Bukele makes El Salvador the safest country in Latin America, according to official figures

The government of El Salvador presented encouraging data on a significant reduction in homicides in 2023, ensuring that the country now has the lowest homicide rate in Latin America.

The figures revealed that the country recorded 154 homicides last year, which implies a reduction to 2.4 per 100,000 inhabitants.

"The daily average of annual homicide is 0.4, this places us, at the level of America, the second country and the first in Latin America; with the lowest homicide rate, just below Canada, which closed with 2.25 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants," said Security Minister Gustavo Villatoro.

The minister stated that these data also represent a "historical reduction" for the country since, according to him, there have not been such low figures since the civil war ended in 1992.

"El Salvador is officially the safest country in all of Latin America," President Nayib Bukele also celebrated through X, confirming the information offered by the minister.

It should be noted that the data has not yet been confirmed by other international organizations, which in the past have expressed concern about the lack of independent verification of data on homicides. However, the data provided by Statista on homicides in El Salvador in 2022 already placed the country second in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the lowest homicide rate, registering 7.8 per 100,000 inhabitants.

El Salvador attributes the improvement in security to the implementing of the emergency regime in force since 2022. "We have transformed the history of El Salvador in terms of public security, the country's homicide rate in 2018 was 53.1%, and in 2022 with 9 months of implementation of the emergency regime we began the aspiration of where we wanted to go. In 2023, we have closed with a rate of 2.4%, we are the safest country in Latin America and we are about to position ourselves as the safest country on the American continent," said Villatoro.

Although the implementation of the new security measures has generated criticism and concerns about alleged human rights violations, when Villatoro provided the homicide figures for 2023, the minister highlighted that it is precisely these policies that have allowed the country to transform. "We are experiencing a transformation as a country and society towards a true Salvadoran State, the population inside and outside the country is placing all their trust in President Nayib Bukele to make difficult decisions (…), to confront with courage and sovereignty these criminal organizations and international organizations in love with organized crime," he expressed.