On Thursday, we discovered the delirious images of Kristi Noem, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, the mega-prison in El Salvador used to combat gangs. The visit is part of the cooperation on migration between the governments of Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele. Recently, the United States interned 200 deported Venezuelans accused of belonging to criminal gangs. To do so, it used an 18th-century law, and there was no trial.
The scenes we've seen previously of this enormous prison are shocking due to the control and confinement protocols for the prisoners, dressed only in white underwear and with shaved heads, crammed into enormous cells. Kristi Noem recorded a video designed for social media, shot vertically on a cell phone. She stood in front of one of the large bars where dozens of prisoners were being held. All the men, half-naked and silent, as if stunned, watched the filming and became part of the scenery. Noem, who conforms to the feminine stereotype that panders to Trump, wore an official hat that granted her authority. The message was directed directly at potential migrants interested in entering the United States: "I want you to know that if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you may face. [...] You will be removed and prosecuted. Know that these facilities are one of the tools we use if you commit a crime." We were witnessing a grotesque staging of power and punishment. A performative act that represents a return to the idea of public corporal punishment, torture, and torment before the people as a lesson and a mechanism of terror, just as it was done in the 18th century.
The resulting images were worthy of a influencer TikTok, where the protagonist's frivolity contrasted with the sordid and cruel panorama that surrounded her. It turned the back insiders into one props In a theatrical way, the prisoners' bodies were used as scenery. They became objects. Their individuality was erased, transforming them into a controlled, homogeneous mass stripped of identity. Noem took advantage of this image to display an obscene, extreme, and effective power. The pride of repression. In the background, the harm behind bars, humiliated and deactivated. In the foreground, Kristi Noem representing good, conforming to the most typical comic book heroine model. A staging that fits Bukele's visual strategies, in which the prison footage has an air of reality extreme, a kind of Squid Game. Noem, standing there, became the show's glamorous host.
Symbolically, the visit and the coordinated spectacle between El Salvador and the United States emits the effluvia of diplomatic globalization from the most authoritarian right. The propaganda of a new model of expanding national security.
