Mexico City When Nayib Bukele spoke at the graduation ceremony for newly appointed army officers at the end of November, he found nothing but praise for the security forces and their role as peacemakers in violence-stricken El Salvador.
“Thanks to you, people have real peace again,” said the President of the Central American country in front of thousands of military and police officers. Bukele used the ceremony to announce the fifth phase of his controversial “Territorial Control Plan”.
Nine months ago, the young, dynamic and, above all, authoritarian head of state declared a state of emergency. Since then he has ruled with an iron hand, primarily against organized crime, arresting more than 58,000 people, expanding the powers of the security forces and restricting the rule of law. According to surveys, the population loves Bukele for this. Human rights activists criticize the 41-year-old.
So at the end of November Bukele announced to the security forces what was now going around the world as news: the complete sealing off and capture of a large suburb of the capital San Salvador by 10,000 soldiers and police officers in order to take action against members of the feared youth gangs – the so-called Maras.
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In the village of Soyapango, which has so far been effectively beyond the control of the state, the security forces are combing the houses and apartments of the residents and have so far arrested numerous suspects.
However, local residents criticized the fact that soldiers and police officers also took away young men who had nothing to do with the “MS-13” and “Barrio 18” gangs. But Bukele has never considered collateral damage. The “MS-13” is considered the most powerful criminal organization in the country.
The young head of government is known for breaking taboos. Human rights activists, for example, criticize his extremely tough course on criminals.
(Photo: Reuters)
The state of emergency, which has now lasted nine months, allows the president to wage a “war against the gangs” with which he wants to restore the state’s monopoly on the use of force. For decades, the Maras have controlled entire villages and neighborhoods in El Salvador, as well as in the neighboring countries of Guatemala and Honduras.
Gangs have controlled El Salvador for decades
They finance themselves primarily through extortion, but also through drug trafficking, money laundering and simple robberies. A United Nations study published in June 2020 found that street vendors and vendors alone paid around $20 million to gangs in 2015.
In addition to the structural poverty in the Central American countries, the violence of the maras is a key driver for migration to the USA. Tens of thousands of families with growing children are fleeing rather than having their daughters or sons forcibly recruited into the gangs.
>> Read more about this: El Salvador’s state finances are trembling
The maras, whose strength in Salvador is estimated at almost 100,000 members, have been just as bad a plague for the country as the drug cartels have been for Mexico for decades. The gangs are brutal, ruthless and control large parts of the country.
Whole neighborhoods are combed through – and in the process even innocent citizens are terrified.
(Photo: Reuters)
All of Bukele’s predecessors tried to break their power. Nobody made it. However, no other head of state relied so heavily on violence and ignored the rule of law as mercilessly as the incumbent head of state.
The Salvadorans support Bukele’s borderline measures
Nayib Bukele has governed El Salvador for a good three years and not only turned the country upside down economically by introducing Bitcoin as the official currency, but also significantly weakened democracy. According to a recent survey by the Central American University (UCA), three quarters of Salvadorans agree with the state of emergency. Because the measures taken by the President are successful.
They can hardly extort protection money anymore and they have lost control of the companies where they launder money. A prosecutor who has been investigating the affairs of the MS-13 for the past ten years
An investigator and a prosecutor who have been investigating the operations of the MS-13 for a decade told the Spanish daily El País in early November that the gang’s recruiting capacity, territorial control and criminal economy were at a critical juncture. “They can hardly extort protection money anymore and they have lost control of the companies where they launder money. If MS-13 were a legal business, it would have gone bankrupt long ago,” the prosecutor said.
The price of this success is high. Thousands of complaints about illegal arrests, cases of torture, forced relocations by the police and army, and murders in prisons are brought forward by relatives and human rights activists. This week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Salvadoran organization Cristosal plan to jointly present a report documenting serious abuses such as “disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment”.
More: Bitcoin President Bukele is reaching for total power in El Salvador