SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Nine months after President Nayib Bukele declared a state of emergency to combat street gangs, El Salvador has seen more than 1,000 documented human rights violations and about 90 prisoner deaths. And Bukele’s popularity ratings have skyrocketed.
For decades, El Salvador’s main street gangs, Barrio 18 and the MS-13, have extorted money from nearly everyone and exacted violent revenge against those who don’t pay. The gangs, estimated to number some 70,000 members, have long controlled parts of the territory and extorted and killed with impunity.
Bukele, who was elected in 2019, began sealing off certain parts of Salvadoran cities earlier this year, surrounding them with police and soldiers who monitored anyone entering or leaving. Bukele petitioned Congress to grant him the extraordinary powers after gangs were blamed for 62 murders in just one day, March 26.
More than 60,000 people have been arrested under the measures, which suspend the right of association, the right to information about the reason for arrest and access to a lawyer. The government can also intervene in the phone calls and mail of anyone it considers to be a suspected gang member. The time that someone can be detained free of charge has been extended from three days to fifteen days.
Rights activists say young men are often arrested based on their age, their appearance or because they live in a gang-dominated slum. The country’s human rights official, Raquel Caballero, said 2,100 people were released after arrest because they had no ties to the street gangs.
But Bukele, who is seeking re-election in 2024, has enjoyed recent polls suggesting a nearly 90% approval rating for both himself and his gang appearance.
“I don’t care what the international organizations say,” Bukele said earlier this year of criticism of his measures. “They can come get the gang members. If they want them, we will give them all.”
Why do Salvadorans endure seemingly endless extensions of month-long emergency decrees that limit constitutional rights and give police and soldiers wide latitude in searches, arrests, and pre-trial detention?
Thanya Pastor, a lawyer and political analyst, says years of uncontrolled crime and violence have left Salvadorans desperate for a solution.
“People will not listen to anything about human rights at this point, nothing about democracy or authoritarianism. What they are interested in is their safety and the ability to live a free life,” Pastor said.
Pastor says he supports the crackdown. But he says the Bukele government should still be held accountable for abuses and accountable for those who died in custody.
The brutal act seems to have surprised the street gangs.
“They didn’t expect it, they didn’t know about it, and they rounded up almost all of them,” said Manuel Torres, who works at a factory in the San Jose El Pino neighborhood of the capital San Salvador. The neighborhood was once controlled by the MS-13.
Torres looked around concerned, afraid of being caught for speaking openly about the gangs. “There are still a few left,” he says.
Cristóbal Benítez, a 55-year-old street vendor, says the change is striking.
“The gangs ruled here, they had marked their territory well. You paid or they killed you,” Benítez said. “But now the government seems to be in control again.”
Juan Pappier, the acting deputy director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch, said it was a mistake to think that “you can achieve success based on massive human rights abuses,” arguing that mass raids destroy the organizational structures of the gangs will not dismantle. .
Bukele is defiant in the face of such criticism, writing in his Twitter account: “They are afraid that we will be successful and that other governments will want to copy it.”
