Deep Background on Bukele's Gulags in El Salvador / John Washington

This Is Hell!

News

5 • 930 Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2025

⏱️ 121 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John Washington joins us to discuss his recent piece in the New York Review of Books, "The Roots of Bukele’s Gulag." An all new "Rotten History" and "The Moment of Truth" segments follow the interview. Check out John's article here: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/06/01/the-roots-of-bukeles-gulag/ Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Transcript

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0:00.0	The water
0:03.0	Take a jack
0:19.0	Take a jack This is Making back!
0:41.7	This is Hell.
0:52.8	Live from the United States, where the law is far too often the crime, this is hell.
0:58.5	You may have seen the headlines this morning in the New York Times about the deal or deals, I guess.
1:07.4	The Trump administration was making to send Venezuelan immigrants to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, known as CCOT.
1:12.3	It's an abbreviation for what the actual name of it is in Spanish, CECOT.
1:21.2	That whole process from the negotiations the Trump administration was involved in to the Venezuelans who were picked up in the states and sent to El Salvador.
1:25.0	Seems to have been, as the New York Times headline today, reads,
1:30.2	U.S. botched a deal to swap Venezuelans held in El Salvador for Americans.
1:35.5	Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the U.S. envoy to Venezuela were both working on different deals and ended up at cross purposes.
1:40.0	Apparently, Secretary of State Rubio was involved in talks that would have led to the return
1:45.6	of several U.S. citizens held as political prisoners in Venezuela in exchange for the approximately
1:52.6	250 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador to be returned to Venezuela, avoiding detention in
2:00.4	Sikot, which El Salvador President Naïbe Buckele has promised
2:04.7	that anyone who enters will never see the light of day again. All sentences in Seacot are
2:11.8	life sentences. And considering the conditions in Seacot, many of those lives will be cut drastically short.
2:22.3	Meanwhile, President Trump had sent his own personal envoy with a different deal for Venezuela.
2:30.3	Take the deported Venezuelans in exchange for the U.S. allowing Chevron to continue its operations in Venezuela.
2:38.6	There had been sanctions put on Venezuela
2:40.7	because the Biden administration as well as the Trump administration
	...

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