I am a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Anthropology at York University. I am a Canadian-born Salvadoran and my parents left during the Salvadoran Civil War. I completed her Bachelor’s of Science at the University of Toronto, specializing in Mental Health Studies and minoring in Anthropology. I then went on to complete her Master’s degree in Anthropology at the University of Toronto.

My research is based in El Salvador, where, two years after Bukele’s government instituted the state of exception, more than 76,000 citizens have been arrested or detained. The detentions led to a significant decline in the nations murder rate and fundamentally altered the sense of security for many residents, who can now move around freely in communities once controlled by gangs. With this new sense of security, graffiti and urban street are has reemerged thanks to Phase II: Opportunities of the security strategy: Plan Territorial Control which works to reconstruct “the social fabric of the country.” My research explores the interconnections between security, urban space, and human rights in San Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele has invested in urban street art, particularly graffiti. I pay particular attention to the spatialization of security, human rights, and populist discourse, and the reproduction of a moral panic around gangs that serves to justify populist authoritarianism and the suspension of rights. One of the key foci of my project is Bukele’s claim that El Salvador “es oficialmente el pais mas seguro de toda Latinoamerica” [“is officially the safest country in all of Latin America”]. As authorities commit human rights violations including arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and ill-treatment in detention, my project asks, who is safe in Bukele’s El Salvador? My project examines the role graffiti plays in reinforcing this claim and the sense of security that has been accomplished through the state of exception.

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