Kai Sallas, proving again that El Salvador definitely has contestable waves. Photo: Pablo Jimenez//ISA
I have long given El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele the benefit of the doubt. But after refusing to return a mistakenly imprisoned man deported from the United States, he’s fallen out of favor with me. I wonder if the leaders of surf institutions, flush with millions of dollars from Bukele’s tourism ambitions, feel the same.
It’s atypical that a single government plays such a pivotal role in the global surfing landscape, but Bukele, the “self-proclaimed world’s coolest dictator,” has gleefully muscled his way into that conversation. He’s made surfing the poster child of El Salvador’s transformation from murder capital to vacation hotspot. And surf events have been a key instrument to catalyze that change. Bukele and surfing have become inextricable.
But as Bukele mocks U.S. law and order with “LMFAO” emojis, how should the surfing community respond? Are his political antics and El Salvador’s tourism renaissance intrinsically linked? Or can we separate the two, keeping an increasingly controversial human rights record from overshadowing the positive impact surfing is having on the country? It’s a question myself, and surely the sport’s major institutions, are grappling with.
In March, Bukele cut a deal with the United States, accepting 238 alleged gang-involved immigrants, putting them in his mega prison in exchange for $6 million annually. Aside from the fact that all of these immigrants were sent to prison in a foreign country without any hearing or chance to plead their case, one man emerged as an example of the United States’ alarming carelessness in vetting deportees. The Trump administration admitted that it had accidentally included a Maryland man with protected status, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in the round-up.
Trump claimed he was powerless to get Abrego Garcia back once he was transferred to Bukele’s jurisdiction. And when a federal judge in the U.S. demanded that the immigrants be returned, Bukele taunted the order with a post on X that read, “Oopsie…too late.” Bukele then went to the White House, doubled down on his social media post, and peddled an unsubstantiated claim that Abrego Garcia is a “terrorist.” Now Bukele is trying to use these same prisoners as bargaining chips in an exchange for prisoners currently held in Venezuela, so he clearly does have the power to release them if he wants.
I’ve met Bukele. The guy is approachable and charming. Our paths crossed when I was working at the International Surfing Association’s (ISA) 2019 Standup Paddle championships in El Salvador – Bukele’s first major surfing event.
Bukele’s rhetoric sounds pragmatic. Thus, I kept an open mind when he was preaching his plan to give El Salvador a major facelift. After all, how could I possibly understand what it’s like to live in a country ruled by gangs, where people live in constant fear for their lives? I cannot remotely relate, so I optimistically listened. And the results, on paper, have been astoundingly successful: Homicides have fallen by 98 percent and El Salvador is now one of the safest countries in the Americas as far as murders per capita.
Bukele’s actions present an interesting ethical dilemma regarding the extent to which a society’s rights should be compromised for the greater safety of the whole. Furthermore, in a surfing context, it presents the leaders of the sport with a quandary of their own: Where do they draw the line with Bukele? Is there a political tipping point where they would turn down Bukele’s event cash?
When I posed this question to the ISA, a spokesperson explained that individual political matters in El Salvador go beyond the scope of their partnership with the country, which is specifically based on developing surfing. The WSL didn’t respond to this line of questioning.
El Salvador has forged a symbiotic relationship with these institutions. Bukele needs their events to bring global media attention and credibility to his “Surf City” plan. And the WSL/ISA bank on Bukele’s role as a reliable partner who takes on the financial risk of their premier surfing events.
I understand that the ISA (and presumably the WSL) deduce that Bukele’s surf events are distinct and unrelated to his authoritarian policies. But I reckon that Bukele’s refusal to return an innocent prisoner to the U.S. has at the very least opened a rift between El Salvador and these institutions. The WSL and ISA, U.S.-based organizations, must be having uncomfortable conversations behind closed doors about the long-term viability of having El Salvador as such a close partner.
I can support El Salvador’s vision for surfing. But Bukele, who has made a mockery of another country’s legal processes while leveraging Trump to boost his own persona, I can no longer stand by – not while he knowingly holds at least one innocent man hostage.
I’m not sure a boycott is the answer – doing so could cause real financial harm to the Salvadoran people. But if Bukele refuses to rectify the situation, surfing’s institutions will have some difficult questions to confront: To what extent are we complicit?
