President Nayib Bukele El Salvador Famous 1,000 days without homicides since he took power in 2019. But what exactly means, and there are reasons to doubt figures in a country formerly dominated by the MS13 And District 18 Street gangs? Alex Papadovassilakis, chief investigator of Insight Crime in Central America, explains why Bukele could overestimate the achievements of his administration.
Deborah: (00:00:03) I am Deborah Bonello, editor -in -chief of Insight Crime, and I speak to our main investigator in Central America.
Alex, the government of President Nayib Bukele celebrates 1,000 days without homicides since it took power in 2019. But what exactly does that mean? And are there any reasons to doubt figures?
Alex: (00:00:22) Well, it is true that violence has fallen spectacular since Bukele took office. The homicides are at historical stockings-that is to say in large part because the government has launched a ruthless repression against the two main street gangs in the country, the MS13 and the Barrio 18, which were previously responsible for the vast majority of homicides in Salvador.
During this repression, the gangs were mainly dismantled. However, there are a few reasons to question government figures. First, as Insight crime stressed during the annual listening to this year's homicides, El Salvador does not follow what is called the Bogotá protocol, which is the standard method to measure homicides in the region.
But perhaps more importantly, the government of Bukele has in fact began to omit certain types of homicides from their count. So, first of all, you have the omission of bodies discovered in clandestine tombs or unmarked tombs. This is important in El Salvador because gangs are used to having their victims in mass pits. The government has also started to omit people killed in clashes with police and soldiers – also important in Salvador, where security forces have a complicated history of extrajudicial murders. And more recently, the government has also started to omit the homicides that occur in prisons, and this is increasingly important in Salvador, which, during repression, has become the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world.
So what does all this mean? This means that government data can overestimate how complete the reduction in violence has been, and it can inflate the perceived success of government security policies.
Deborah: (00:02:44) So we have an idea of the way the version of government events compares to reality on the ground in Salvador, in terms of violence?
Alex: (00:02:57) I think it is difficult to say it statistically. Admittedly, on the ground in Salvador, there was a remarkable difference in tranquility, in particular in the communities which were once dominated by the gangs.
In terms of difficult data, it is difficult to examine government figures because under Bukele, government's transparency has decreased in a fairly radical way. There was an investigation of Foreign policy Last year, which concluded that the government of Bukele had underestimated the murders on average of a third since it launched its great repression in 2022. This information was based on government figures compared to the information collected by civil society actors as well as the local press.
Unfortunately, it becomes more and more difficult for independent organizations to check the figures, because the government of Bukele recently began to take measures to target independent civil society actors in the press with legal attacks. And so that space is shrinking, and it is likely that it will become more and more difficult to move forward to determine how much the reduction in violence has been important from a statistical point.
DB: (00:04:38) Indeed. The less critical voices, the less we know about what is really going on. But as you say, some of his security gains are impressive given the situation in which El Salvador was confronted just a few years ago. Alex, thank you very much for your time. For those who look at, to learn more about the gangs of Salvador and the security situation there, please dive in our archives on insight.org
