Inside El Salvador’s war on crime

in El Salvador 2 000 prisoners are herded into a Maximum Security Prison its disturbing footage they've been jailed without Fair trials as part of a nationwide Crackdown and what's really shocking about this video is it was posted by the country's president has locked up tens of thousands of young men yet across Latin America he's more popular than the Pope I traveled to El Salvador to find out why this increasingly authoritarian leader has approval ratings of 80 to 90 percent president bukele offers A playbook for how to dismantle a democracy while remaining popular [Music] the standing on a road outside of prison in El Salvador tens of thousands of young men rounded up by the police accused of being gangsters and locked up without anything remotely resembling a trial along this road mothers of them wait for a possibility of a glimpse of their son I've been transported out of the prison or sometimes tragically taken to hospital after beatings inside these families are feeling the effects of one of the most intense Wars on gangs Latin America has ever seen El Salvador has long been plagued by stratospheric levels of gang violence like nearly every president of El Salvador naiba Kelly won office on a promise to crack down on gangs unlike previous presidents he did so with a ferocity that was quite unprecedented head program was to toss out the old rule book and round up a huge proportion of the young male population of El Salvador anyone whom the police remotely suspected of even distant ties to a gang on the flimsiest of evidence could be a dodgy tattoo could be an anonymous tip-off so far mukelee has locked up the equivalent of seven percent of El Salvador's young male population on the streets near San Salvador people seem unfazed by bukele's tactics foreign neighborhoods it used to be that gangsters could Swagger into people's shops and demand money and the shopkeepers would feel they had to pay up because if they didn't they'd be killed and they didn't think that anyone would do anything about the gangsters because that would require testimony which everyone was too scared to give now that's changed the gangsters know that just one phone call from an anonymous person can get them locked up indefinitely many salvadorians are delighted that the gangs have lost their grip but the families I saw outside the jail told a different story foreign with over 70 000 people imprisoned on at best circumstantial evidence it didn't surprise me that the women I spoke to wouldn't risk showing their faces they didn't want to appear on camera because anyone can be locked up on no evidence in El Salvador so they're terrified this is Gustavo viatoro El Salvador's Minister for justice and internal security I challenged him on his government's erosion of due process will the group who are being held their trials how long will it take to finish their trials where this is we are working the the trial against them already started 63 000 of them are under a judge decision in prison but we expect maybe 24 months more to finish the trial against and these trials are the individual trials or group trials in group and what do you say to the human rights groups who say that this Crackdown has been pursued without proper regard to Human Rights we don't work for human right organization we work for Salvadorian citizens it's not just due process that pokelay's government is chipping away at he's dismantling other checks and balances largely in the name of keeping salvadorians safe so he purges the Judiciary of Judges who want to restrain him he is reducing the size of Parliament and gerrymandering it to increase his party's control he's even using crime as an excuse to gag the media by passing a terrifying law which imposes jail sentences of 10 to 15 years for any report that causes anxiety or amplifiers supposedly any messages from gangs [Music] for now most salvadorians are celebrating the peace that's come back to their streets but over time they may discover that they've traded fear of gangs for fear of a police state and Robert guest the deputy editor of The Economist to read more of our coverage of Latin America and indeed what's happening in El Salvador please click on the link and don't forget to subscribe

Channel: The Economist

Views: 280,385

Keywords: The Economist, Economist, Economist Films, Economist Videos, Politics, News, short-documentary, noticias, nayib bukele, noticias en vivo, quien es nayib bukele, el salvador, murder, murder capital

Id: gZtuK-ALP7o

Length: 6min 23sec (383 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2023