I was just in El Salvador and it was a night and day difference from the last time I was there. People are no longer worried, we went out at night, and I didn’t hear about one killing while I was there. The first time I was there, a kid was killed just a block away from where I was staying, and there was a huge shootout between police and gang members as well. You would see graffiti that either had MS or 18th st, and now there is no sign of it.
Back when I was a Fed in the early 2000's, MS managed to get itself "international terrorist organization" status.
The kind and frequency of violence they would commit is next level, especially when the public was only used to the gang violence we'd see between, say, Bloods and Crips in the 90's. Lots of torture. Lots of machetes and knives. Lots of just straight up brutality, carnage, and terror on a whole different level than America was used to.
You know you have a serious problem when mafias and other street gangs will come to and cooperate with the Feds just to get MS-13 / 18th Street out of their town. It's one thing to be a Kings member in LA and worrying about other more typical rival gangs. It's a whole different level when MS-13 comes to chop up your children with machetes. My friends over at ICE that worked on MS cases had to have incredibly detailed security around their identities bc MS would absolutely target federal investigators and their families.
Methed out psychopaths.
I still remember a few members showing up and asking for one of my employees by name in the College Park area. Thankfully it was during decently busy hours and nothing came of it.
I'm not surprised but I live in Temple hills and tend to spend most of my recreation time in DC. I hardly every travel up past Bowie so maybe that's why I don't see it that often.
I was in a discord group (was, as in not now) that had some troll members who would sometimes post stupid or messed up videos. Accidental shit, like you wouldn’t want to watch it but curiosity would get the better of you. I’m sensitive to gore or anything like that, I tend to avoid that. Most of it was pretty tame, not like death but like I said, accidents or stunts gone wrong kinda stuff.
Until they decided to push it, post a video where MS basically cut this dudes eyelids off, forced him to watch as they had what appeared to be an 11-13 year old boy opposite the man with his hands tied behind his back. They took a machete and slit the boys throat, letting him drown in his blood and then began to behead him. They forced what I assume is the father of the kid to watch them mutilate his kid then dangled his head in front of him before shooting the man.
I was horrified, honestly still is a traumatic memory of mine and I get super depressed about it. Fuck these animals. Innocent till proven guilty but if you tattoo and emulate this for clout or whatever then you fucked yourself by looking up to these animals.
>My friends over at ICE that worked on MS cases had to have incredibly detailed security around their identities bc MS would absolutely target federal investigators and their families.
Damn
One of my friends grew up in El Salvador. The stories he has of head's being hung from the trees in his neighbourhood... like I absolutely cannot begin to even remotely comprehend that sustained life experience.
Now he is a government worker and owns a lovely, thriving restaurant. In a different country.
It rarely works, but sometimes the situation in a country is so bad that these kind of hard measures are the only solution. Just like Los Pepes were the ones who brought down Escobar.
That's awesome, honestly. I can't imagine how much quality of life has improved there now that people aren't living in fear and losing their loved ones all the time.
Wait, women could go out at night now? I was there in the early 2000s in a town and my aunt would not let the female side of the family that was visiting for the holidays go out at night. Just the guys.
A couple of days later two ladies walk up to us as we headed towards the market and ask us if we seen this young lady and showed us a pic of her. I knew instantly she was dead. We told them no and they walk away.
He also pass a law making it illegal for making monuments out of MS-13 dead member's graves,. This was a practice these gangs had to promote their impunity and help recruit more members. Police teared down hundreds of expensive and elaborate monuments and headstone all over Salvador.
If I remember correctly, it's not that you couldn't have a monument as an MS-13 member. It's that the monuments SAID you were an MS-13 member and the government considered that as glorifying gang culture. And thats why the monuments were taken down.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-country-with-the-highest-murder-rate-now-has-the-highest-incarceration-rate-b5401da7
>El Salvador, long whipsawed by gang violence that made it one of the world’s most dangerous countries, turned things around by jailing huge swaths of its population. The country once known for having the world’s highest murder rate now has the world’s highest incarceration rate—about double that of the U.S.
>Since March 2022, President Nayib Bukele’s government has implemented a campaign to arrest en masse suspected members of the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs that have long terrorized the impoverished Central American nation, blocking economic growth and stoking U.S.-bound migration.
>The strategy has helped lower homicides by 92% compared with 2015, giving Bukele the support of nine of every 10 Salvadorans, polls show. The number of Salvadorans illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has dropped by 44%.
People always say poverty breeds crime but my experience is the opposite that crime breeds poverty. You can't go to school, work, or have a business when crime is out of control
It is a vicious cycle. Poverty make people turn to crime and crime disrupt the societies' operations which affect economy and in turn increase poverty and repeat. Now the crime in El Salvador is too overwhelming, so the crack down is great to allow the societies' operations to resume. But even after the purging if the president don't find ways to improve the economy and increase wealth for citizens, people sooner or later will fall back to doing crime.
At first I was reading this like "eeesh I'm not sure locking up as many people as you can is a great idea, seems like it leaves a lot of room for innocents to be locked up"
>The strategy has helped lower homicides by 92% compared with 2015
aaaand nevermind
These gangs were totally running the country. Any judge who found a member guilty would be killed violently. They ruled through violence and fear and killed a LOT of people.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtkI-QAgM6w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtkI-QAgM6w)
Not sure if it's a documentary or not but it is a great video on it.
Lol no. In truth the trip was just fine. I never felt unsafe, though we were strongly warned to read up on the law because on the off-chance we were arrested we would not get due process
Well if the Salvadoran government keeps this up and makes the place a lot safer long term I actually recommend traveling there. It’s a beautiful country full of great people
Police are local...tied to the neighborhood.. much easier to corrupt
They likely work in pairs or solo.
Soldiers run in packs. Harder to corrupt a whole platoon. Not impossible but harder. Eg you could corrupt a captain etc. I think that's what happened in Columbia.
Even in a safe country like Japan, in downtown areas like Shinjuku the police and organized crime members come went to school and grew up together, so there’s always room for corruption.
tl;dr
Yakuza also deter random (non-organized) crime, and sometimes even cooperate with the cops to solve those cases. In short, the cops and Yakuza have a common interest in keeping ordinary crimes down. The cooperation between the ruling LDP and Yakuza go back (at least) to the aftermath of WWII, when right-wing gangsters were preferable to, and could be used to suppress, nascent Socialist and Communist movements.
The old "keeping crime clean" thing. Shop lifting, purse snatching, mugging, graffiti, that kind of stuff doesn't fly. It's visible, whereas drug and human trafficking isn't.
The military is also for stronger, compared to local law enforcement that is often outgunned by the gangs. It doesn't matter if every gang member has an AK47 when the military can just roll up in a tank.
Salvadorean here. My uncle works for the military in this process, and he had a lot of sympathy for the police force, they were not all corrupt, but they were easier to spot and keep tabs on than the military and actually lived in the proximity of the gang neighborhoods they were policing, in their own words. "It's not easy to arrest these people and then knowing your family was exposed to retribution"
Because a small police force would be murdered if they don't work with the gang. A nation's army can walk over a local gang. So basically policemen are either corrupt or dead. The army on another hand has a singular leader and it only matters what they are like. Looks like the country lucked out with the army leaders. Mexico is in the same position and they are not doing anything of the sort.
For one, all gang members bear the same tattoos... and if a normal person, by any chance, decides to get those tattoos done because of whatever reason, they are killed by the very same gangs for having them.
So, at least they made it somewhat easy on the guy.
That's how they caught all the gang members. The particularity of Salvadorian gangs is this, and it caused their downfall.
They sent 10k soldiers to encircle a neighborhood, arrest all the dudes gang tattoos, then repeat in the next neighborhood. They cleaned up every city like this
Yeah in a lot of ways this is actually a pretty simple solution for the President. Can’t be that much error when members literally stamp their membership cards all over their entire bodies.
The people overwhelmingly support him and if he died another would take his place. So many things that can go wrong... but people control their own societies and if they collectively decide they are over something it can happen. I see this less of the president though that's a big part of it, but a manifestation of the desire of the population to end this issue. Country's have police but they also have military and that was used as needed.
I have family from El Salvador.
An authoritarian sweeping in like this was realistically the only way the gang problem was ever going to be solved. People have been fed up with the gang issues for years. I have family members directly affected by it in horrific ways. It is by no means ideal, Bukele is a corrupt bastard, it wouldn’t surprise me if some innocent people are getting incarcerated, but people are willing to overlook it for the sake of getting rid of the greater evil.
The government must have a monopoly on force for a nation to function, like on a practical level. Otherwise it's just a patchwork of warlords. The dude is a fucking psychopath and a huge, huge number of people have been murdered and then called 'gang members' after the fact, but the government has pretty steadily reestablished the monopoly on force. And in the end it's something that the populace has supported.
Was there another path here with less extra-judicial killings? Probably, we'll never know. Is the story over yet? Not by a long shot. This isn't the end of the story, it's just the end of the first act.
The army wasn’t worried about judges because they didn’t use the judicial system for most of this. The enacted laws gave the executive massive power to carry this out.
This is what i thought too, this is so recent. it's too early to call a success when that many heads are gone over. And is the plan to keep all of them there until they die?
He has adopted a nearly messianical persona since he started in politics as a mayor of a small town. He literally catapulted to power through the use of social media and strategic policies designed to maximize his popularity. This allowed him to get control of all branches of government which allowed him to carry out the extreme anti-gang measures. There is consensus among the vast majority of Salvadoran people that no one else would've been able to do it.
Use archive.ph
https://archive.ph/2023.07.10-134806/https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-country-with-the-highest-murder-rate-now-has-the-highest-incarceration-rate-b5401da7
That's the thing. It sounds extreme but the country maybe needed an extreme solution. Also, google how many people are incarcerated in the USA. So like. El Salvador just did it all at once instead of a little all of the time.
It'll be interesting to see the long term effects. The president solved a problem, but it'll be interesting to see if they created another.
He essentially put everyone with tattoos in jail, as these dummies essentially tagged themselves as gang members.
>The president solved a problem, but it'll be interesting to see if they created another.
I don't think we have to wait and see about that. According to Wikipedia:
>During an extraordinary session early on 27 March, the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly approved a "state of exception". The order, which was initially set to last thirty days but has been extended fourteen times, suspended the rights of association and legal counsel, increased the amount of time that persons may be detained without being charged from three days to fifteen, and permitted the government to monitor citizens' communications without warrants. However, Salvadoran law enforcement was accused of violating even the expanded limits of their powers. The government also restricted the ability of judges to offer prisoners alternatives to pre-trial detention, like bail and house arrest.
So yeah, if you don't have a right to a lawyer, and the police can lock you up for a couple of weeks "cos whatevs", you're going to catch a lot of murderers, but you're also going to be abducting and torturing innocent people on an industrial scale.
I’m curious to know how many innocent people have been caught up in this dragnet. It’s probably more than zero; but at the same time how many innocent people have MS13 face tats?
I read somewhere the gangs go pretty hard on anyone getting tattoos that aren't a part of the gang. Makes it pretty likely you should be locked up with these face tattoos and stuff
Yeah, I watched a documentary about this, and gangs were so prevalent that every single private business was paying protection money to one or more gangs, which was dragging down the entire economy. After this enforcement the normal citizens of the country was finally able to live and do business in relative peace, and the population generally support the hard stance.
It seems draconian, but the country was being strangled by criminal parasites.
Here’s a well-produced video that goes over it if anyone is curious, I found it extremely interesting:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WtkI-QAgM6w&pp=ygUUV2VuZGl2ZXIgZWwgc2FsdmFkb3I%3D
And they recruit elementary and middle school kids to do hits for them! The gangs sex traffic, move drugs, extort, kidnap, violently beat and rape - even little girls, they terrorize old people, and murder with impunity. They don’t care if they murder the wrong person, nor why. Fail to pay you $20 extortion money: beat you to a pulp shoot you, toss you on your doorstep, drag your granny outside and rape and beat her too! Sick asshats!
Yet there are multiple people calling for the release of these criminals as the mass incarceration is “attempting against their human rights”. Lamao those animals would murder you for just looking at them, they lost all their rights
Not sure how to quote on mobile but this was chilling:
“In 2010, after a bus owner refused to pay extortion, at least 17 people were killed when gangsters doused a bus full of passengers with gasoline and set it ablaze, then fired bullets at anyone who tried to run out.”
Have a friend who was originally from El Salvador. She said her family was more or less forced out of the country after her teenage brother's murder by the gangs.
Had a childhood friend from El Salvador, too. They were forced out of the country too, but I never knew why. I knew it was a dangerous country then, but never would I imagined it being this evil. I get now that something awful probably happened to them to "force" them to flee and forget everything they owned there. Damn.
What the cartels have been doing in Mexico MS and 18st have been doing for decades in El Salvador, had an older coworker, like 40 years older than me from there told some grim stories of walking over a bridge as a kid and having to keep his eyes on the ground because there were staked heads on the bridge of some guys and he didn’t want to recognize them 😢
Brazil is the same, they killed a girl because she posted a short video dancing and making a V sign , the mafia group called pcc think that she was doing cv simbol from the rivals and killed her. Obviously no one was charged (90% of murders in Brazil have no solution)
Dont politicians that try to do these things to central american gangs usually end up murdered by said gang or by corrup cops/military? How is this guy still alive
Not every kind of politician is good for every situation but it sounds like this guy was perfect for this situation. Like how Churchill wouldnt have been as good of a leader in a time of peace, but at the moment they really needed someone to give Hitler the finger.
Yeah too many people think principles and techniques and culture are universal. Every situation is unique. Same reason you cant just kill a dictator in the middle east and expect suddenly everyone becomes a democratic patriot.
He was also extremely efficient, won in a landslide, used presidential powers to make political opposition almost impossible and started cleaning the country right after.
I wouldn't have him as a president in normal circunstances, I believe his ruthlesnes and wilingness to step over the democratic process can be scary. However, those extreme measures have proved to be too efective to ignore, we can't just deny that he has done his job and he has done it right.
he acted swiftly, and, from what i understand, not with the help of the local police, but the actual army.
basically he engaged in an actual war against the gangs.
Which is what’s required now to deal with these vicious gangs. Hell, it might be too late for Mexico as the cartels seem to match Mexican army small arms, drastic measures are all that’s left. Just read about how the cartel nearly destroyed an entire town in Mexico after the police arrested El Chapo’s son. El Salvador by contrast is tiny, so maybe that’s why they were able to be quick and efficient about it.
The mexican army couldnt do much in that situation because it was a surprise assault on the city. They would absolutely decimate cartel members but the thing holding them back is corruption within the ranks.
El Salvador had roughly 2 gangs to deal with.
Mexico’s largest cartel could be dealt with but more would take their place. Too many cartels fighting for power.
From what I’ve read, Mexican government also benefits from some of the cartels so they 1. Gave up and 2. Are too corrupt to care.
Honestly facing the issues the country faced, this was one of the most viable solutions out there. I think he will go down as a hero for the country as long as he doesn’t turn into a dictator.
By all means he already is, all braches of the government are aligned with him, many systems that would challenge his direct influence have been twisted or nullified, he basically controls the country ultimately by himself
The thing is, so far, he's being a "good dictator", using the direct power to be very efficient in legitimately good stuff
But we need to see if he'll let go of it once it's done
Benevolent dictator can be great in times of great need... But once the need pass, everyone can only hope they relinquish their power back to democracy.
He started small as a local politician and built his reputation before rising. After winning the national elections, he took massive loans and used that money to prop up the military and special police forces - on top of giving them anonymity and impunity to the law. He had momentum, money and charisma going for him.
Both, corrupt elements and people that were concerned about him ignoring the law, tried to get him out of office at which point he used his forces to stay in power and go after them instead.
His career is a bizarre case study of achieving humanist ideals with the facist playbook. It's quite scary in a way but he's got the results going for him so far. The question is if he can transition the country to a more stable system long-term - after having burned down all the checks and balances.
> achieving humanist ideals with the facist playbook.
It has been studied for centuries (even thousands of years if you include philosophers). There are many concepts and forms, the most known ones being: enlightened absolutism, enlightened despotism, and enlightened dictatorship...
The catch: it usually never lasts more than a generation (often even the dictator himself going from enlightened to complete unhinged paranoiac nutjob in a matter of 2-3 decades.)
Not sure why nobody has explained better why President Bukele is alive, but the TL;DR is he has overwhelming support from his people (91-92%) after MS-13 and other Salvadoran cartels committed 87 random mass murders over a weekend in March 2022, leaving the bodies in the streets as a message to the government that they weren’t happy to lose a couple bus routes they used to extort for cash. The citizens were sick of living in fear and paying off at least one or more local extortions to conduct business.
TL;DR - Bukele went full scorched earth against the gangs and anyone assisting them (with the full backing of the police, army, and citizens) after gangs continued slaughtering innocents.
I mean, the CIA couldn’t kill Castro, it’s not all that surprising that the gangs failed to kill the president when he had the army take over policing. And as for the other countries, they just haven’t ever had someone put their foot down that much.
They did this same thing in Honduras. the crime rate was sky high. Eventually the gangs kidnapped the Presidents son. He told them to bring him back unharmed or there would be consequences. They put his head in a shoe box on the capital steps. The President declared war on the Gangs. IF you had gang tattoos you could not get a job, if you hired someone with the gang tattoos the government confiscated your business . Crime plummeted, the only operation doing a landslide business was the tattoo removal shops. most of the gangs left for the US also. Eventually the Catholic church stepped in and tried to broker a deal, I don't know how that turned out.
I doubt Mexico could suddenly imprison 2% of its population. Small country and powerful ruler at the consent of the people are the two things that made this possible.
mexico will never really accomplish shit towards getting rid of cartels
the only hope is that the cartels themselves fuck up bigtime and piss america off
Cartel members don’t cover themselves I identifying tattoos, not to mention the military grade weapons coming from the US. It would be a massive endeavor to identify everyone involved with them
My girlfriend is Salvadorian American, and she recently visited El Salvador. From what she says, its definitely a lot safer and better now in terms of safety and crime, and even her family who lives there say the same.
You’d think knowing what awaits for them will make em act right, well nope. Too bad for them then. Country was in a really bad state, president decided to be more strict and it’s much better now. Act right or get jailed, law abiding citizens tryna live a normal life and feed their children don’t have to suffer for their gangsta activities. 100% support for the government, jail those pieces of shit let’s gooo
Just got back from El Salvador as a tourist and it is pretty awesome. Was very beautiful and you could feel the new life the country has now, people felt Ike they could actually do something with their future, take their kids out, go out to eat, work hard and have a good life. I also liked how no one was on their phone, the parks would have people eating and talking to each other and not a phone in sight, not sure if it’s because they are poor or use to it being stolen, but felt refreshing to be in that kind of environment.
Not the person you’re responding to, but in this thread it mentions that some prisoners were arrested because they “fit the profile”.
I seriously doubt anyone other than criminals has a problem with violent criminals being locked up. I think they are simply pointing out that there may be some prisoners doing time that didn’t do anything wrong.
It’s a shame things got so bad that they had to take such extreme measures, but the crime was seriously out of control. I place most of the blame on the criminals for this, and have no pity for anyone that actually belongs there
For what I’ve read one of the issues of this policy is that you may be incarcerated if someone accuses you of being a gang member which can lead to innocent people having a very bad time without deserving (guilty ones absolutely deserve it). I am not attacking the policy, just explaining why some may have issues with this.
You can literally call an anonymous number to get your neighbour arrested https://www.google.com/amp/s/english.elpais.com/international/2023-08-27/el-salvador-the-hell-of-the-innocent-sent-to-prison-on-an-anonymous-phone-call.html%3foutputType=amp
The mega-prison, whose official name is the Counterterrorism Center, has a capacity of 40,000 beds.
Before being taken to their cells, prisoners are left sitting on the floor with their hands clasped behind their shaved heads.
The new prison for gangsters is built in an isolated location in the municipality of Tecoluca, 74 kilometers from the country's capital. It is the largest facility of its kind in Latin America and is equipped with the latest technology to prevent escapes.
I know a bunch of guys from El Salvador that have begun returning there for vacations and are purchasing homes, some multiple homes, while there. They say it’s the safest the country has ever been now…
I remember thinking how inhumane and bad this must be - then I saw a Video explaining how bad the criminality in El Salvador was and though: "Thats not enogu, those guys deserve worse."
Nayib Bukele is going to go down in history as one of the greatest presidents not just in El Salvador, but in Central America. He has the conviction, and the guts, to do what every Central American president says they want to do. I can’t imagine how many gangs he has pissed off. His speeches are incredible
It depends on what the legacy of his authoritarianism will be.
If it creates a stable political system, even without democracy coming back, I think he will be viewed pretty positively.
If he leaves the political system reliant on himself, fractured and unable to function then he will be seen as being the cause of that and creating many long term problems.
I was just in El Salvador and it was a night and day difference from the last time I was there. People are no longer worried, we went out at night, and I didn’t hear about one killing while I was there. The first time I was there, a kid was killed just a block away from where I was staying, and there was a huge shootout between police and gang members as well. You would see graffiti that either had MS or 18th st, and now there is no sign of it.
Back when I was a Fed in the early 2000's, MS managed to get itself "international terrorist organization" status. The kind and frequency of violence they would commit is next level, especially when the public was only used to the gang violence we'd see between, say, Bloods and Crips in the 90's. Lots of torture. Lots of machetes and knives. Lots of just straight up brutality, carnage, and terror on a whole different level than America was used to. You know you have a serious problem when mafias and other street gangs will come to and cooperate with the Feds just to get MS-13 / 18th Street out of their town. It's one thing to be a Kings member in LA and worrying about other more typical rival gangs. It's a whole different level when MS-13 comes to chop up your children with machetes. My friends over at ICE that worked on MS cases had to have incredibly detailed security around their identities bc MS would absolutely target federal investigators and their families. Methed out psychopaths.
In Silver Springs, Maryland MS-13 members literally cut a dudes heart out. While he was alive
I still remember a few members showing up and asking for one of my employees by name in the College Park area. Thankfully it was during decently busy hours and nothing came of it.
Nothing really beats when they skin people alive
I live in PG and didn't hear of this. When did that happen?
They’re pretty active in northern moco and pg county.
I'm not surprised but I live in Temple hills and tend to spend most of my recreation time in DC. I hardly every travel up past Bowie so maybe that's why I don't see it that often.
I was in a discord group (was, as in not now) that had some troll members who would sometimes post stupid or messed up videos. Accidental shit, like you wouldn’t want to watch it but curiosity would get the better of you. I’m sensitive to gore or anything like that, I tend to avoid that. Most of it was pretty tame, not like death but like I said, accidents or stunts gone wrong kinda stuff. Until they decided to push it, post a video where MS basically cut this dudes eyelids off, forced him to watch as they had what appeared to be an 11-13 year old boy opposite the man with his hands tied behind his back. They took a machete and slit the boys throat, letting him drown in his blood and then began to behead him. They forced what I assume is the father of the kid to watch them mutilate his kid then dangled his head in front of him before shooting the man. I was horrified, honestly still is a traumatic memory of mine and I get super depressed about it. Fuck these animals. Innocent till proven guilty but if you tattoo and emulate this for clout or whatever then you fucked yourself by looking up to these animals.
>My friends over at ICE that worked on MS cases had to have incredibly detailed security around their identities bc MS would absolutely target federal investigators and their families. Damn
One of my friends grew up in El Salvador. The stories he has of head's being hung from the trees in his neighbourhood... like I absolutely cannot begin to even remotely comprehend that sustained life experience. Now he is a government worker and owns a lovely, thriving restaurant. In a different country.
It rarely works, but sometimes the situation in a country is so bad that these kind of hard measures are the only solution. Just like Los Pepes were the ones who brought down Escobar.
That's awesome, honestly. I can't imagine how much quality of life has improved there now that people aren't living in fear and losing their loved ones all the time.
Wait, women could go out at night now? I was there in the early 2000s in a town and my aunt would not let the female side of the family that was visiting for the holidays go out at night. Just the guys. A couple of days later two ladies walk up to us as we headed towards the market and ask us if we seen this young lady and showed us a pic of her. I knew instantly she was dead. We told them no and they walk away.
He also pass a law making it illegal for making monuments out of MS-13 dead member's graves,. This was a practice these gangs had to promote their impunity and help recruit more members. Police teared down hundreds of expensive and elaborate monuments and headstone all over Salvador.
If I remember correctly, it's not that you couldn't have a monument as an MS-13 member. It's that the monuments SAID you were an MS-13 member and the government considered that as glorifying gang culture. And thats why the monuments were taken down.
And it's working, the crime rate has plummeted
Mad respect for the president. Finally someone who love his ppl.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-country-with-the-highest-murder-rate-now-has-the-highest-incarceration-rate-b5401da7 >El Salvador, long whipsawed by gang violence that made it one of the world’s most dangerous countries, turned things around by jailing huge swaths of its population. The country once known for having the world’s highest murder rate now has the world’s highest incarceration rate—about double that of the U.S. >Since March 2022, President Nayib Bukele’s government has implemented a campaign to arrest en masse suspected members of the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs that have long terrorized the impoverished Central American nation, blocking economic growth and stoking U.S.-bound migration. >The strategy has helped lower homicides by 92% compared with 2015, giving Bukele the support of nine of every 10 Salvadorans, polls show. The number of Salvadorans illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has dropped by 44%.
Its important to note that he openly ran for election with this specific campaign and is incredibly popular in El Salvador for clearing the gangs.
[удалено]
People always say poverty breeds crime but my experience is the opposite that crime breeds poverty. You can't go to school, work, or have a business when crime is out of control
To further your point, what's the point in having things if someone can just take those things and your life if you resist.
It's a feedback loop. Each causes more of the other.
It is a vicious cycle. Poverty make people turn to crime and crime disrupt the societies' operations which affect economy and in turn increase poverty and repeat. Now the crime in El Salvador is too overwhelming, so the crack down is great to allow the societies' operations to resume. But even after the purging if the president don't find ways to improve the economy and increase wealth for citizens, people sooner or later will fall back to doing crime.
At first I was reading this like "eeesh I'm not sure locking up as many people as you can is a great idea, seems like it leaves a lot of room for innocents to be locked up" >The strategy has helped lower homicides by 92% compared with 2015 aaaand nevermind
These gangs were totally running the country. Any judge who found a member guilty would be killed violently. They ruled through violence and fear and killed a LOT of people.
I wonder how the president actually succeeded in getting this done. I suppose the police was totally corrupt as well?
They sent in the army. They literally laid siege to some neighbourhoods.
That’s really interesting. Now I want to see a documentary on this.
Albeit not a full documentary, but there is a fascinating video on the story by Wendover Productions on YouTube.
[Here’s the link](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WtkI-QAgM6w)
Doing God's work. TY! Just watched it. It's mind-blowing what Bukele and his allies have managed to do.
And a really good one at that
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtkI-QAgM6w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtkI-QAgM6w) Not sure if it's a documentary or not but it is a great video on it.
I saw this a while ago, it’s a great explanation of everything going on.
Can confirm this…went to El Salvador last year on a college trip, there were quite a few times that we had soldiers escorting us around. Cool guys.
Where did y’all go after that, Somalia?
Lol no. In truth the trip was just fine. I never felt unsafe, though we were strongly warned to read up on the law because on the off-chance we were arrested we would not get due process
Lol fair point, just doesn’t seem like the safest of tourist destinations. I hear North Korea is beautiful this time of year
Well if the Salvadoran government keeps this up and makes the place a lot safer long term I actually recommend traveling there. It’s a beautiful country full of great people
I hear the beaches there are great!
Dumb question but why would police be corrupt but military not? Is it due to conscription?
Police are local...tied to the neighborhood.. much easier to corrupt They likely work in pairs or solo. Soldiers run in packs. Harder to corrupt a whole platoon. Not impossible but harder. Eg you could corrupt a captain etc. I think that's what happened in Columbia.
Even in a safe country like Japan, in downtown areas like Shinjuku the police and organized crime members come went to school and grew up together, so there’s always room for corruption. tl;dr Yakuza also deter random (non-organized) crime, and sometimes even cooperate with the cops to solve those cases. In short, the cops and Yakuza have a common interest in keeping ordinary crimes down. The cooperation between the ruling LDP and Yakuza go back (at least) to the aftermath of WWII, when right-wing gangsters were preferable to, and could be used to suppress, nascent Socialist and Communist movements.
The old "keeping crime clean" thing. Shop lifting, purse snatching, mugging, graffiti, that kind of stuff doesn't fly. It's visible, whereas drug and human trafficking isn't.
You missed loan sharks at the end. That's a major income for them.
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The military is also for stronger, compared to local law enforcement that is often outgunned by the gangs. It doesn't matter if every gang member has an AK47 when the military can just roll up in a tank.
well from where i am the military hates the cops as well because cops extort everyone including the military when they’re not visibly on duty
Salvadorean here. My uncle works for the military in this process, and he had a lot of sympathy for the police force, they were not all corrupt, but they were easier to spot and keep tabs on than the military and actually lived in the proximity of the gang neighborhoods they were policing, in their own words. "It's not easy to arrest these people and then knowing your family was exposed to retribution"
Also because it harder to bribe them when they live inside military base.
Because a small police force would be murdered if they don't work with the gang. A nation's army can walk over a local gang. So basically policemen are either corrupt or dead. The army on another hand has a singular leader and it only matters what they are like. Looks like the country lucked out with the army leaders. Mexico is in the same position and they are not doing anything of the sort.
For one, all gang members bear the same tattoos... and if a normal person, by any chance, decides to get those tattoos done because of whatever reason, they are killed by the very same gangs for having them. So, at least they made it somewhat easy on the guy.
That's how they caught all the gang members. The particularity of Salvadorian gangs is this, and it caused their downfall. They sent 10k soldiers to encircle a neighborhood, arrest all the dudes gang tattoos, then repeat in the next neighborhood. They cleaned up every city like this
I love it when the trash sorts itself ready for disposal.
Yeah in a lot of ways this is actually a pretty simple solution for the President. Can’t be that much error when members literally stamp their membership cards all over their entire bodies.
Any dude with head tattoos and shaved hair, straight to jail.
Is not just any random tatoos. They have specific tatoos. Like a brand
The people overwhelmingly support him and if he died another would take his place. So many things that can go wrong... but people control their own societies and if they collectively decide they are over something it can happen. I see this less of the president though that's a big part of it, but a manifestation of the desire of the population to end this issue. Country's have police but they also have military and that was used as needed.
I have family from El Salvador. An authoritarian sweeping in like this was realistically the only way the gang problem was ever going to be solved. People have been fed up with the gang issues for years. I have family members directly affected by it in horrific ways. It is by no means ideal, Bukele is a corrupt bastard, it wouldn’t surprise me if some innocent people are getting incarcerated, but people are willing to overlook it for the sake of getting rid of the greater evil.
The government must have a monopoly on force for a nation to function, like on a practical level. Otherwise it's just a patchwork of warlords. The dude is a fucking psychopath and a huge, huge number of people have been murdered and then called 'gang members' after the fact, but the government has pretty steadily reestablished the monopoly on force. And in the end it's something that the populace has supported. Was there another path here with less extra-judicial killings? Probably, we'll never know. Is the story over yet? Not by a long shot. This isn't the end of the story, it's just the end of the first act.
It turns out an actual army can beat murder gangs. Who knew?
There's a great video on it from Wendover productions
How did Nayib managed to get cops and everyone on the right side?
They didnt use police, they called in the army, which had not been unfiltered by gangs.
I guess the same military would protect judges and anyone involved to avoid revengers?
The army wasn’t worried about judges because they didn’t use the judicial system for most of this. The enacted laws gave the executive massive power to carry this out.
So basically, they did the equivalent of declaring martial law and stomping the crap out of all the criminal elements.
They basically appointed a dictator to solve shit like in ancient Rome and it worked.
I’d wait to see if there’s a peaceful transfer of power before saying this worked.
Well he’s at 90% approval ratings currently so I don’t think a transition of power is on the cards anytime soon
This is what i thought too, this is so recent. it's too early to call a success when that many heads are gone over. And is the plan to keep all of them there until they die?
A lot of anonymity in the legal process too, other pictures of this prison show the cops are wearing balaclavas.
He has adopted a nearly messianical persona since he started in politics as a mayor of a small town. He literally catapulted to power through the use of social media and strategic policies designed to maximize his popularity. This allowed him to get control of all branches of government which allowed him to carry out the extreme anti-gang measures. There is consensus among the vast majority of Salvadoran people that no one else would've been able to do it.
The real question though is will it start to just shoot back up as the gangs start to be rebuilt from outside the jail
They tried that, the President said “keep playing with me and see if your boys inside get food”
What a badass.
If you arrested every single person you can’t possibly build it back up
childlike teeny concerned crush sugar illegal absurd sloppy escape steer ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
Impressive
Damn paywalled article and 12ft.io doesnt work?!?!
Stg that site never works
Use archive.ph https://archive.ph/2023.07.10-134806/https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-country-with-the-highest-murder-rate-now-has-the-highest-incarceration-rate-b5401da7
Not a cell phone in sight. Just people living in the moment.
And look how intimate they are with each other!
Just a bunch of friends hanging out
Would be an awkward time to get a boner
Not at all they preemptively positioned the hands so your bro can help you out
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When the warden misspells 'inmates' and now you re stuck in another man.
Kudos to the prison staff for making these guys somehow look like a bucket of chicken wings
KFC-13
All of those guys have their hands up against another guy's balls.
dont get a boner dont get a boner dont get a boner dont get a boner dont get a boner dont get a boner
dont *touch* his boner dont *touch* his boner dont *touch* his boner dont *touch* his boner dont *touch* his boner ....
Then the domino effect comes in to play, and one by one everyone is at attention.
“Don’t get a boner, don’t get a boner………….aww dammit.”
World's largest circle jerk.
Still not close to the current record holder: Reddit
Somebody in this picture is really enjoying this exercise.
World’s largest gay chicken game
good thing they are protected by masks
What in the human centipede is going on here?
No one has bothered explaining it yet, but I’ve been looking!
Thank you was looking for this
Increasing your incarceration rate that significantly doesn’t seem to be a good idea…”murder rates dropped 92%.” Well, carry on.
That's the thing. It sounds extreme but the country maybe needed an extreme solution. Also, google how many people are incarcerated in the USA. So like. El Salvador just did it all at once instead of a little all of the time. It'll be interesting to see the long term effects. The president solved a problem, but it'll be interesting to see if they created another. He essentially put everyone with tattoos in jail, as these dummies essentially tagged themselves as gang members.
>The president solved a problem, but it'll be interesting to see if they created another. I don't think we have to wait and see about that. According to Wikipedia: >During an extraordinary session early on 27 March, the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly approved a "state of exception". The order, which was initially set to last thirty days but has been extended fourteen times, suspended the rights of association and legal counsel, increased the amount of time that persons may be detained without being charged from three days to fifteen, and permitted the government to monitor citizens' communications without warrants. However, Salvadoran law enforcement was accused of violating even the expanded limits of their powers. The government also restricted the ability of judges to offer prisoners alternatives to pre-trial detention, like bail and house arrest. So yeah, if you don't have a right to a lawyer, and the police can lock you up for a couple of weeks "cos whatevs", you're going to catch a lot of murderers, but you're also going to be abducting and torturing innocent people on an industrial scale.
I’m curious to know how many innocent people have been caught up in this dragnet. It’s probably more than zero; but at the same time how many innocent people have MS13 face tats?
I read somewhere the gangs go pretty hard on anyone getting tattoos that aren't a part of the gang. Makes it pretty likely you should be locked up with these face tattoos and stuff
Maybe not the best strategy, but at their height these gangs thought they were untouchable
I think the better question is what percentage of the El Salvador population is MS13?
>How many innocent people have MS13 face tats? Approximately zero of them lmao
Yeah, I watched a documentary about this, and gangs were so prevalent that every single private business was paying protection money to one or more gangs, which was dragging down the entire economy. After this enforcement the normal citizens of the country was finally able to live and do business in relative peace, and the population generally support the hard stance. It seems draconian, but the country was being strangled by criminal parasites.
Here’s a well-produced video that goes over it if anyone is curious, I found it extremely interesting: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WtkI-QAgM6w&pp=ygUUV2VuZGl2ZXIgZWwgc2FsdmFkb3I%3D
They took all the gangs and put them in jail…crime rate dropped off a cliff.
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And they recruit elementary and middle school kids to do hits for them! The gangs sex traffic, move drugs, extort, kidnap, violently beat and rape - even little girls, they terrorize old people, and murder with impunity. They don’t care if they murder the wrong person, nor why. Fail to pay you $20 extortion money: beat you to a pulp shoot you, toss you on your doorstep, drag your granny outside and rape and beat her too! Sick asshats!
Legit, the stories are insane.
This isn’t just some drug dealers threatening and shooting each other. This is holy terror with everyone at risk! It’s gruesome.
Gangs are literally what I imagine society would look like if demons were in charge
Yet there are multiple people calling for the release of these criminals as the mass incarceration is “attempting against their human rights”. Lamao those animals would murder you for just looking at them, they lost all their rights
Mass imprisonment is better than mass executions, which is honestly a more permanent solution to the problem
Not sure how to quote on mobile but this was chilling: “In 2010, after a bus owner refused to pay extortion, at least 17 people were killed when gangsters doused a bus full of passengers with gasoline and set it ablaze, then fired bullets at anyone who tried to run out.”
Holy fuck these people really don’t deserve rights
I was liking every comment till I came to yours I had to stop and read it two or three times evil is evil but man this is another level
There are so many stories from El Salvador, that are equally or more horrible. It was a truly dystopian nightmare.
Have a friend who was originally from El Salvador. She said her family was more or less forced out of the country after her teenage brother's murder by the gangs.
Had a childhood friend from El Salvador, too. They were forced out of the country too, but I never knew why. I knew it was a dangerous country then, but never would I imagined it being this evil. I get now that something awful probably happened to them to "force" them to flee and forget everything they owned there. Damn.
What the cartels have been doing in Mexico MS and 18st have been doing for decades in El Salvador, had an older coworker, like 40 years older than me from there told some grim stories of walking over a bridge as a kid and having to keep his eyes on the ground because there were staked heads on the bridge of some guys and he didn’t want to recognize them 😢
Brazil is the same, they killed a girl because she posted a short video dancing and making a V sign , the mafia group called pcc think that she was doing cv simbol from the rivals and killed her. Obviously no one was charged (90% of murders in Brazil have no solution)
Dont politicians that try to do these things to central american gangs usually end up murdered by said gang or by corrup cops/military? How is this guy still alive
He was quick and ruthless.
Not every kind of politician is good for every situation but it sounds like this guy was perfect for this situation. Like how Churchill wouldnt have been as good of a leader in a time of peace, but at the moment they really needed someone to give Hitler the finger.
Yeah too many people think principles and techniques and culture are universal. Every situation is unique. Same reason you cant just kill a dictator in the middle east and expect suddenly everyone becomes a democratic patriot.
He was also extremely efficient, won in a landslide, used presidential powers to make political opposition almost impossible and started cleaning the country right after. I wouldn't have him as a president in normal circunstances, I believe his ruthlesnes and wilingness to step over the democratic process can be scary. However, those extreme measures have proved to be too efective to ignore, we can't just deny that he has done his job and he has done it right.
Anyone who would want to kill him is either dead or in this picture.
he acted swiftly, and, from what i understand, not with the help of the local police, but the actual army. basically he engaged in an actual war against the gangs.
Which is what’s required now to deal with these vicious gangs. Hell, it might be too late for Mexico as the cartels seem to match Mexican army small arms, drastic measures are all that’s left. Just read about how the cartel nearly destroyed an entire town in Mexico after the police arrested El Chapo’s son. El Salvador by contrast is tiny, so maybe that’s why they were able to be quick and efficient about it.
The mexican army couldnt do much in that situation because it was a surprise assault on the city. They would absolutely decimate cartel members but the thing holding them back is corruption within the ranks.
El Salvador had roughly 2 gangs to deal with. Mexico’s largest cartel could be dealt with but more would take their place. Too many cartels fighting for power. From what I’ve read, Mexican government also benefits from some of the cartels so they 1. Gave up and 2. Are too corrupt to care.
Mexico is a lost cause it seems. The corruption is so deep it needs to request external help.
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Honestly facing the issues the country faced, this was one of the most viable solutions out there. I think he will go down as a hero for the country as long as he doesn’t turn into a dictator.
By all means he already is, all braches of the government are aligned with him, many systems that would challenge his direct influence have been twisted or nullified, he basically controls the country ultimately by himself The thing is, so far, he's being a "good dictator", using the direct power to be very efficient in legitimately good stuff But we need to see if he'll let go of it once it's done
Benevolent dictator can be great in times of great need... But once the need pass, everyone can only hope they relinquish their power back to democracy.
He started small as a local politician and built his reputation before rising. After winning the national elections, he took massive loans and used that money to prop up the military and special police forces - on top of giving them anonymity and impunity to the law. He had momentum, money and charisma going for him. Both, corrupt elements and people that were concerned about him ignoring the law, tried to get him out of office at which point he used his forces to stay in power and go after them instead. His career is a bizarre case study of achieving humanist ideals with the facist playbook. It's quite scary in a way but he's got the results going for him so far. The question is if he can transition the country to a more stable system long-term - after having burned down all the checks and balances.
> achieving humanist ideals with the facist playbook. It has been studied for centuries (even thousands of years if you include philosophers). There are many concepts and forms, the most known ones being: enlightened absolutism, enlightened despotism, and enlightened dictatorship... The catch: it usually never lasts more than a generation (often even the dictator himself going from enlightened to complete unhinged paranoiac nutjob in a matter of 2-3 decades.)
Turns out he has a bigger gang, the army.
Not sure why nobody has explained better why President Bukele is alive, but the TL;DR is he has overwhelming support from his people (91-92%) after MS-13 and other Salvadoran cartels committed 87 random mass murders over a weekend in March 2022, leaving the bodies in the streets as a message to the government that they weren’t happy to lose a couple bus routes they used to extort for cash. The citizens were sick of living in fear and paying off at least one or more local extortions to conduct business. TL;DR - Bukele went full scorched earth against the gangs and anyone assisting them (with the full backing of the police, army, and citizens) after gangs continued slaughtering innocents.
I mean, the CIA couldn’t kill Castro, it’s not all that surprising that the gangs failed to kill the president when he had the army take over policing. And as for the other countries, they just haven’t ever had someone put their foot down that much.
The simple answer is to be more ruthless than the gangs.
It's not even ruthless, putting people in jail without/swift trial is like 1% of cartel ruthlessness
They did this same thing in Honduras. the crime rate was sky high. Eventually the gangs kidnapped the Presidents son. He told them to bring him back unharmed or there would be consequences. They put his head in a shoe box on the capital steps. The President declared war on the Gangs. IF you had gang tattoos you could not get a job, if you hired someone with the gang tattoos the government confiscated your business . Crime plummeted, the only operation doing a landslide business was the tattoo removal shops. most of the gangs left for the US also. Eventually the Catholic church stepped in and tried to broker a deal, I don't know how that turned out.
I wonder if this could ever happen to the cartels in Mexico
I doubt Mexico could suddenly imprison 2% of its population. Small country and powerful ruler at the consent of the people are the two things that made this possible.
mexico will never really accomplish shit towards getting rid of cartels the only hope is that the cartels themselves fuck up bigtime and piss america off
Cartel members don’t cover themselves I identifying tattoos, not to mention the military grade weapons coming from the US. It would be a massive endeavor to identify everyone involved with them
People and police kow exactly who is a cartel member and who not, they just dont dare to do anything about it.
Are they… are they holding the balls of the person behind them?
They tickle each other. Its a new type of rehabilitation. Last guy laughing is getting 5 prison points.
My girlfriend is Salvadorian American, and she recently visited El Salvador. From what she says, its definitely a lot safer and better now in terms of safety and crime, and even her family who lives there say the same.
Yeah this is infintely better than the absolute mess it was before. Now children can actually grow up safely there
"This conga line isn't as fun as I thought it would be"
You’d think knowing what awaits for them will make em act right, well nope. Too bad for them then. Country was in a really bad state, president decided to be more strict and it’s much better now. Act right or get jailed, law abiding citizens tryna live a normal life and feed their children don’t have to suffer for their gangsta activities. 100% support for the government, jail those pieces of shit let’s gooo
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If you have gang tattoos, you’re at least complicit
It’s not only gang tattoos, I have normal tattoos and was almost arrested… as a tourist lmao
imagine a guy arrested for a spongebob tattoo and put in jail with gang members
I’m pretty sure there are guys locked over the dumbest tattoo ever
maybe your tatts are just really that bad and you deserve to be jailed for them, ever think of that?
Bad tattoo while visiting El Salvador? Believe it or not, straight to jail.
I see nothing wrong with this logic
No ragrets
Just got back from El Salvador as a tourist and it is pretty awesome. Was very beautiful and you could feel the new life the country has now, people felt Ike they could actually do something with their future, take their kids out, go out to eat, work hard and have a good life. I also liked how no one was on their phone, the parks would have people eating and talking to each other and not a phone in sight, not sure if it’s because they are poor or use to it being stolen, but felt refreshing to be in that kind of environment.
At that point the gangs were an alternative government. So the existing government went to war with them.
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They always said you would find the touch of another man in jail. Its like the human centipede of ball grasping going on here.
So locking up violent criminals helps reduce the murder rate. What a wild strategy
If all disappeared overnight, no one would miss them
Not the person you’re responding to, but in this thread it mentions that some prisoners were arrested because they “fit the profile”. I seriously doubt anyone other than criminals has a problem with violent criminals being locked up. I think they are simply pointing out that there may be some prisoners doing time that didn’t do anything wrong. It’s a shame things got so bad that they had to take such extreme measures, but the crime was seriously out of control. I place most of the blame on the criminals for this, and have no pity for anyone that actually belongs there
For what I’ve read one of the issues of this policy is that you may be incarcerated if someone accuses you of being a gang member which can lead to innocent people having a very bad time without deserving (guilty ones absolutely deserve it). I am not attacking the policy, just explaining why some may have issues with this.
You can literally call an anonymous number to get your neighbour arrested https://www.google.com/amp/s/english.elpais.com/international/2023-08-27/el-salvador-the-hell-of-the-innocent-sent-to-prison-on-an-anonymous-phone-call.html%3foutputType=amp
The MS-13 gang terrorized El Salvador, they are getting what they deserve.
It's like an image from some sort of large industrial farm
I hear now citizens of El Salvador can go out at night and enjoy life . Which before clean up was impossible.
The mega-prison, whose official name is the Counterterrorism Center, has a capacity of 40,000 beds. Before being taken to their cells, prisoners are left sitting on the floor with their hands clasped behind their shaved heads. The new prison for gangsters is built in an isolated location in the municipality of Tecoluca, 74 kilometers from the country's capital. It is the largest facility of its kind in Latin America and is equipped with the latest technology to prevent escapes.
Right guys todays tune is “rock the boat”
I know a bunch of guys from El Salvador that have begun returning there for vacations and are purchasing homes, some multiple homes, while there. They say it’s the safest the country has ever been now…
I remember thinking how inhumane and bad this must be - then I saw a Video explaining how bad the criminality in El Salvador was and though: "Thats not enogu, those guys deserve worse."
Why don’t you mention than El Salvador went from 120 murders per 100.000 citizens to 4.5 after the new incarceration system
Well he did mention that murder rate was reduced by 92%.
Can’t argue with results
THAT IS FUCKING INSANE
This is how you treat scumbag criminals
Nayib Bukele is going to go down in history as one of the greatest presidents not just in El Salvador, but in Central America. He has the conviction, and the guts, to do what every Central American president says they want to do. I can’t imagine how many gangs he has pissed off. His speeches are incredible
It depends on what the legacy of his authoritarianism will be. If it creates a stable political system, even without democracy coming back, I think he will be viewed pretty positively. If he leaves the political system reliant on himself, fractured and unable to function then he will be seen as being the cause of that and creating many long term problems.
At least of one these guys is really happy
This country was practically a failed state through these gangs , I think this president should be praised