The logo of El Salvador’s CECOT prison looks a lot like the ISIS logo.
This proves nothing, of course. But when I’m not wearing sight aids my mind has been trained over a lifetime to match low-info, blurry images to the closest matching sign in my inventory (everyone’s mind does this of course, but because of my low vision I suspect I do it faster and better than most.) Here’s what the two logos look like through a Photoshop filter I made to closely simulate my unaided sight:
Both logos have a white-on-black color scheme. Both feature a white circle with black markings. Both have similar ratios of circle-to-text. If I see one of these logos on a laptop screen and I can’t find my glasses, I have a hard time picking them apart on first glance. Global brand recognition of the ISIS flag is high and is in the Christian and secular west nearly universally associated with fear, and this seemingly-superficial similarity may at minimum count as a visual metaphor (Marlan, 2018) or even trademark dilution via associative cognition (Tushnet, 2007).
I found no evidence that this similarity is intentional. Even if it is, I doubt any such evidence will ever come to light; admitting inspiration came from an organization so universally loathed in the Christian and secular west would create unnecessary political risk for Nayib Bukele’s government and its Trumpist U.S. backers. But CECOT’s logo is part of a project of political branding much as the black-field-white circle banner was for ISIS (Bandopadhyaya, 2019), and the similarity of these projects is more than graphical. CECOT was built not just to incarcerate gangs but also to generate propaganda images that inspire fear among outsiders (Oette, 2024) and encourage public acceptance of violent and supposedly necessary measures towards achieving populist social change (Rosen et al., 2023). These are goals ISIS shared.
Whether CECOT’s logo was meant to subconsciously remind us of ISIS or not, the resemblance should prompt us to examine nominally-Christian western societies like El Salvador and the United States, their flagging commitment to the Christian values of forgiveness and redemption, and their drift towards glorification of violence.
Further Reading
Bandopadhyaya, S. (2019). Branding the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Global Media and Communication, 15(3), 285–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742766519874380
Marlan, D. (2018). Visual metaphor and trademark distinctiveness. Washington Law Review, 93(2), 767–826. https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr/vol93/iss2/5/
Oette, L. (2024). Degradation as salvation: Reflections on El Salvador’s punitive prison model. Torture Journal, 34(1), 143–147. https://doi.org/10.7146/torture.v34i1.144071
Rosen, J. D., Cutrona, S., & Lindquist, K. (2023). Gangs, violence, and fear: Punitive Darwinism in El Salvador. Crime, Law and Social Change, 79(2), 175–194. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-022-10040-3
Tushnet, R. (2007). Gone in sixty milliseconds: Trademark law and cognitive science. Texas Law Review, 86, 507–534. https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/792/