mega Prison, Where Thousands Are Detained.” New York Times, March 15, 2023.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/world/americas/el-salvador-prison-bukele.html

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. “Indigo in Colonial Central America.” Oxford University Press, 2019.
https://oxfordre.com/latinamericanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.001.0001/acrefore-9780199366439-e-937 

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “El Salvador.” UNHCR, 2020.
https://www.unhcr.org/el-salvador.html 

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “UNHCR Refugee Data Finder.” Accessed September 2025.
https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/ 

United States Institute of Peace. “El Salvador’s Crackdown on Gangs Comes at a Cost.” USIP, July 2022. https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/07/el-salvadors-crackdown-gangs-comes-cost 

UK Government. Home Office. Country Policy and Information Note: El Salvador, Gangs. Version 2.0, December 2022.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/el-salvador-country-policy-and-information-notes 

UK Government. Home Office. Immigration System Statistics, Year Ending June 2025. August 2025.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-system-statistics-year-ending-june-2025 

UK Government. Home Office. Immigration and Protection Data Q1 2023. May 2023.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-and-protection-data-q1-2023 

UK Government. 2022. Business Risk Note: El Salvador. London: UK Government.

UK Home Office. 2022a. Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 17). London: Home Office.

UK Home Office. 2022b. Country Policy and Information Note: El Salvador – Gangs, Version 2.0. London: Home Office.

World Bank. “Personal Remittances, Received (% of GDP) – El Salvador.” World Bank Data.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS?locations=SV

World Bank. “Intentional Homicides (per 100,000 people) – El Salvador.” World Bank Data.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=SV 

Carcach, Carlos. “A Bayesian Spatio-Temporal Model of Variation in Homicide in El Salvador.” PLOS ONE (2025).

García Pinzón, Viviana. “Containing Violence in El Salvador: Community Dynamics and Governance in Chalatenango.” Development and Change 54, no. 1 (2023): 192–219. 

Kashani, Saraí. “Forces that Propelled the Civil War in El Salvador: Peasant Mobilization, Foreign Intervention, and Structural Inequality.” Aleph: UCLA Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences 17 (2020). 

Rosen, Jonathan D., Sebastián Cutrona, and Katy A. Lindquist. “Gangs, Violence, and Fear: Punitive Darwinism in El Salvador.” Crime, Law and Social Change 79, no. 2 (2022): 175–194. 

Fowler, William R. The Cultural Evolution of Ancient Nahua Civilizations: The Pipil-Nicarao of Central America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.

Larde y Larín, Jorge. El Salvador: Historia de sus Pueblos, Villas y Ciudades. San Salvador: Ministerio de Cultura, 1957.

Grandin, Greg. Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006.

World Bank. “Intentional Homicides (per 100,000 People) (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5).” Accessed November 11, 2025. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5 

Musalo, Karen. “El Salvador — A Peace Worse than War: Violence, Gender and a Failed Legal Response.” Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 30, no. 1 (2018): 3-84. 

Geneva Declaration Secretariat. Global Burden of Armed Violence 2015: Every Body Counts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Bayona, Aracely Bautista. “Declaration of Legal Expert on the Situation of Violence Against Women in El Salvador.” April 12, 2013. In Childhood, Migration, and Human Rights: Children and Young People at Risk in Latin America (English edition), edited by Centre for Gender & Refugee Studies et al., 160-69. San Salvador, 2013.