Published: April 2025
On April 14, 2025, President Donald Trump hosted El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele at the White House. The meeting drew international attention, not only for its symbolism but for the deep questions it raises about democracy, power, and the spiritual cost of governance rooted in fear.
In 2021, Bukele drew global headlines by ironically adding “world’s coolest dictator” to his Twitter (now X) bio. The move, while glib, hinted at a deeper truth: Bukele’s consolidation of power has been swift, dramatic, and controversial.
He replaced top judges, sidestepped constitutional limits on presidential terms, and instituted extended emergency powers under which thousands have been detained. His supporters praise him for restoring public safety. Critics see in him the blueprint of 21st-century authoritarianism.
As The Guardian noted, the “dictator” moniker wasn’t just a joke—it was a challenge to the very idea of democratic accountability.
At the heart of Bukele’s war on gangs is CECOT, a mega-prison built to house up to 40,000 inmates. Inside its stark, windowless walls, detainees are cut off from the world—no visitors, no legal representation, no sunlight. This prison is a concrete monument to the ethos of punishment without process.
While gang violence has dropped dramatically in El Salvador, international observers including Human Rights Watch warn that mass incarceration under emergency powers erodes the rule of law and violates human rights. The structure may be effective—but at what moral cost?
At the Trump–Bukele summit, one human face stood out: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a U.S. resident mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Upon arrival, he was thrown into CECOT—despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling ordering his return.
Trump and Bukele dismissed the decision, alleging ties to criminal organizations—claims not substantiated by public evidence.
This flagrant disregard for judicial authority raises alarm bells for anyone who believes in due process. Vanity Fair captured the surreal tone of the meeting: Trump boasted of his bond with Bukele, calling him “the coolest dictator in the world,” while the fate of a real person hung in the balance.
HuffPost España offered a stark summary: “Trump y Bukele descartan vuelta de migrante deportado por error”.
This wasn’t just a meeting between two heads of state. It was the forging of a transnational axis of illiberalism: performative, media-savvy, and dismissive of traditional checks and balances.
In both leaders we see a strategy of ruling by spectacle—weaponizing fear, flouting judicial norms, and appealing to a base hungry for “strength” rather than justice.
What this meeting reveals is not just a political realignment—but a deeper cultural crisis: a loss of memory about what democracy, and even human dignity, is supposed to mean.
From a spiritual perspective, these developments carry heavy implications.
If, as mystics have long held, all beings are manifestations of the divine—if each soul is a spark of the infinite—then how we treat the marginalized, the accused, and the feared is a reflection of our collective spiritual maturity.
To build a prison like CECOT is not just a political act—it is a metaphysical statement. It says: “These people are beyond redemption. They are not us.” But the deepest spiritual traditions—from Advaita Vedanta to Christian mysticism—reject this separation.
“Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me.”
—Jesus (Matthew 25:40)
“The real does not die, the unreal never lived.”
—Nisargadatta Maharaj
“Brahman is the only reality, the world is illusion, and the individual self is not different from Brahman.”
—Adi Shankara
To forget the divine core within others is to forget it within ourselves. When power dominates instead of liberates, it creates not order but spiritual poverty.
As a practitioner on the path of divine mysticism, I see in this moment a call—not to moral outrage alone, but to Spiritual Tough Love: the capacity to discern truth without fear, to call out injustice without hatred, and to hold power accountable not just legally, but spiritually.
True power does not imprison the body and ignore the soul.
It awakens the soul—and frees the body.
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