From Peace Negotiator to Prisoner: Salvadoran Artist in Exile Fights for His Father's Freedom
Originally published by Global South World on 13 June, 2025
Atilio Montalvo Valiente has two passions: Making music and fighting autocracy and injustice.
This is the story of how:
His sick father, a hero of El Salvador’s peace process, was kidnapped and imprisoned by the government
His family endured threats and intimidation from the authorities and their supporters
He tricked his way into seeing his imprisoned father
He fled his home with less than an hour's notice to avoid arrest
He now lives in exile, seeking ways to continue his fight
When Valiente was just over two years old, in January 1992, the civil war in his native El Salvador came to an end. He knows this not only because he studied it, as every Salvadoran of his generation has, but because his father, Atilio Montalvo Cordero, was part of the negotiating team. The latter served as a commander of the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación (Popular Liberation Forces, FPL), one of the five guerrilla organisations that signed the accords that ended the armed conflict.
The Peace Agreement that Montalvo Cordero helped sign did not only seek to silence the guns but also to profoundly reform the Salvadoran system, so that ideological and political differences could be resolved through peaceful means. It also sought to depoliticise the security forces and put an end to decades of political persecution and exile for those who dissented. In short, Atilio Montalvo Valiente grew up in a country at peace, with democratic aspirations, one that his father helped build.
Three decades later, that optimism has faded. In the early hours of May 31, 2024, National Civilian Police (PNC) agents raided the private residence of the former guerrilla commander, who, hours later, was accused of allegedly planning terrorist acts in the context of President Nayib Bukele’s second inauguration, which took place on June 1. In February 2024, Nayib Bukele was re-elected in a controversial vote widely criticised as unconstitutional, since El Salvador’s Constitution prohibits consecutive presidential terms. His candidacy was enabled in 2021 by a widely criticised ruling from the Constitutional Court.
From the beginning, Atilio, Jr. denounced irregularities in his father’s process, calling it an arbitrary arrest. On social media and in the press, he detailed his father’s complex medical condition–diabetes, kidney failure, and ischemic heart disease—and reported that he was being denied access to both his lawyer and his family. A month after the arrest, he was forced into exile.
Speaking from Mexico City, where he now lives with refugee status granted by the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), Atilio Montalvo Valiente spoke to Global South World about his father’s arrest, how it reflects El Salvador’s democratic backslide, the moment he fled, and how his music has become a vehicle for processing and denouncing what he sees as an injustice and “the ultimate act of cruelty”.
“See you on the other side”
The last time Atilio saw his father, he wasn’t authorised to do so. In late June 2024, nearly a month after the 72-year-old former guerrilla commander had been taken into state custody, he was transferred to a hospital run by the Salvadoran Social Security Institute in the capital, San Salvador, to receive treatment for his various health conditions.
Up to that point, locating his father had proved nearly impossible. He explained that he had reached out to courthouses, the prosecutor’s office, hospitals, and the General Directorate of Penitentiaries, but received no information. So when he learned that his father had been taken to a hospital for a medical check-up, he went there with a clear objective: to speak with him directly, something authorities had not previously permitted.
“When I got to the hospital, I told the guard at the door, ‘Look, my cousin is in there and she asked me to bring her a sweater.’ A total lie. But they let me in, and I slipped into the Social Security hospital,” he told GSW. After deceiving a security guard, walking past long lines of people waiting to be seen, and avoiding police officers, he managed to see his father, whom he found “reduced, gaunt, skinny, unwell.”
Montalvo Valiente knows it may have been the last time he ever saw his father. That’s why, he says, in that hospital room, he hugged him tightly and told him: “I love you. I’m proud of you. See you on the other side.”
What that “other side” meant wasn’t clear, even to him: “It just came out of me,” he said. “But now I interpret it as ‘see you when we’re both with God or with the devil, wherever we end up.’ Or maybe it means ‘see you when you get out.’ Maybe it means see you in Mexico. It could mean so many things.”
As they embraced and cried together, he recalled, a police officer approached, asked for his ID, and reminded him he wasn’t allowed to be there and that the former commander wasn’t permitted visitors. According to his account, moments later, heavily armed officers awaited him at the hospital entrance and threatened to arrest him, too. That is when his father’s wife passed along a message whose source remains unknown: “You have to leave. Now.”
"Presumption of innocence no longer exists"
It was on May 30, 2024, at 10:19 pm that the official account of El Salvador’s National Civilian Police (PNC) announced the news on X: “Tonight we have arrested seven leaders of war veterans for planning explosive attacks at various points across the country for June 1st. They were part of the so-called “Salvadoran Insurrection Brigade, and their targets included gas stations, supermarkets, and public institutions.”
The post was accompanied by photos of explosives and an audio recording of a man, allegedly a war veteran, referencing the materials. Authorities have never identified the voice in the recording or offered further evidence to back their claims.
Atilio Montalvo Cordero’s name was not included in that initial message. However, just hours after the PNC’s tweet, he was arrested. By the next day, state-controlled media had linked him to the alleged plot, and government officials were already calling him a terrorist.
Global South World reached out to the National Civilian Police for comment on the alleged irregularities surrounding the arrest, but received no response by the time of publication. The presidential press secretary, who is responsible for coordinating official statements, was also contacted via Signal. Although the messages were marked as read, no reply was provided. In June 2024, a judge placed the case under seal, restricting access to further information about the charges and the alleged evidence against Montalvo Cordero.
On June 10, 2025, prosecutors were granted a six-month extension for the investigation phase in the case against Montalvo Cordero and the other former combatants accused of acts of terrorism. As a result, this stage will now conclude on December 14, 2025, and the defendants must remain in detention.
According to his son, Atilio Montalvo Valiente, the case is a fabrication by President Nayib Bukele’s administration, lacking credible evidence and built on a media narrative that has not been substantiated in court. “When [Bukele] took office for his second term, he made up a case accusing supposed opposition leaders of plotting attacks on the day of his inauguration. Among those alleged ‘opposition leaders,’ whom he calls terrorists without any proof, is my father,” he told Global South World.
At the time of his arrest, the former guerrilla commander was 72 years old and in fragile health. His son recalled that just a month earlier, Montalvo Cordero had suffered a heart attack that nearly killed him. “He has all the health issues you'd expect in someone his age: diabetes, poor circulation, and on top of that, he survived a war. He is physically worn down.”
The other men arrested in connection with the case are from the same generation, men in their sixties and seventies who once took up arms against a military dictatorship and later helped usher in a peace process. Montalvo Valiente argues: “They’re not a real threat, they’re old men, limping or with walking sticks, protesting in the streets.”
Still, he notes that in El Salvador, the presumption of innocence no longer exists, especially since March 2022, when Bukele’s legislature declared a state of exception that suspended constitutional protections for all citizens. Although initially intended to fight gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18, the decree has also affected those facing unrelated charges.
In December 2024, a report by Amnesty International stated that the state of emergency enabled “a policy of cruel and degrading treatment, including torture, inside correctional facilities.”
According to Montalvo Valiente, in the early hours of May 31, authorities didn’t even inform his father that he was being arrested. “They took him from his house under the pretence that he needed to answer questions about a case involving war veterans. At no point did they tell him he was being detained,” he said.” He also pointed out that his father was transported in a private vehicle, not a police patrol car.
From that moment on, the family was denied all contact. He has had very limited access to his lawyer, and repeated requests to substitute prison with less severe measures due to his medical condition have been denied. In June 2024, two weeks after the arrest, a special organised crime court placed the entire case under seal, an action the son believes is meant to silence the families of those detained.
“You should have the right to communicate with your loved ones, and judges should be impartial, but none of that exists,” Montalvo Valiente said. “On top of that, the lawyer has been harassed, and so has our family. The entire process is tainted. My father’s presumption of innocence has been ignored. They’re treating him like he’s Osama bin Laden, but he’s just a retired man.”
The same day, father and son got to reunite, and shortly before Montalvo Valiente fled the country, thanks to public pressure from the family on social media and in the press, Montalvo Cordero was transferred to La Occidental, a penitentiary for elderly detainees. The other men arrested in the same case remain in regular prison facilities.
“What’s being done to my dad feels like the ultimate cruelty. I’d even go as far as to say it’s an unnecessary cruelty, because he’s an old man who’s already nearing the end,” Montalvo Valiente says, and adds: “This is all about the international spotlight Bukele wants. He wants to be the face of the ‘biggest jail in the Americas.’”
Resisting from Mexico
“Zero out of ten. Zero stars. I don’t recommend this exile process,” joked Montalvo Valiente, who now lives in Mexico City with refugee status granted by the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) in 2024.
Following his father’s arrest, as he and other relatives publicly denounced what they described as due process violations, he began to notice they were being followed, photographed, and threatened on social media.
“A former guerrilla once told me there are two kinds of surveillance: one where you’ll never notice it, and another where they want you to know you’re being watched. We got the second kind. They wanted us to know they were watching our whole family closely. Imagine the level of intimidation and paranoia that creates.”
After moving between various safe houses and facing continued harassment, Montalvo Valiente had to make a difficult decision: stay and risk arrest himself, or leave the country. His own family was divided, as some urged him to keep fighting publicly for his father’s release, while others insisted he flee to avoid imprisonment.
That month, he recalls, was harrowing. “It was the longest month of my life. I couldn’t even eat, as I felt guilty knowing my dad was in jail without food. When it rained, I cried, knowing he was freezing in a two-by-two meter cell with fifteen other people. I knew he didn’t even have a bed. He was sleeping on the floor. I knew he had a wound that was getting more infected by the day.”
It was on the night when he finally managed to see his father, after receiving the fateful message from his stepmother, that he realised the decision he needed to make.
“In that moment, I understood,” he said. “I ran to the house where I was staying and packed whatever I could in 30 or 40 minutes. I’ve never packed that fast. And that was it, I left. The next day, I was in Mexico.”
Today, he faces the same paradox of exile: the relief of walking freely and without fear, and the anguish of being far from home, unable to continue fighting until his father is free.
Music as refuge
In conversation with Global South World, Atilio Montalvo Valiente shared that music has always been his sanctuary, an escape from a difficult childhood marked by the lingering wounds of civil war. “In my family, there are people who had bombs planted in their homes, people who were tortured, people who lived through horrific things. And even though we were a joyful, happy family on the surface, behind closed doors, there was a lot of pain,” he said.
That pain is one reason he had never written openly about politics, until his father’s arrest forced him to flee the country where he was raised with the post-war generation’s optimism for peace and democratic consolidation.
In late November 2024, Montalvo Valiente released his first solo song, Ídolo (Idol). In it, he critiques a common tradeoff demanded by certain political leaders: the illusion of safety in exchange for unquestioning loyalty and silence.
When asked whether the track is a direct jab at President Nayib Bukele, he was quick to broaden the scope. “It could be Bukele, it could be [Donald] Trump, it could be [Javier] Milei or [Nicolás] Maduro. I try to speak of mythological creatures, of archetypes in history that we humans keep repeating.”
Still, it is the Salvadoran government that ultimately fuels both his activism and his exile. In just three decades, El Salvador has shifted from a democratic promise to what The Economist Democracy Index now classifies as a hybrid regime, where formal democratic elements coexist with intensifying authoritarian practices.
“Salvadorans are revolutionaries in everything, even in fascism,” he said. “El Salvador has become a social experiment for a lot of people who aren’t even Salvadoran: famous crypto bros, incels, toxic masculinities who said, ‘This is our safe space to be crypto bros, incels, or toxic in peace.’ It’s such a small, particular territory that you can build a closed environment to test things like a punitive, prison-like society.”
In January 2025, he released his second solo song, Aquí, alongside a video with images of his dad speaking about the transition from war to peace, from authoritarianism to democracy, from barbarism to civilisation.
With this glimmer of optimism in mind, and despite the injustices he says his family is experiencing, Montalvo Valiente still clings to hope.
“I’ll tell you something my grandmother once said: things last longer than they seem. She was born in 1931. As a child, she lived through World War II, then through El Salvador’s military dictatorship, exile, democracy, and now this. She’s seen how the pendulum swings. And that’s how I see it too: ‘At some point, I can hope for justice.’ I don’t know if it’ll happen, I can’t know that, but I’ll spend my whole life fighting for it.”
