LETTER FROM SAN SALVADOR
Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele frequently promotes the accomplishment on his social media accounts, often showcasing it using drone footage. However, it's not the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), Central America's largest prison for gang members, which he also frequently publicized on video, but rather a cultural project.
In November 2023, the head of state inaugurated a new national library, the Binaes, which, like CECOT, was called "the largest and most modern in Central America," open around the clock and every day of the year. Bukele was quick to point out that these hours of operations were possible "thanks to the security that now reigns in the country" following the incarceration of nearly 75,000 pandilleros (gang members).
Re-elected on February 4, the highly popular Bukele made this library a valuable tool during his campaign to promote his image as the "world's coolest president." The building is one of four donated to El Salvador by China. Under former Salvadoran president Salvador Sánchez Cerén (2014-2019), El Salvador broke off relations with Taiwan in 2018 and recognized the People's Republic of China as "one and indivisible."
The following year, after Bukele's election, China financed four infrastructure projects in El Salvador: a football stadium, a port, a water treatment plant and a national library – projects chosen by the newly elected president, then 37 years old. "China is showing El Salvador, but also countries in the region that continue to recognize Taiwan, like Guatemala and Belize, that they can count on its help. These gifts were made for purely political reasons, to weaken Taiwan," noted the researcher Marisela Connelly, a China specialist at the Colmex University's Center for African and Asian Studies in Mexico City.
Video games, ball pit and Star Wars
Located in the heart of the historic center of San Salvador, the country's capital, the seven-story national library, lined with light strips, stands out alongside the national theater, the national palace and the cathedral. Beijing entrusted the $54 million project to the Chinese construction company Yanjian Group, which has already completed 28 cooperation projects in the name of its government around the world. According to Salvadoran Vice Minister of Culture Eric Doradea, the state's cultural heritage services collaborated on the project, with the library featuring "several elements of our culture, in particular its pyramidal shape, which calls to mind the mounds of pre-Columbian ceremonial centers."
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