![]() Nevertheless, when you are arresting 70,000 people (about 1% of El Salvador's population) in just a couple of months, a good many other people get caught in the net during the police sweeps through gang-infested areas. Gang members tend to be heavily tattooed, which helps to sort them out. ![]() In neighbouring Guatemala, for example, the front-runner in this month's presidential election, Sandra Torres, promises to implement Mr Bukele's strategies to the letter because "they are working." That presumably means that she will declare a "state of exception" and arrest tens of thousands of people, most but not all of whom are gang members. This has made him a populist icon throughout Latin America, where some governments are already copying Mr Bukele's methods - President Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador, President Xiomara Castro of Honduras - and presidential candidates or opposition leaders are mimicking him in several more. El Salvador's murder rate is down by more than four-fifths to only 7.8 killed annually per 100,000, exactly the same number as the United States - but at the cost of imprisoning one in a hundred of its population. Mr Bukele took that problem on, and he has succeeded. ![]() A murder rate of more than fifty people per 100,000 meant that practically everybody knew at least one of the fresh murder victims every year. They back him because five years ago El Salvador had the world's highest murder rate, mostly committed by the rival gangs that controlled most urban neighbourhoods and many rural areas. However, he is certainly an instrument of public opinion: a January poll by CID Gallup found 92% support by Salvadoreans for the ruthless tactics he has used against the gangs. He was speaking ironically, mocking the kind of label that foreign media stick on him. President Nayib Bukele agrees, calling himself "the instrument of God".ĭon't get Mr Bukele wrong, though. We've done something really good here," said El Salvador's vice-president, Felix Ulloa, defending the government's no-quarter war against the street gangs that have dominated the Central American republic for decades.
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