Amid Fierce War Against Gangs, Bukele Says El Salvador Recorded 365 Days Without Homicides

The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukelehas declared in the last few hours that his country records 365 days without homicideswhich “positions” it as “the safest in Latin America”.

Bukele stressed this Thursday in a Twitter message that Wednesday, May 10 closed “with 0 homicides nationwide” and that with that day “that’s 365 homicide-free days.” It is a report on the struggle of his administration against the gangs that dominated the streets of the Central American country.

For years, El Salvador had one of the worst homicide rates in all of Latin America, with the rate nearly double that of countries like Mexico, Brazil or Colombia. But that situation seems to have changed.

In any case, what the President has not made clear is that in his statistics, the Security authorities do not report the deaths of alleged gang members in “clashes” with the Police and the Army as homicides.

El Salvador is in a state of emergency as a measure to ‘fight’ the gangs. The measure is one year old and so far the arrest of more than 68,000 alleged gang members or related people to these structures, also known as maras.

The authorities attribute the drop in homicides to the emergency regime and the Territorial Control Plan, which according to official accounts were 496 in 2022, 57% less than in 2021.

The Salvadoran Minister of Security, Gustavo Villatoro, recently assured in an interview with EFE that the security forces carry out a “responsible job” within the emergency regime, which has already been in force for a year in the country, “attached a to the rule of law” and “to the laws”.

However, humanitarian organizations in the Central American country have registered up to mid-March at least 5,082 “direct victims” of human rights violations, mainly due to arbitrary detention, in the context of the emergency regime.

These data go hand in hand with what the government itself says, which ensures that more than 5,000 people with no connection to the gangs have been jailed and eventually released. Also according to the government, at least 90 people died in custody.

Nayib Bukele’s cinematic operation to transfer 2,000 gang members to a new mega-prison in El Salvador

In a mega-film production, the controversial president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, showed the transfer of 2,000 of the 40,000 gang members who were locked up in the Terrorism Confinement Center, a mega-prison with punishment cells and factories where the president assured that they will live for decades.

The prison, located 74 kilometers from the capital in the municipality of Tecoluca, San Vicente department, has 33 building blocks within 236 city blocks. It consists of prison pavilions with metal booths and punishment cells, virtual courtrooms and two modules for prison anti-leisure factories.

Two days before the move, a US Justice Department indictment against 13 alleged leaders of the MS-13 gang, for multiple crimes in New York, accused the gangs of negotiating with members of the Farabundo Martí Front government to the National Liberation (FMLN) to reduce killings in exchange for benefits, as well as with the rival right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) and the current government.