Bukele Continues Crack-Down on Gangs

Economist: To understand why El Salvador’s president is so popular—and why aspiring autocrats elsewhere are likely to copy his ostentatiously brutal methods—it helps to visit one of the neighbourhoods he has made safer. Until recently, criminal gangs controlled huge portions of this small Central American country of 6.3m, terrorising locals. A study by the central bank and the un Development Programme in 2016 estimated that extortion payments added up to 3% of gdp, and the total annual cost of gang violence, including the lost income of people deterred from working or investing, was a staggering 16% of gdp.

In 2019 Salvadoreans elected a then 37-year-old president, Nayib Bukele. Like most candidates, he promised to crack down on gangsters. Unlike his predecessors, he has done so on such a scale that most are either locked up or in hiding. He hopes to parlay that success into a constitutionally dubious second term. On July 9th his party, New Ideas, announced that he would be their candidate at elections in February 2024. His critics fear he is building a dictatorship—a notion he does not exactly dispel when he dubs himself “The World’s Coolest Dictator”.

The gang crackdown began in earnest in March 2022, after 87 people were murdered in a single weekend, apparently after a deal between gangs and the government broke down. Mr Bukele declared a “state of exception” (ie, emergency). He let the police arrest anyone they suspected of gang ties, even if the only evidence was a tattoo or an anonymous tip-off. More than 71,000 people—a number equivalent to around 7% of male Salvadoreans aged 14-29—have been rounded up and tossed into overcrowded jails. Human-rights groups are outraged, but most Salvadoreans are delighted. more here