During his recent speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele made the case for his country being the foremost representative of a viable way forward for Latin American and, in general, crime-ridden, developing nations:
El Salvador has gone from being the world’s murder capital to becoming the safest country in Latin America. El Salvador competes with Canada for being the safest country on the continent.
He emphasized that his policies are neither right- nor left-wing and that they are characterized by a general disregard for foreign recipes in tackling local realities, which means that national sovereignty has to be exercised and ideological preconceptions abandoned.
The results of this seemingly simple approach have, indeed, been impressive, as AP reported:
In 2015, El Salvador was considered one of the world’s most violent as it recorded 6,656 homicides, or about 106 per 100,000 people. So far this year, the National Civil Police have registered 146 homicides through Sept. 18, more than 72% below the same period last year.
As a consequence, the Salvadoran president enjoys widespread popularity:
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele could comfortably win the 2024 elections with 68.4% of the votes, according to an opinion poll released on Monday, despite debate over his constitutional eligibility to seek re-election.
The survey by the Center for Citizen Studies at the Francisco Gavidia University, found that Bukele’s closest opponent, from the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), had just 4.3% support.
His policies have also been lauded abroad, for example, by politicians like Eduardo Verástegui in Mexico, even as they are reviled by ones like Colombian President Gustavo Petro, whose approach has been to negotiate with the ELN terrorist group in his own country.
We may, therefore, characterize the sovereignty-centric, ideologically unaligned Bukele as representing a rising current in Latin American politics coming to confront and fill the gap left over by the failures of the so-called Pink Tide that has swept the continent in recent decades.
Finally, it is worth emphasizing the geopolitical and human dimensions of El Salvador’s current trajectory. Key to his speech at the UN was the idea that securing the country allows emigrants to return home:
Salvadorans abroad who have spent years without returning home are now investing in the country and have plans to come back. According to a study carried out last year, in 2022, by the International Organization for Migration at the United Nations, more than 60% of Salvadorians living in the United States plan to return.
From being on the periphery of the international system and contributing cheap labor to foreign centers of economic prosperity, the Central American country may become one of the first success stories in reversing the demographic exodus from the Global South to the Global North.
Source link : https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/bukele-the-un-and-the-future-of-latin-america/
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Publish date : 2023-09-29 03:00:00
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