The country once known for having the highest murder rate in the world, El Salvador, is now the safest country in Latin America.
New figures from the Salvadoran government of President Nayib Bukele show only 114 murders in 2024. In the context of El Salvador’s recent history, 114 is astonishingly low. The trend line is clear. In 2023, the country suffered 154 homicides. In 2022, there were 495. In 2021 and 2020, there were more than 1,000. In 2019, more than 2,000 Salvadorans were murdered. Applied per 100,000 people, El Salvador’s homicide rate is now one-tenth that of Mexico and 30 times lower than that of Jamaica.
This reduction in murders is a stunning moral victory for the people of El Salvador and an unprecedented boon for their future prospects. Bukele deserves much credit.
Since 2021, he has presided over a massive and ruthless crackdown on the MS-13 and 18th Street crime gangs that turned El Salvador into a dystopia. Relying on a parliamentary state of emergency order, Bukele sent the military and heavily armed police into gang-controlled neighborhoods. Gang members were detained en masse, and any show of resistance was crushed with great force. The age of criminal culpability was lowered to prevent young teenagers from carrying forward the work of their superiors. Gang members have been imprisoned simply for membership in a proscribed organization. In turn, where displays of abundant gang tattoos were once markers of power and purveyors of fear, those tattoos now earn a one-way ticket to prison. This is a problem for the gang members who once happily adorned their faces with such tattoos.
The costs of Bukele’s crackdown have sometimes extended to the innocent. By his own admission, thousands of innocents have been caught in the dragnet (though Bukele said many have been released). Recent data suggest that a remarkable 3.3% of all Salvadoran men are now incarcerated. The vast majority of these individuals are being detained without trial.
The dividends for El Salvador and its people are clear. The country was on the verge of collapse. Now, it has a chance to thrive.
Salvadorans recognize this. Bukele’s approval ratings have regularly exceeded 90% since spring 2023. A good test of his popularity is to ask Salvadorans living in the United States how they feel about their president. The response is normally one of effusive praise. This is unsurprising. In just a few years, El Salvador has transitioned from a hell hole to a model for security in Latin America.
The contrast between Bukele’s anti-crime strategy and that favored by other regional leaders is striking. He has focused on delivering the first human imperative: durable safety. Other leaders, such as Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, and Honduras’s Xiomara Castro, placate the gangs in return for bribes and short-term pledges of political fealty. Sheinbaum’s Morena party is viewed by the FBI and DEA as a subsidiary of the Sinaloa Cartel. Shamefully, the Biden administration has viewed vast aid flows to corrupt states such as Mexico and Honduras as preferable to cooperation with pro-American leaders such as Bukele, who are regarded as unacceptable because they are “right-wing.” Until Bukele’s success made it utterly untenable, the Biden administration treated him with open derision. President-elect Donald Trump could chart a different diplomatic course.
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The true story of El Salvador’s success isn’t measured simply by the many hundreds or thousands of Salvadorans who would otherwise now be dead but for Bukele’s policy. It is also measured by the approval Bukele’s policies get from the great majority of his fellow citizens. That approval stems from the simple fact that people are finally free to pursue happiness without fear that walking down the street might well lead to their robbery, rape, or murder.
El Salvador was on the verge of becoming a Haiti-style Mad Max reality. Now, it is credibly seeking to attract Western investment and tourists.
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Publish date : 2025-01-08 16:01:00
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