El Salvador: Bukele's pact with criminal gangs

[Silvanus]

Wasn't sure where to post this. It sure isn't a "funny event", and it's only tangentially related to the US election. New thread it is.

El Salvador's Nayib Bukele was mayor of San Salvador from 2015-2019, then President from 2019. He campaigned on a strong anti-crime message, promising to stamp out gang activity, drugs & homicides. In 2022 he launched a massive anti-gang campaign, arresting over 80,000 people to date-- the homicide rate has dropped significantly.

Campaigners have pointed out that many of these arrests have been arbitrary, based on where someone lives or how they look. There have been hundreds of deaths in prison, and credible allegations of torture.

Now, several former leaders of a criminal gang have given a long video interview with El Faro. They say that there have long been secret agreements between Bukele and the criminal gang-- these include voter intimidation to assist Bukele's mayoral campaign in 2014, and instruction to keep the reported homicide rate low by concealing bodies. The Bukele gov apparently tolerated extortion and assisted leaders in evading capture in return.

El Faro has now been informed that 7 arrest warrants have been prepared for its journalists.

El Faro Denounces Possible Arrest Warrants for At Least Seven Staff Members in El Salvador

<p>A reliable source in El Salvador told El Faro that the Bukele-controlled Attorney General’s Office is preparing at least seven arrest warrants for members of El Faro. The source reached out following the publication of an interview with two former leaders of the 18th Street Revolucionarios on...

elfaro.net

This is the government that Donald Trump has agreed to pay to incarcerate people without charge.

 

[Schadrach]

and instruction to keep the reported homicide rate low by concealing bodies.

Wouldn't this mean that the missing persons rate would correspondingly go up? Like if you just vanish someone instead of letting the bodies be found, wouldn't people still notice they're gone and report it?

 

[Silvanus]

Wouldn't this mean that the missing persons rate would correspondingly go up? Like if you just vanish someone instead of letting the bodies be found, wouldn't people still notice they're gone and report it?

Much less of a headline statistic, I presume.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Yeah they just blast the low homicide rate all day every day and nobody can get any air to mention there are more disappearances. Side note, called it. I always had a feeling that low homicide rate was because of a deal.

 

[Gergar12]

Wasn't sure where to post this. It sure isn't a "funny event", and it's only tangentially related to the US election. New thread it is.

El Salvador's Nayib Bukele was mayor of San Salvador from 2015-2019, then President from 2019. He campaigned on a strong anti-crime message, promising to stamp out gang activity, drugs & homicides. In 2022 he launched a massive anti-gang campaign, arresting over 80,000 people to date-- the homicide rate has dropped significantly.

Campaigners have pointed out that many of these arrests have been arbitrary, based on where someone lives or how they look. There have been hundreds of deaths in prison, and credible allegations of torture.

Now, several former leaders of a criminal gang have given a long video interview with El Faro. They say that there have long been secret agreements between Bukele and the criminal gang-- these include voter intimidation to assist Bukele's mayoral campaign in 2014, and instruction to keep the reported homicide rate low by concealing bodies. The Bukele gov apparently tolerated extortion and assisted leaders in evading capture in return.

El Faro has now been informed that 7 arrest warrants have been prepared for its journalists.

El Faro Denounces Possible Arrest Warrants for At Least Seven Staff Members in El Salvador

<p>A reliable source in El Salvador told El Faro that the Bukele-controlled Attorney General’s Office is preparing at least seven arrest warrants for members of El Faro. The source reached out following the publication of an interview with two former leaders of the 18th Street Revolucionarios on...

elfaro.net

This is the government that Donald Trump has agreed to pay to incarcerate people without charge.

We need to napalm the Darien Jungle and build a highway to get more goods from South to North and vice-versa. Hillary Clinton who many hated was right to want more immigration, and or a hemispheric electric grid so that Mexico and Brazil don't face power outages that stifle growth. I don't care how many cartels we have to bribe, or jungle we burn. It would be so easy to do it to counter China's Belt and Road initiative. The US doesn't want it because of "illegal immigration", and some people in the region don't want it for stupid environmentalist reasons. The only way we get more money into regular people's hands is to increase the amount of trade that occurs instead of pointing ships at the US. Ross Perot was an idiot, Mexico's HDI did get better from US trade like avocados, and car parts. He's a bad-faith outsider, and while Bernie Sanders has good ideas on healthcare and the environment he was wrong on this too.

 

[Silvanus]

Wouldn't this mean that the missing persons rate would correspondingly go up?

Yeah they just blast the low homicide rate all day every day and nobody can get any air to mention there are more disappearances.

Yep, did a bit more reading: the OCCRP said in 2022 that El Salvador's disappearance rate spiked in 2019 and has been very high since. But the report had to be compiled by a group of NGOs-- the government apparently has no central reporting for this.

El Salvador Registers 4,060 Disappeared People under President Nayib Bukele

Of the last three presidents of El Salvador, the administration of Nayib Bukele has seen the highest average rate of disappearances of people, said a report released by the University Observatory of Human Rights last week.

www.occrp.org

 

[Agema]

Yep, did a bit more reading: the OCCRP said in 2022 that El Salvador's disappearance rate spiked in 2019 and has been very high since. But the report had to be compiled by a group of NGOs-- the government apparently has no central reporting for this.

If it weren't for the ocean of human suffering underneath, Bukele would just be all so... tawdry.

One can compare and contrast with Duterte in the the Philippines, who engaged in mass humanitarian abuse - but did at least organise plenty of actual crime-fighting.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

despite clear Britishness of John Oliver, may not play in uk without vpn adjacent tinkering, though phone browser seems indecisive on whether data saving mode counts as that or not. If I don't save these links when they first pop up in recommends they're seemingly banished entirely from search results too

John Oliver discusses the recent deportations by the Trump administration, the conditions in the facility people are being sent to abroad, and why even Henry Winkler could be in danger of being expelled from the U.S. Yeah, even national treasure Henry Winkler.

he shows clips I tried sharing here before but with only whole unedited live stream there was no way anyone was gonna see what Id hoped they'd see
oh they giveth and they taketh the perilous territory of comments



interesting background on the leader and the various historical roots of these gang affiliations

Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador and Trump’s number one Latin American buddy, is a renaissance man for our era. Crypto, memes, reddit. Repression, megaprisons, anti-communism. We take a look at the history of El Salvador and the ascent of the “coolest dictator in the world”.

Caio Almendra: https://x.com/caioalmendra
The U.S. is Not Special: https://caioalmendra.substack.com/s/the-us-is-not-special