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An important March anniversary for Salvadorans arrives next week. March 24th marks the 44th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Oscar Romero, who was assassinated by agents of the political elite who regarded their own people as enemies. And March 27 marks the start of the third year under the “state of exception” declared by President Nayib Bukele for 2022. The decree authorized extraordinary measures, including suspension of civil liberties, to suppress gang violence.
President Bukele's decree received its 24th consecutive one-month extension on March 9, and was approved with 67 votes in El Salvador's 84-seat Congress, where President Bukele's Nuevas Ideology party holds an overwhelming majority following February elections.
The president has used his emergency powers to detain more than 78,000 suspected gangsters in what human rights groups call an arbitrary and violent security crackdown. Many arrests were made based on a person's appearance or the neighborhood in which they lived. The government was forced to release more than 7,000 people due to a lack of evidence linking them to crimes.
The original 30-day “state of exception” order, declared after 87 murders in two days, gives security forces the power to arrest anyone suspected of belonging to or supporting gangs. It also suspends the right to know the reasons for detention, legal defense during initial investigation, privacy of communications and correspondence, and freedom of association. The state of exception also extends the period during which suspects can be detained without charge in El Salvador to 15 days.
The 2022 State Department assessment noted: “Since the declaration, there have been numerous reports of arbitrary arrests, home invasions, unfair judicial processes, and deaths in custody. “More than 52,000 people were arrested in the first six months of the state of exception, leading to allegations of overcrowding and inhumane treatment in prisons.”
And a year after the law went into effect, the Central American human rights advocacy group Cristosal published a report showing that 153 people detained under the law had died. “None of the deceased had been convicted of the crime with which they were charged at the time of their arrest,” the report’s authors said. Cristosal also contains records of deaths resulting from torture, negligence, and even malnutrition.
According to the report, since the declaration of emergency, “tens of thousands of people have been arrested without prior investigation and subjected to torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment in an already collapsing prison system or in prisons created to enforce the regime. As a result, gang terror was replaced by organized state violence.”
The president's extraordinary powers have been repeatedly deplored by civil libertarians and human rights advocates inside and outside El Salvador. In a normally functioning society, they may be the kind of authoritarian power that the general public is reluctant to hand over to government. Particularly in societies like El Salvador, we know all too well the potential suffering of governments and security forces operating there. Jokes about your own people. But in El Salvador, which is tired of crime, Mr. Bukele firm hand (The 'hard' approach to gangs has enjoyed widespread public and church support.
Months after the decree was issued, Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas of San Salvador acknowledged that most Salvadorans supported the law. El Salvador's gangs, primarily Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18, are estimated to have about 70,000 members. Rooted in the Los Angeles gang culture experienced by Salvadoran immigrants to the United States who were later deported, gangs have controlled entire communities. The gangs fought each other and the Salvadoran police. Its members carried out lucrative kidnapping and extortion rackets and were harassed and killed with impunity.
Archbishop Escobar Alas said at a press conference in July 2022: “People are afraid to go back to their old ways now that they have started living without this scourge. People don't want violence to happen again. They not only do this [emergency measures] “They continue to want to move forward to end the violence.”
El Salvador's Catholic Church has welcomed the improving security situation but has at times expressed concern about the process. Archbishop Escobar Alas has been criticized for expressing tacit support for the president.
The archbishop is campaigning to canonize 47 saints, including Saint Oscar Romero and Blessed Rutilio Grande, who were martyred while resisting government oppression and brutality. Among the candidates for sainthood are six notorious Jesuits and their staff murdered on the campus of the Jesuit University of Central America in San Salvador in 1989, and four American church women raped and murdered by the military in 1980. These martyrs, the archbishop said, They were like Father Grande and Archbishop Romero. Always close to truth and justice, always advocated for the poor.
The archbishop was recently interviewed by reporters on the UCA radio station when he was asked if there were any similarities between the political context in which the 47 priests, catechists and laypeople were martyred and the current situation in El Salvador. Fundamental rights were broadly tolerated in the pursuit of citizen safety.
The archbishop said similarities and differences can always be discerned throughout history. He said, “In history, context does not repeat itself, but attitudes do.”
Many of the families of those arrested under emergency measures maintain the innocence of their detained relatives and are trying to find out what happened to them, where they are being held and when they can be brought to trial. Thousands of gang suspects have been sent to a new large prison, the Terrorism Detention Center. According to the Associated Press, “Inmates here do not receive visits. “There are no programs, workshops or educational programs to prepare people for reintegration into society after serving their sentences.” The new gang prison can accommodate 40,000 people.
But despite the obvious human rights disaster that the “state of exception” declaration has wrought, it is difficult to argue for success and comparable peace. The number of murders has decreased from 6,656 in 2015 (about 18 per day on average) to 18 so far this year. There were only 214 murders in 2023. About once every two days. If government figures are accurate, El Salvador has become one of the safest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
However, as Wall Street Journal reporters pointed out last year: “A country once known for having the highest murder rate in the world now has the highest incarceration rate in the world. “This is about twice that of the United States.”
Mr. Bukele's campaign against gangs has been received favorably across Central America, where gang violence has caused chaos and led to emigration. President of Honduras Xiomara Castro declare Exceptions have been made in December 2022 for some parts of the country with the highest crime rates. In designated areas, authorities suspended constitutional rights, and military police could make arrests and search homes without warrants. And in January, Ecuador launched a self-imposed ban on drug gangs to stem the social unrest that followed the rise of drug gangs in other Latin American and Caribbean countries, including Colombia, Haiti, Honduras and El Salvador. Mr. Bukele.
The success of these anti-gang campaigns clearly offers huge benefits to the region's emerging populist politicians. In February, Mr. Bukele became El Salvador's first ever re-elected president, winning by a landslide with 87% of the vote. This, he suggests, defies many critics. He celebrated his re-election as a victory for democracy, a somewhat paradoxical assessment that his campaign was only allowed to proceed after a constitutional court packed with Bukele's supporters revoked El Salvador's constitutional single-term system. Presidency.
El Salvador's traditional political parties, Arena and FMLN, which emerged from El Salvador's bitter 12-year civil war, disappeared in recent elections. Now democracy advocates fear the landslide victory could mark the beginning of one-party rule in El Salvador. Mr. Bukele does not share their concerns.
Prime Minister Bukele said, “This will be the first time in this country that there will be only one political party in a completely democratic system,” and pointed out, “The entire opposition party has been crushed together.”
Riding a political high of what critics have described as “punitive populism,” Mr. Bukele has enjoyed unprecedented public support as president, often scoring above 90% in voter sentiment surveys. As president, his approval rating has never fallen below 75%, and he has become the most popular political leader in Latin America. He jokingly called himself “the world’s coolest dictator.”
Mr. Bukele's success and popularity have not gone unnoticed in political networks outside El Salvador. Perhaps trying to replicate, or at least enjoy, his charm. Last February, Prime Minister Bukele was invited to speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, where he said that if authorities do not follow his “iron fist” strategy, many American cities will be on the same path to destruction as El Salvador. said.
American conservatives do not appear to share concerns that Mr. Bukele is following a script first innovated by political strongmen such as Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Hungary's Viktor Orbán. This is about gaining public trust and confidence and suppressing free speech. They then take over the judicial and legislative branches of government.
In El Salvador, where the crackdown on gangs has made the streets more peaceful, the number of immigrants is falling significantly. The Congressional Research Service reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 61,515 migrants from El Salvador in 2023, down from 97,000 in 2022. This is an outcome that the Biden administration certainly appreciates, as it has struggled to manage the situation at the Mexican border.
Policymakers in Washington will no doubt continue to raise concerns about Mr. Bukele's authoritarian tendencies. But his success against gangs and its impact on immigration has overshadowed concerns about declining civil liberties in a country that appears willing to compensate for Mr. Bukele's demands despite painful experiences with state-sanctioned violence. You can. firm hand.