July, August, and September became the three safest months in El Salvador’s history, marking 212 days of Bukele’s administration without homicides.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, is fulfilling perhaps the most crucial campaign proposal on his agenda: September became the third consecutive month with zero homicides in the Central American country.
A wave of killings by the mara gang at the end of March was the straw that broke the camel’s back and convinced the Legislative Assembly to approve Bukele’s security plan, much resisted by the opposition.
The plan puts the country in a state of emergency, militarizes the streets, allows massive arrests of gang members, and enables extreme conditions in prisons.
Since its implementation, some 50,500 people have been arrested, accused of belonging to the gangs that have ruled the country’s streets for decades.
Before the exception regime, there were 15,000 gang members in prison, so now the total number reaches 65,500 incarcerated.
Bukele launched an all-out war against the maras, a group of gang members responsible for drug trafficking, human trafficking, kidnappings, robberies, and homicides, and who had the leaders of El Salvador’s two most important parties, the leftist FMLN, and the conservative ARENA, in their pocket.
“July and August 2022 become the two safest months in our history,” the president had posted on Twitter when El Salvador completed two consecutive months without homicides, the first time in the country’s history since the return to democracy in 1992.
Of those arrested, 70% are accused of belonging to the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang, followed by the Sureños faction of the Barrio 18 gang (18%) and the Revolucionarios faction of the same group (11%).
The remaining 1% comprises the Mao Mao, MS503, Máquina, and Mirada Locos Sureños gangs.
With information from Derecha Diario