Travel
The president of El Salvador is turning his nation from the ‘murder capital of the world’ into a tax-free surf zone in a bid to attract bitcoin tech bros to its shores. By Kye Halford.
How the ‘murder capital of the world’ became Surf City
“When you all become old – far, far from now – you will look into the past and remember you were the ones that started it all.”
– El Salvador President Nayib Bukele at the 2021 Surf City ISA World Surfing Games
Even in the fading grey light, it’s clear the streets of El Salvador’s Surf City are kept in pristine condition. Perhaps it’s because we’re in the wet season, I wonder, as we swig cold pilsener on a restaurant terrace in El Tunco, awaiting our first plates of pupusas. I’m travelling with a crew of Australian surfers chasing waves along Latin America’s Pacific coast. Our shirts are damp and shoulders stiff after dragging our surfboard bags through the heavy tropical air to our hostels. The shuttle bus from Guatemala had left us at Surf City’s boom gate entrance to avoid the entry fee.
On weekends, El Tunco’s beachside bars attract backpackers and Salvadorans who make the hour-long drive south from the landlocked capital, San Salvador, to blow off steam. Half-built concrete villas and yellow “Surf City under construction” signs reveal a village scrambling to keep pace with a rapid influx of tourism. But on a Tuesday night, there’s plenty of space for a karaoke-goer in thongs and knee-length board shorts to take his microphone onto the street for a merciless rendition of “November Rain”. Shopkeepers selling football jerseys featuring President Nayib Bukele and the great Mágico González hardly seem to notice as the backpacker sways in front of their stalls – his voice still a few decibels under the rich blend of Bob Marley, Depeche Mode and reggaeton that bounces between the neighbouring venues. It seems we’ve arrived early.
El Tunco is one of several coastal villages rebranded as Surf City in 2019, a slogan coined by Bukele that would gloss over El Salvador’s global image as the “murder capital of the world”. The project has received US$170 million in government funding, a portion of which is allocated to the World Surf League and International Surfing Association, to run contests at the world-class point breaks scattered along the cobblestone coastline.
“Surfing is not only tourism. It’s also building a worldwide community right here in El Salvador,” Bukele said to ISA staff at his presidential palace after his election in 2019. He declared Surf City “a synonym for El Salvador in the future”.
Bukele, a tech-savvy 43-year-old who has described himself as “the world’s coolest dictator”, came to power largely on a promise to end the gang rule that has plagued El Salvador for decades. “Our country is like a sick child,” he said to a hopeful crowd at his first inauguration. “We have to suffer a little now, we have to have a little pain, assume our responsibility and all as brothers to bring forward that child.”
On this front, Bukele has been true to his word. Gang violence has plummeted since his implementation of hardline measures to empower El Salvador’s military and police forces. The president’s initial attempts to reduce the national homicide rate involved behind-the-curtain deals with MS-13 and the Barrio 18 gangs, but negotiations broke down after a series of gang leader arrests. MS-13 retaliated by killing more than 80 civilians over a single weekend in March 2022, including a surf instructor. A corpse left by the road that leads to Surf City was a clear message to Bukele and the nation.
Bukele declared a state of emergency after the killings, seizing immense powers that paved the way for mass incarcerations. More than 75,000 people have since been imprisoned for alleged gang affiliations, and many of the arrests were found to have been arbitrary. Bukele has also used these powers to bend the country’s democratic institutions to his will, removing political opponents by gerrymandering and attacking journalists who contradicted the state narrative.
Still, Bukele has overwhelming support in a country wounded by the terrors of its recent past, and the decline of gang rule has radically improved many lives. The government declared a 70 per cent drop in the murder rate in 2023, and Bukele secured re-election for a second term with an 85 per cent approval rating, despite his consecutive mandates being a violation of El Salvador’s constitution.
Early on our first morning, the restaurants are already serving Western breakfasts as we pass with surfboards underarm. A wall of driftwood holding a tree stump the size of a dining table prevents waves from smashing into the boardwalk at high tide. Stormwater gushes from the river mouth, the mix of volcanic sand churning the ocean into a chocolate brown. Our hands disappear from sight inches under the surface as we paddle with the outgoing current to La Bocana break. The water is so warm it melts the wax on our boards.
The swells arrive shaped like dark teepees. They scatter locals and travelling surfers across a wide playing field, disarming the tension often felt in the line-ups at nearby point breaks. We spend hours shooting to the inside to catch waves that pitch on the shallow bank, trying to avoid the bombing walls of white water that break further out to sea.
I take my final wave and lean on my back foot to stall as I wait for the wave to lurch over the cobbles. For a moment I’m tucked in the barrel and time is briefly suspended until I’m lifted off my board and driven hard to the sea floor. I wait to be snagged on a submerged branch as I’m wrenched across the bottom, but eventually the wave releases its grip and I resurface by the shore unscathed.
On my way back from the beach, I see armed officers standing over a dozen men all wearing yellow shirts and caps – they are kneeling in the scant shade of the hedge that lines the outskirts of my accommodation. The receptionist tells me the men are prisoners who’ve committed relatively minor offences and are allowed to re-enter communities to provide various maintenance tasks. As I eat breakfast on the hostel balcony, I watch them collect rubbish and fumigate the area to kill the mosquitoes that carry dengue fever. They cross paths with European backpackers on their way to the beach, neither group acknowledging the other’s presence.
A 90-minute drive away, more than 40,000 people are locked in a new mega-prison called the Terrorism Confinement Center – a black hole for the many inmates who are yet to face trial.
Days later, it’s twilight in the port of La Libertad when I climb into the Uber outside the new amusement park that overlooks the crown jewel of El Salvador’s surf breaks, Punta Roca. I give the driver, Juan, the required security code and he seems satisfied once El Tunco appears on the map. But we’re immediately stuck in gridlock traffic, caused in part by the roadworks from an upgrade of the coastal highway. Neither Juan nor I can speak the other’s language particularly well, but to pass the time we share a packet of Oreos and use Google Translate to talk about thunderstorms and Juan’s favourite reggaeton songs. We’re listening to Pitbull’s “El Taxi” as we buy water from a man who stops at each car halted on the road, balancing a large box of bottles on his shoulder.
Across the street, a group of military officers walks past Sunset Park, their machine guns lowered as an empty Ferris wheel spins above their heads. “There’s so much security here,” I say. “Do you feel safer now?” It’s a clumsy question in inept Spanish and it makes Juan giggle as he responds in English. “They’re not here for me, my friend.” The creases in his face deepen as he presses his index finger into my shoulder. “They’re here for you.”
On my final day, I travel west to El Zonte, better known as Bitcoin Beach since the cryptocurrency became legal tender in El Salvador. It’s the mark of Bukele’s ambitions to transform Surf City into a tax-free haven for foreign tech bros and crypto users with ideals that will shape a new age. There’s the Bitcoin Hardware Store. A bitcoin ATM. Restaurant logos designed in the style of the bitcoin symbol. “The future is here!” one hotel sign declares. As I walk around the bare neighbourhood, littered with construction sites for luxury villas, I feel a disconnect. Who is the future being built for? Who can be part of it?
I pass a real estate sign written in English. “A unique investment opportunity to develop 10 Luxury Loft Villas, plus a Clubhouse and the Largest Surfskate Pumptrack in La Libertad. We accept payments in USD or Bitcoin.” It reminds me of when I first heard about Surf City two months earlier, at a bar in Mexico City, listening to three British travellers discussing a joint venture to buy a property in El Salvador “before it explodes”. Foreign investors are buying land along the coast, across the highway from this state of emergency. I wonder what will become of the boom gates outside El Tunco, and the people they will shut out.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 30, 2024 as "El Salvador’s surfdom".
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