El Salvador: The Safest Country in Latin America

El Salvador has been ravaged by gang violence for decades, and as with the situation involving Reagan and the Contras in Nicaragua, the issue is primarily of American origin. In 1980, a civil war erupted in El Salvador between the right-wing government and left-wing guerrillas, with the United States supporting the government. For over a decade, the guerrillas battled against the U.S.-backed government until a truce was eventually signed at the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City in 1992. The war resulted in the deaths of over 75,000 civilians, leading to nearly a quarter of the Salvadoran population fleeing to the United States.

Born in the United States among Central American migrants, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 (18th Street) gangs saw their members deported by US authorities in the 1990s. They subsequently re-established themselves in Honduras, Guatemala, and especially El Salvador, where they quickly assimilated existing gangs and fought for control. Since then, the country has witnessed a significant increase in gang membership, rising from 6,000 members in 2003 to approximately 86,000 in 2021.

As gang membership grew, so did the level of violence. In 2015, El Salvador's murder rate per capita was 104 per 100,000, the highest in the Western Hemisphere, with 6,600 homicides. This was ten times the murder rate in New York and equated to approximately 1/10th of 1 per cent of El Salvador's population being murdered that year. To provide some perspective, it's akin to 330,000 Americans being murdered in a single year.

Since the early 2000s, successive presidents of El Salvador have employed various techniques to address the violence issue. In 2003, former President Francisco Flores used a policy known as "mano dura," or the "strong hand," to deploy troops into impoverished neighbourhoods and increase the country's prison population. Then-San Salvador Mayor Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez, aged 34 at the time, criticised these actions as "immoral" and "impractical." However, as the violence escalated, he would later change his views and aspirations. 

Three years later, in 2019, Bukele assumed office, winning 53 per cent of the vote and becoming the youngest president in Latin America. He took office on June 1st, and promptly set about tackling the gangs. Within four years, he claimed El Salvador as the safest country in Latin America. Is he right? And, above all, how did he achieve this?

Two weeks after taking office, Bukele launched his 'Territorial Control Plan', which involved modernising the country's national security forces by providing them with powerful firearms and surveillance equipment and increasing their presence in gang-controlled areas. In the first two months, a total of 5,000 people were arrested nationwide. Between 2018 and 2019, the homicide rate fell by 30 per cent, from 53 per 100,000 (the highest in the world at the time) to 36 per 100,000. By 2021, it had decreased another 50 per cent to 17.6 per 100,000, a figure that the InSight crime think tank deemed "unimaginable" compared to 2015 figures. René Merino Monroy, the Minister of Defence, attributed the sharp decline in homicides to the gang crackdown.

However, an investigation by the online magazine El Faro disputes this claim. They accused Bukele of striking a deal with MS-13, offering prisoners better conditions and privileges in exchange for a reduction in murders. Bukele vehemently denies these allegations.

Nonetheless, the crackdown did not deter the gangs. Between March 25 and 27, 2022, MS-13 killed 87 Salvadorans in three days, including 62 on a single Saturday, marking the highest daily total in decades. What was different this time was that, instead of targeting rival gang members, they went after individuals with no gang affiliation: shopkeepers, fruit sellers, and ordinary citizens. Gang members even left a corpse on the road leading to Surf City, an expensive beachfront area on the Pacific Coast, as if to taunt Bukele.

The retaliation was swift and brutal. Bukele declared a State of Exception on March 27th. He suspended constitutional rights, eliminating due process and freedom of association. During this period, private communications could be monitored without warrants, and children were tried as adults. As of August 10th, 2023, more than 72,000 people accused of having gang affiliations had been arrested.

With so many arrests, the question arose: where do we put them? Prior to Bukele's tenure, El Salvador seemed to have a soft approach to crime, with 29 prisons housing a population of 36,000 inmates, a surprisingly low number for a country with the world's highest murder rate. So, in January 2023, Bukele opened a new Supermax prison. With a capacity of 40,000, the Terrorism Confinement Center is said to be the largest prison in the Americas, doubling the nation's prison capacity. With more than 63,000 suspected gang members behind bars, El Salvador currently has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 2 per cent of its population locked up.

This has angered human rights groups, with Amnesty International accusing El Salvador of "massive human rights violations." While there's some truth in this— after all, even some of the most violent people on the planet should have the right to legal representation—emergency orders such as the State of Exception are typically designed to have a sunset clause. Nevertheless, as of the time of writing, this order has been extended fifteen times by the Legislative Assembly, the legislative branch of government.

It's crucial to note that El Salvador has classified gang members as terrorists, mirroring what the United States did during the war on terror when it enacted the Patriot Act. The key distinction is that gang violence has a much more significant impact on El Salvador than a single act of terrorism has on the United States.

While some evidence suggests that mass incarceration has little impact on crime in certain countries, like the United States and the U.K., it's vital to consider the actual data. So, does mass incarceration work in El Salvador? In 2021, there were 1,140 homicides. By the time Bukele had rounded up the rest, the number had dropped to 496 in 2022, representing a 56 per cent reduction. In the first six months of 2023, the Salvadoran National Police recorded 74 homicides. When you double that number and divide it by 6.3 million (the population of El Salvador), you get a per capita rate of 2.3 per 100,000. That's your answer.

So, is El Salvador the safest country in Latin America? Yes, it is.