🇸🇻 El Salvador

El Salvador is Central America's smallest and most densely populated country — 6.3 million people in just 21,000 square kilometers. GDP is about $33 billion. The country made global headlines by adopting Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021, the first country to do so. President Nayib Bukele's gang crackdown has slashed the murder rate from one of the world's highest to one of the lowest in Latin America, though at the cost of mass incarceration and human rights concerns. Remittances from the 2+ million Salvadorans in the US account for about 25% of GDP. The country sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire with 20+ volcanoes.

Remittances ($7+ billion annually) are the economic lifeline. Textiles, coffee, and sugar are the main exports. The US is overwhelmingly the dominant trade partner. The Bitcoin experiment has been controversial — the government bought over 5,000 BTC and built a Bitcoin-themed beach town. Manufacturing in free trade zones, particularly textiles, employs a significant workforce. GDP growth has been modest at 2-3%.

El Salvador's Joya de Cerén, a Maya farming village buried by volcanic ash in 600 AD, is called the "Pompeii of the Americas" — it's the best-preserved ancient village site in the Western Hemisphere. The country's pupusa (stuffed corn tortilla) was declared a national dish and has its own national day (November 13). El Salvador is one of the few countries where the gang truce approach has been tried at national scale.

Bukele's security transformation is real and popular, but the democratic erosion and Bitcoin gamble create uncertainty. The remittance dependency means El Salvador's economy is essentially controlled from Washington.