EL SALVADOR

El Salvador's experiment with mass incarceration under President Bukele has created a new chapter in the country's male crisis. Over 70,000 men have been detained under a state of exception, many without due process, in mega-prisons designed to hold them indefinitely. Families of these men — many of them innocent — face the double stigma of association with gangs and the economic devastation of losing a breadwinner overnight. The state solved gang violence by creating a prison population that may eventually return to society even more broken.

Before the crackdown, Salvadoran boys in communities like Soyapango and Apopa faced a gauntlet: the maras controlled territory block by block, and merely living in the wrong neighborhood conscripted you into a side you didn't choose. Boys who tried to remain neutral were targeted by both gangs and police. The evangelical church offered the only recognized escape route — conversion as a gang exit strategy — but this traded one rigid masculine performance for another. The deeper crisis remains untouched: a country where men's emotional vocabulary consists of rage, silence, or scripture, with nothing in between.