Crew cuts and shiny shoes: El Salvador schools get anti-gang makeover

Nayib Bukele Photographer: Juan Carlos/Bloomberg

Public schools in El Salvador on Monday began enforcing a new disciplinary code which requires students to say “please” and “thank you” and to wear “appropriate” conservative haircuts.

The new regulations bring iron-fisted President Nayib Bukele’s anti-gang crackdown into the classroom.

Implemented by his new education minister Karla Trigueros, an army officer who wears camouflage, the “school courtesy” rules require students to greet the teacher on entering the classroom, say “please” when requesting something, and express gratitude.

Shoes must be polished, uniforms must be spick and span, and boys must keep their hair short -- no quiffs, mullets or other embellishments -- under the rules announced by Trigueros last month.

Sonia Guerrero, a teacher at Jaime Francisco Lopez National Institute in the capital San Salvador, hailed the new rules as “very good” for both students and teachers.

But teacher union leader Idalia Zuniga complained that they represented the “militarization of public education.”

She added that failing students for transgressions, as threatened by Trigueros, violated El Salvador’s current school regulations.

Trigueros has warned that principals who do not enforce the new rules will be sanctioned.

Last week, she dismissed the director and deputy director of a high school in San Salvador for appearing in an old video shared by Bukele on X, in which students from the school are seen making gang signs with their hands.

Independent political commentator Carlos Araujo called the appointment of an army officer as minister “another sign of the authoritarianism” imposed by Bukele.

“They (the government) want to control everything, and they don’t want anyone to step out of line or stand out,” he said.

Bukele’s hardline approach to El Salvador’s powerful gangs has made him one of the world’s most popular leaders and a hero to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has called him a “model” for Latin America.

But campaigners have denounced gross abuses, pointing to the tens of thousands of men rounded up and held without charge on suspicion of gang membership since 2022.