The reelection of President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador is welcome news. His success shows that security is a prerequisite for happiness and freedom. Lacking security, people set aside the pursuit of happiness and ambition and focus on simple survival. Lacking security, the innocent are left easy prey for the vicious and the violent.
These facts drove Bukele’s stunning margin of victory on Sunday. Before the electoral reporting system suffered a technical failure, Bukele had secured 83% of the vote. This was not so much a landslide as an electoral earthquake.
Bukele is loved by his nation because he has rescued it from the grip of murderous gangs. In doing so, he has provided a long-suffering people with a new sense of optimism. The data tell the tale. Between 2019 and 2021, thousands of El Salvadorians were murdered each year. But in 2022, the number dropped to 495, and then in 2023, it fell again, to 154. This is one of the lowest homicide rates in the Americas.
How did Bukele achieve this staggering improvement? With belated but decisive action.
Following a 2020 effort to bribe gang leaders, a flawed policy many of his predecessors had pursued, Bukele instead ordered a crackdown on the gangs that dominated El Salvador’s prisons. Gangsters were held incommunicado, and lockdown policies were enforced. Disliking this, gangs tried to force Bukele to back down by unleashing a spasm of murderous violence in March 2022. In a display of brutality unusual even for such hardened killers, gangs randomly targeted and murdered more than five dozen people. It was their greatest mistake. In response, Bukele declared war.
Passing a state of emergency through parliament — it has been repeatedly extended with parliamentary assembly — Bukele sent the army and police into gang strongholds as part of a “Territorial Control Plan” to restore security. Tougher sentences were imposed for gang membership and related activities. The age of criminal responsibility was lowered to reflect the frequent use of young teenagers as gang enforcers. Security forces detained men with gang tattoos, posing a problem for gangsters who broadcast their affiliation with facial tattoos.
The result was that tens of thousands of gangsters are now in prison. Gangs have lost freedom of action and their once vast monopoly of force. Put simply, Bukele has made law enforcement bigger and tougher than the gangs, and it protects Salvadorans rather than murdering and extorting them. The president’s resolution in the face of internal threats and external criticism has been unrelenting. Faced with accusations that prison overcrowding had become intolerable, for example, Bukele has simply built new megaprisons. While Bukele’s restrictions on press freedom are disappointing, his strategy has worked. The brutal MS-13, a truly foul gang that runs child prostitution and kills people by burning them alive, has been especially hard hit.
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Bukele is set to redouble his efforts. Others across Latin America are taking notice of his success and, presumably, the electoral favor it has won him. Bukele is highly popular in other crime-ridden nations such as Ecuador and Honduras, leading the Honduran government to attempt to replicate his get-tough strategy. Opposition leaders are winning favor by calling for similar steps in their own nations. And voters are getting the message. The contrast between Bukele’s strategy and that of other leaders, such as Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, bought and paid for by criminal syndicates, is increasingly hard to ignore.
Long may it continue.