More than 56,000 arrests since March, a government that refuses to be accountable to international organizations, hundreds of accusations of human rights violations, and a young president who relentlessly insists on his war against gangs. At BioBioChile we tell you all the details of the controversial president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.
Nayib Bukele, a president who is currently leading an unlimited battle in El Salvador to pacify the country, has the support of many salvadorans but also has detractors inside and outside the country.
an alleged agreement (and later break) of the government with the gang organization Mara Salvatrucha (MS) was what triggered an emergency regime in March of this year.
Without asking background information, without an arrest warrant and “without any criteria” El Salvador’s police and militia have the power to arrest anyone suspected of belonging to organized crime.
The government boasts of becoming one of the safest countries in Latin America, detaining more than 57.000 personas.
This week Bukele himself “celebrated” through Twitter the arrest of 140 suspected gang members in less than two days.
“It is clear that those who oppose this are against human rights, Salvadorans, peace, freedom and justice,” says the president of El Salvador on his networks.
The municipality of Soyapango, the most populous in our country, has been completely fenced off since yesterday morning.
In less than 48 hours, more than 140 gang members have been arrested inside the fence.
The Territorial Control is already totally of the State. pic.twitter.com/JI81dCZXnq
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) December 5, 2022
“A president born of despair”
To deepen the topic, BioBioChile communicated with a Salvadoran journalist who lives in Chile, Paola German, who gave details of this unconventional leader.
To be one of the youngest Latin American leaders today, he can be considered a very conservative man, due to the reality of his country.
“He (Bukele) is very careful not to have clear positions on controversial issues. El Salvador is a Catholic country with a religious tradition”, says Paola.
“That is what the average Salvadoran likes, in addition to the issue of street safety,” he added.
“For me, Nayib Bukele is a figure born out of the Salvadoran’s desperation for greater public security,” Paula explained.
“The Salvadoran heritage is to have violence in their DNA, because the civil war and achieved everything, it was with the issue of weapons. The Salvadoran who did not take up arms got used to seeing violence around him,” he commented.
“Then the gangs were born due to the same social neglect of the governments that arrived with the peace agreements and did not worry about educating the population. That is where figures like Bukele are born ”, said the Salvadoran journalist.
Report of The Lighthouse
An essential part of this scenario is understanding the origin of the war against gangs led by Nayib Bukele.
For this, it is necessary to go to the report made by the media The lighthouse From El Salvador.
El Faro linked the March massacre to the rupture of an alleged pact between the Executive and the gangs, where a total of 87 people were murdered.
These crimes were not long in being attributed by the Salvadoran Executive to those criminal groups known as “gangs” o “non-existent”.
This wave of violence in El Salvador led at the end of March to the approval by Congress of a exception regime.
It was there that El Faro demonstrated the breaking of an alleged pact between the Salvadoran government and the gangs, which provoked the massacre at the end of March.
To carry out this investigation, the journalist carlos martinez He says he has been in contact with two leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha-13 and one of the Barrio 18, the most influential groups in El Salvador.
Detainees, Human Rights and Nayib Bukele
In the midst of all this war, the president of El Salvador refused to render accounts with various international human rights organizations, as was the case with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Specifically, Bukele refused to provide information regarding the accusations of arbitrary arrests, deaths in state custody and torture under an exceptional regime.
“Official information flowed in El Salvador in previous governments,” recalled journalist Paola Alemán.
“Now, if you ask for unofficial information on how much the deputies are spending, how much Bukele is spending on State , that information is not there,” he lamented.
The international community is being informed, and not by Bukele’s “media”, about what is happening in the country.
Now, more than ever, real journalism is important from #The Savioreven though the military wants to bring him to his knees, like the EDH photojournalist.— Paola German (@paola__aleman) March 30, 2022
“This makes it much easier for institutions not to deliver the information. For example, Legal Medicine (Institute of legal medicine) It doesn’t really tell you how many deaths there are from violence and how many deaths there are from other acts that are not violent,” he added.
According to different NGOs, there is a lack of medical care for detainees, especially people with HIV, chronic illnesses, and psychiatric conditions.
He also pointed out that they have registered cases of people who have been beaten by police and soldiers after being arrested, including minors.
Nayib Bukele and bitcoin in El Salvador
One of the most controversial aspects of Bekele throughout his entire term, in addition to the war against gangs, is the establishment -as an official payment method- of the bitcoin cryptocurrency in El Salvador.
Since the Legislative Body, at the request of Bukele, approved the Bitcoin Law, the Government supposedly bought 2,381 bitcoins for more than 100 million dollars, whose value has been reduced by the falls it has had.
Although bitcoin transactions could be publicly known by the address of the digital wallet in which they are stored, the government has not disclosed this information.
Bitcoin, the best known and most valuable cryptocurrency, fell 5.35% after cryptocurrency platform FTX filed for bankruptcy in the United States, due to this decision.
As a result of this situation, web pages have emerged dedicated to rigorously following how much money has Bukele lost with this daring move.
Despite all this, “Salvadorans like to talk about their country and they themselves believe through publicity that the situation is under control,” says Paola Alemán.
“However, they do not know that the Bukele effect actually brings consequences for people who, although they are not gang members, are stigmatized in the vulnerable areas where they live,” he concluded.