SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Principals this week in El Salvador began greeting students individually at school gates, not only to wish them “buenos días,” but also to inspect their haircuts and school uniforms.
President Nayib Bukele has expanded his efforts to remake his country to students’ appearance as part of bringing discipline back to schools, once a recruiting ground for the country’s powerful gangs.
His newly appointed education minister, Karla Trigueros, is an Army captain and physician who visits the country’s schools wearing fatigues.
She sent a memo Monday to all school principals saying not only would they be held to a high standard as role models for students, but they must stand at the gate looking for clean and neat uniforms, “appropriate” haircuts and formal greetings from students.
Failure to follow the directives would be considered a “serious lack of administrative responsibility,” Trigueros said in the memo.
The rules already existed, but weren’t enforced. The order generated lines in barbershops across the country as boys sat for neat, high and tight haircuts and many students posted videos of themselves being shorn.
Bukele is a millennial leader who leaned toward baseball caps and jeans during his first term but has taken on more formality in his second. He shared the memo on X, writing, “to build the El Salvador we dream of, it’s clear we must completely transform our educational system.”
Anecdotally, parents seemed to support the latest move by the highly popular president too.
“I feel like it’s good, that’s how you straighten them out from a young age,” mother María Barrera said Thursday as she watched her son enter the Concha Viuda de Escalon school.
“I didn’t know, but my son came clean, though a little hairy,” said María Segovia, who takes her son to school on her way to work. “I took him to the barber today. We’re going to comply because it’s good.”
Parent Ramon Valladares alluded to the powerful gangs that ruled neighborhoods and recruited school kids for years before Bukele’s crackdown that has imprisoned more than 88,000 people suspected of gang ties. In those days, teachers feared imposing discipline on students who might have gang connections.
“Now that the government is putting things in order, maybe people might not like it, right?” Valladares said. “But there are some families like ours who are open-minded about any situation. So for me, it’s great.”
One student who was pulled out of line and identified himself only as Juan said they got him for not having a school insignia on his shirt pocket.
“I promised to bring it tomorrow,” he said. “I thought it wasn’t so serious and I put on another shirt.”
Vicky Alvarado, principal at the Francisco Menéndez Nation Institute, said “the students always gets in, their entrance is never prohibited, what we do is call attention so they comply.”
Bukele’s administration recently alleged the gangs were trying to reestablish themselves through schools. In June, more than 40 students were arrested at three public schools in the capital, San Salvador.
One of the country’s teachers’ unions said it supported the new guidance, but believed it was necessary to adjust laws protecting children that made it difficult to impose school discipline.
“Many teachers, in a desire to achieve order and discipline in schools, were reported and many were punished,” said Paz Zetino Gutiérrez, secretary of the El Salvador Public School Teachers Union.
Attempts to regulate hairstyles in U.S. school districts have caused a furor. Some were criticized for disproportionately affecting students of color and attempting to deny cultural and religious identities.
Human rights lawyer Jayme Magaña criticized the instructions, however, saying the requirements in the Trigueros memo could create hardships for families with limited resources.
“If moms can’t pay the barbershop, if their homes don’t have (running) water, (or) electricity to iron, if they haven’t given them shoes, put yourself in that position Minister (Trigueros), and dress like a civilian,” Magaña wrote on X.
Bukele trolled those he called “haters” in a post on X late Thursday, saying critics accuse Trigueros of repressing students above a video of girls asking her for her autograph.
