El Salvador’s popular hardline president bragged about his high approval ratings on social media following his government’s strict crackdown on crime.
Nayib Bukele has jailed more than 65,000 gang members since he introduced a ‘firm hand’ approach to rampant cartel activity in the country in March 2022.
As a result, various polls have seen the 42-year-old’s support soar to around 90 per cent, with Bukele retweeting favorable statistics about his tenure on Tuesday after they were published by the controversial conservative ‘End Wokeness’ Twitter account.
Bukele shared the account, which has 1.4 million followers, to highlight how record levels of incarceration and unsurpassed policing have essentially ended the cartels’ dominance of the nation.
“He took one of the deadliest countries and made it the safest in Latin America,” the account said. ‘As it did? He jailed the criminals.
Nayib Bukele has taken a ‘firm hand’ approach to El Salvador’s crime wave, which has led to a wave of arrests while his popularity ratings have skyrocketed.
El Salvador’s homicide rate peaked at 107 per 100,000 in 2015, before Bukele’s hardliners dropped the figure to just 2.3 in 2023.
Bukele’s heavy-handed approach to crime became apparent as soon as he was elected president more than four years ago, when he announced a “territorial control plan” to target gang activity.
El Salvador was still reeling from one of the worst crime waves in recent memory, reaching a staggering 107 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015, according to data from the world Bank.
More than 4,000 people were arrested in the first weeks of his tenure, and widespread arrests sent homicide rates plummeting to just 18 per 100,000 by 2021.
Although crime rates improved, Bukele was clearly not satisfied, and last year he intensified his administration’s focus on gangs amid a surge in activity, particularly from the infamous MS-13 cartel.
Bukele’s extensive focus on cartel activity has led El Salvador to have the highest levels of incarceration in the world.
On March 26, 2022, El Salvador recorded its deadliest day since the end of its civil war 30 years ago, with 62 murders in a 24-hour period. In response, Bukele announced a state of emergency, which suspended civil liberties and dramatically increased police powers.
Initially, the ‘state of emergency’ was meant to last just 30 days, but in the year and a half since nearly 70,000 suspected gang members have been locked up.
The arrests have led El Salvador to have the highest incarceration rate in the world, according to dismantle.
The outlet calculated that the homicide rate for the first six months of 2023 is around 2.3 per 100,000, a dramatic drop from the 2015 peak.
While some have criticized Bukele for the extensive arrests, he has been widely praised by those happy to see a lull in the cartel’s wild activity.
The ‘End Wokeness’ Twitter account, which regularly posts about the effects of soft Democratic policies on crisis cities like San Francisco, hailed the president’s success as a result of ‘putting criminals in jail’.
“El Salvador’s homicide rate has dropped 92%,” the account said in a separate post, which was also retweeted by Bukele.
‘How did President Bukele do it? Addressing the “root causes”? Addressing “systemic inequalities”? No. He cracked down on gangs and jailed 65,000 criminals. And now he has a 90% approval rating.
The account added that “our cities need someone like him,” drawing comparisons between Bukele’s strict policing with the rampant robbery, open-air drug use and low arrest rates seen in many Blue-run cities.
While some have criticized the hardline stance for allegedly violating civil rights, the lack of crime has led Bukele to enjoy a period of great popularity, even jokingly calling himself ‘the coolest dictator on the word’.
Until now, successive governments have struggled to deal with the violence that is spreading throughout El Salvador. One of Nayib Bukele’s hardline solutions was the opening of a mega-prison in February (pictured)
The first batch of 2,000 inmates arrived at CECOT’s new mega-prison on February 24, 2023. It comes after El Salvador arrested more than 64,000 suspected gang members in the country’s crackdown on violent crime in the murder capital of the world.
In particular, allegations have surfaced that Bukele made clandestine deals with cartel leaders to reduce the number of gang killings in exchange for better prison conditions.
The spike in homicides came as Bukele allegedly reneged on agreements, including opening the hellish CECOT mega-prison ‘Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo’ in February, which houses more than 100 inmates per cell.
Civil rights groups have compared prison conditions to concentration camps, as cells are 1 meter wide, with no mattresses or open air.
The prison opening comes as part of Bukele’s brutal crackdown on two of North and Central America’s most feared gangs, MS-13 and Calle 18, with members of rival cartels ominously huddled together.
It comes as a result of the president’s stern efforts, as a trade-off for plummeting murder rates is an overcrowded 40,000-capacity prison filled with the country’s most dangerous criminals, many of whom are on opposite sides of a decades-long feud.
