El Salvador's president now boasts 90% support after 65K gang arrests
El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, who calls himself the ‘world’s coolest dictator’, retweets posts showing he now has a 90% approval rating after cutting murders by 92% and putting away 65K criminals
- The hardline president has imprisoned almost 70,000 gang members since March 2022
- The 42-year-old has enjoyed sky-high approval ratings as a result of the crackdown
- He was spotted retweeting his favorable statistics on Twitter after they were shared by controversial conservative account ‘End Wokeness’
El Salvador’s popular hardline president boasted over his soaring approval ratings on social media following his government’s strict crime crackdown.
Nayib Bukele has imprisoned over 65,000 gang members since he introduced an ‘iron fist’ approach to the country’s rampant cartel activity in March 2022.
Varying polls have seen the 42-year-old’s support rocket to around 90 percent as a result, with Bukele retweeting favorable statistics about his tenure on Tuesday after they were posted by controversial conservative Twitter account ‘End Wokeness’.
Bukele shared the account, which boasts 1.4 million followers, to highlight how record incarceration levels and intractable policing have essentially put an end to cartel dominance in the nation.
‘He took one of the deadliest countries and made it the safest in Latin America,’ the account said. ‘How did he do it? He jailed the criminals.’
Nayib Bukele took an ‘iron fist’ approach to El Salvador’s crimewave, which has led to sweeping arrests while his popularity ratings have soared
El Salvador’s homicide rate reached a peak of 107 per 100,000 people in 2015, before Bukele’s hardline policing saw the figure fall to just 2.3 in 2023
Bukele’s tough-on-crime approach was evident as soon as he was elected president over 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 people in 2015, according to data from the World Bank.
More than 4,000 people were arrested in the first few weeks of his tenure, and the widespread arrests saw murder rates plummet to just 18 per 100,000 by 2021.
Although crime rates improved, Bukele clearly wasn’t satisfied, and he stepped up his administration’s focus on gangs last year amid an increase in activity, particularly from infamous cartel MS-13.
Bukele’s extensive targeting of cartel activity has led El Salvador to hold the highest incarceration levels 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.
The ‘state of exception’ was initially only meant to last 30 days, but in the year-and-a-half since almost 70,000 suspected gang members have been locked up.
The arrests have led El Salvador to own the world’s highest incarceration rate in the world, according to Unherd.
The outlet calculated that the homicide rate through the first six-months of 2023 is around 2.3 per 100,000, a dramatic fall since the 2015 peak.
While some have criticized Bukele for the extensive arrests, he has been widely praised by those happy to see a pause on untamed cartel activity.
The ‘End Wokeness’ Twitter account, which regularly posts about the effects of soft Democrat policies on failing cities such as San Francisco, lauded the president’s success as a result of ‘jailing the criminals.’
‘El Salvador’s homicide rate is down 92%,’ the account said in a separate post, which was also retweeted by Bukele.
‘How did President Bukele do it? By addressing the “root causes”? By tackling “systemic inequities”? Nope. He cracked down on the gangs and jailed 65k criminals. And now he has 90% approval rating.’
The account added that ‘our cities need someone like him’, drawing comparisons between Bukele’s strict policing to the unbridled shoplifting, open-air drug taking, 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 sky-high popularity, as he even jokingly labeled himself as ‘the word’s coolest dictator.’
Until now, successive governments have struggled to deal with violence spilling across El Salvador. One of Nayib Bukele’s hardline solutions was the opening of a mega-prison in February (pictured)
The first group of 2,000 inmates arrived at the new CECOT mega-prison on 24 February 2023. It comes after El Salvador rounded up more than 64,000 alleged gang members in the country’s crackdown on violent crime in the murder capital of the world
Notably, allegations have swirled that Bukele made backdoor agreements with cartel leaders to reduce the number of gang killings in exchange for improved prison conditions.
The spike in homicides came as Bukele allegedly reneged on the deals, including opening hellhole mega-prison CECOT ‘Terrorism Confinement Centre’ in February, which houses over 100 inmates per cell.
Conditions in the prison have been compared to concentration camps by civil rights groups, as the cells come with 1 meter of space, no mattresses and no outdoors.
The prison’s 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 the rival cartels ominously packed in together.
It comes as a result of the president’s severe efforts, as a tradeoff for sending homicide rates plummeting is an overcrowded 40,000-capacity prison full of the country’s most dangerous criminals, many of whom are on opposite sides of a decades-long feud.