El Salvador endorses Bukele's administration after one year under a state of emergency

Stacked against each other, wearing little more than white briefs, the inmates take possession of their new cells. The images are distributed by the Salvadoran government itself. Now, one year after establishing a state of emergency, Nayib Bukele, the world's highest-rated president according to polls, is boasting about his results.

The data supports the singular president's version of events. The Minister of Justice and Public Security, Gustavo Villatoro, provided some oof the numbers on social networks: 65,000 "terrorists" in detention, additionally, the Salvadoran state has confiscated more than 3,000 vehicles, 15,600 cell phones and over $1.7 million in cash from criminal organizations.

According to government representatives, the gangs have virtually disappeared from the streets. The culprits of the overwhelming insecurity into which the country was plunged after its civil war are now flooding the prisons. As of late summer 2022, about 2% of the population is now estimated to be behind bars.

In order to achieve this goal, the Salvadoran government undertook the construction of the largest prison in the Americas, the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (Cecot). A colossal complex to house 40,000 prisoners in common cells.

Polls back Bukele

Outside Cecot, the Salvadoran population claims to be able to breathe easy again, without the threat of street gangs. The change from one president to another has never been so evident in the Central American country. Bukele has brought a true revolution, and Salvadorans have taken notice.

"People say it's a change. You can walk down the street with complete peace of mind. It is a fact that everyone seems to agree with," Nerea (last name omitted at the request of the source), a humanitarian worker in the country, told Voz Media. El Salvador has gone from 105 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants per year to only 7.8. This is the best figure in its history. What used to be the first country in this ranking, today has the second best rate in Central America (including Mexico).

According to polls by CID Gallup, 95% of Salvadorans approve of Bukele's performance in the area of security and 91% agree with the measures taken against gang members. According to estimates by the newspaper La Prensa Gráfica, 87% of the Salvadoran population approves of Bukele's administration. Only 9.5% oppose the millennial president's measures.

International pressure

At what cost? The issue has been pointed out by several media outlets and international organizations such as Humans Rights Watch (HRW), which believe that democracy has been put in check in El Salvador because of the "coolest dictator in the world" (as Bukele himself came to define himself on Twitter) and his policies from the moment he forced the dissolution of the Constitutional Court and the Attorney General's Office, by using his influence in the Legislative Assembly.

"The other side of the coin is the fear of the police," Nerea explains. "In the midst of a state of emergency, the forces of law and order and the military conduct rigorous inspections," he adds. Controls are particularly focused on young men, while reports of arbitrary arrests are multiplying.

Tamara Taraciuk Broner, HRW's acting director for the Americas, said in January that her organization had sufficient evidence to corroborate its accusations against the Bukele government. According to this NGO, hundreds of people have been detained and processed without basic guarantees.

Bukele, for his part, continues to respond to the accusations via Twitter, his favorite network. For the young president, the results of his efforts are more important than anything else. "How many more decades, filled with tens of thousands of dead, should we Salvadorans have endured, so that the prescriptions of the NGOs and the 'international community' would begin to work?" he tweeted this week.

But if Bukele's measures are so cruel, how does he manage to maintain popular support? Ioan Grillo, a journalist based in Mexico, thinks he has the answer. This expert on drug cartels and the world of gangs assures that Salvadoran maras, unlike Colombian or Mexican criminal organizations, do not have the same large revenues or resources derived from drug trafficking. Instead, they bleed the population with petty crime and robberies. The locals then have no sympathy for the gang members.

On the road to re-election

Bukele himself also claimed to have his own response. In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, the Salvadoran president affirmed that his popularity is explained by the fact that he has done his duty. "That's the main thing a president should do: work for his country," he stated with conviction.

With the results of the polls, and with the approval of the courts for his reelection, Nayib Bukele has the 2024 presidential elections practically in hand. In addition to being the highest rated president in the country's history, he would also become the first to repeat his term in office since the promulgation of the current Constitution in 1983.