The package always contained milk, cereals, oats, corn and soy flour. He also never lacked sugar. Roberto Alonso Villatoro was diabetic and couldn't take it, but Verónica Reyes, his partner, thought that perhaps she could exchange it for something he liked, or give it to a partner. Roberto was arrested on December 3, 2022 in a neighborhood in the center of San Salvador and finally transferred to the Izalco prison, about 75 kilometers from the capital. He had no criminal record nor was there evidence against him, but the date of his first court hearing had been postponed to 2025. Reyes, he says, made a commitment to make him hold strong: every 15 days she would take the package to the jail. She carefully lists what was included: a toothbrush and a special soap — “because it is known that inmates suffer a lot from skin diseases inside” —, a boxer short, her shorts, a shirt. On January 27, Verónica Reyes received the only call that the prison authorities made to her in 14 months. Roberto had died and she had to go pick up his body. Her pain twisted as she recognized it: “I was looking at a body that died of hunger.” For her, she repeats: “I took the package every 15 days. And he died of hunger.”
The April 22 neighborhood is a labyrinth. There is a main street that leads to hundreds of narrow passages that connect in a way that only its neighbors know. It was a conflictive, violent neighborhood, controlled by gangs. The driver heads to the entrance and says: “I have never been able to get in. Before, at this point, we would have been under gunfire.” Before President Nayib Bukele started his war against gangs. El Salvador, which for years led the ranking as the most violent country in Latin America, has been under an emergency regime since March 2022. Homicides have plummeted, gangs have been annihilated and a car with tinted windows and journalists can enter this neighborhood that now sports freshly painted houses and plants in the windows.
Roberto, 38, and Verónica, 44, were born here, and they met here more than a decade ago. They never married, but they ran a pupusería and a grocery store together. She, a cook, and he, an oil factory worker, decided to open their own business when Roberto's company laid him off due to a staff cut. They lived in a humble house with Verónica's three children, who consider him his adoptive father, 10 turtles, three cats and five tiny Chihuahuas, which they receive looking for the sun. “With that man there was no sadness, he looked for the good in the bad,” says Verónica Reyes and she does laugh.
At least 75,000 people have been detained under the emergency regime, adding to the 35,000 who were already in prisons. In a country of 6.2 million people, there are more than 110,000 in prison. Almost 17% of the population. It is the highest incarceration rate in the world. Among those detained, the Bukele Government has acknowledged, there are innocent people. How many? More than 6,000 appeals have been submitted to the Supreme Court. The Executive, about to be re-elected this Sunday, considers them an acceptable cost to maintain the security climate. In these 22 months, a figure that even exceeds Venezuela, 224 people have died in prisons, according to the organization Socorro Jurídico. The real number is not known because the Government has reserved the information for seven years. The last blow of the abuse comes to this kind woman, with a firm look and easy smile, who in a regime of fear dares to say that her life partner was killed.
There was nothing special about December 3rd. The couple ran errands and tended the store. Police and military patrolled the passages. Many had already been taken from these tangled streets. Roberto Alonso had been stopped several times, but he had shown his documentation and his cell phone, and had continued on his way. Around two in the afternoon, Reyes was returning from visiting his mother when he saw the uniformed officers taking his partner out of the store. In about 20 minutes they reviewed the messages, audios and photos on his phone, they also verified that he had no criminal record. Reyes confesses that he did not worry: “The agent did all his work, he found absolutely nothing when he investigated it.” “But in the end he told me: 'Look, this is the procedure and I have to take it anyway.'
Quick, Roberto in handcuffs. Kneeling in front of the truck. The neighbors gather around. “Old lady, they're taking me,” she manages to tell an elderly neighbor, who protests unsuccessfully to the military. Verónica tries to record how they throw him like a sack into the vehicle, but the police forces her to delete the video, otherwise she wants to be arrested too. “They didn't allow me to talk to him. I saw him from a distance, they didn't allow me to get closer, only our looks spoke. “Just our looks.” Quick, the ordeal.
Roberto Alonso, who was accused of illicit association, was transferred to prison three times. Further and further away, increasingly in worse conditions. He spent the first two months in the Ex-Women's Prison in Soyapango, near his house; then another two in the Quezaltepeque penal center, an hour away by public transportation; The last stop was Izalco, where Verónica took five hours each day between the trip and the return.
He found out about the transfers through Facebook or WhatsApp groups that announced that the prisoners were being removed and their probable destination. There she arrived with her things. “It turns out that when they are transferred they are not allowed to take any of their belongings. So I leave already prepared, I leave with his mat because it was allowed in that prison. And with her package. They always receive it, now it is not a guarantee, because there is no receipt. You leave confident that it will really come to you,” she says sadly.
The woman had closed the pupusería while Roberto was still in prison, to resume it together when he got out. “I said, so that he stays s
trong, he should not lack his food. Even if it's just a little bit that he eats, apart from what they are supposed to give him.” Diabetic and hypertensive, Reyes discovered that his partner was moved from cell to cell but always within the area that family members identified for the sick. “My consolation was that since I was there, I wish they were giving him medical attention for his health conditions.” He asked every time. Always the same answer: “That's fine.”
“This is how it was month by month with the packages. There was no information about the inmates. I never received a call from the Government lawyer. I was never able to talk to Roberto. “I was never able to see it.” Until January 27, 2024. He received the call from the Izalco prison at 10:00 in the morning. They didn't give him much information. His partner had died at the Saldaña hospital in San Salvador and she had to go get him. “When we had to recognize him… he was a person, but in a skull-like state. In other words, he was of no use, as I made an effort every 15 days to bring him food. His skin was sticking to his bones. The skin of his face rested on his skull. When they discovered it it was a skeleton. He didn't eat, I don't know since when.” Veronica just cries now.
You will receive the results of the autopsy in a month and the hospital assessment in about 10 days. At the moment she only has a document written in pen where the head of the Forensic Medicine Institute wrote as a forensic opinion: “He died as a result of pulmonary edema (preliminary cause, pending report of complementary studies).” Verónica Reyes believes that by not receiving medical attention in prison, her health could have been complicated. The hell inside Bukele's prisons is not a secret: several reports from organizations and survivors report that prisoners have to sleep standing up due to lack of space, that beatings are frequent, that they never leave the cell or see the light, who receive cold water hoses, electric shocks, who do not eat nor have the right to medication.
“If he got worse, I could have brought him some medicine, because there are many comments that they don't have enough for treatments. But I never received a notice.” Cry. Repeat the consequences: “In those inhumane conditions, my partner died. Without the right to defend herself, to have a trial where evidence and documents were presented, to prove whether she was guilty or not. The only thing they told me was that the hearings were for 2025, how was he going to last so long?
Verónica says she is sure that she is going to vote this Sunday. She doesn't want Roberto's story to repeat itself. Although she recognizes that she is afraid, for her and her son, an aeronautics student. “Speaking ill of the regime is like a crime. You speak badly, they throw you out of the regime. You claim, the regime. To this day, if my son goes out, I am uncertain, what will happen outside when I am not there, where I do not see him, because now they are taken away even though they have no crime. So what guarantee do we have of security? I think that is not security.”
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