El Salvador: Gender Ideology Removed From Public Education

Mr. Bukele's decision came a week after El Salvador's electoral court ratified his election victory with 84% of the vote. In addition, the count for the allocation of deputies to the National Assembly gave Bukele's Nuevas Ideas party a large majority. The new President Bukele thus benefits from strong support among the population.

From February 21 to 24, 2024, the Salvadoran president attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) which was held in the United States. During the event, he was questioned by Ms. Catalina Stubbe, member of the Moms for Liberty organization – responsible for dissemination in the Hispanic community.

He explained that he thought it was “important that the curriculum does not carry this gender ideology and those types of things,” and assured that “parents should be informed and have a say in what their children will learn.”

He added: “I think it is important that God be reintroduced into schools, that morality and civics are reintroduced, that traditional elements – like mathematics and history – are taught. … Nobody is against modernization: what we are opposed to is the introduction of unnatural, anti-god, anti-family ideologies which have no place in our schools.”

The Minister of Education, José Mauricio Pineda, confirmed on social networks that “all traces of gender ideology have been removed from public schools.”

Feminists in El Salvador have criticized the president's positions, which they consider a violation of women's rights in this small country. “Bukele is a messianic figure, a patriarchal leader, a father president who watches over us and who presents himself as anointed by God,” declared Celia Medrano, human rights activist, in early February.

She added that “he is a very conservative man who clearly tends to manipulate religion to send the message that women should stay at home. Our role is to combat this discourse.”

A reaction which shows the unnatural point to which these activists have come, who can no longer tolerate being reminded of natural law and even less of the rights of God. Fury all the greater since Bukele has already exposed his convictions on other points of morality.

In this way, in March 2020, he revealed in an interview with Puerto Rican rapper Residente that he was against same-sex marriage and abortion: “I am not in favor of abortion and I think that one day, in the future, we will realize that it is a great genocide that is being committed with abortions.” He also declared his opposition to same-sex marriage.

This position is the result of an evolution. Indeed, Nayib Bukele was first a member of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). He was then elected president in 2019, under the independent Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA), becoming the first president since 1992 not to represent either of the two main Salvadoran parties (ARENA and FMLN).