Lawfare Archive: El Salvador’s President Cracks Down on Gangs—and Democracy

Summary

Summary of "Lawfare Archive: El Salvador’s President Cracks Down on Gangs—and Democracy"

Episode Release Date: March 22, 2025

Introduction

In this episode of The Lawfare Podcast, host Quinta Jurecic engages in an in-depth discussion with Manuel Melendez Sanchez, a PhD candidate in political science at Harvard University. The conversation centers on El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele’s aggressive crackdown on gangs and the consequential impacts on democracy and human rights within the country.

Background: The Rise of Gangs in El Salvador

The episode begins with an overview of the historical context that allowed gangs, particularly the maras such as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18, to gain significant power in El Salvador. Manuel Melendez Sanchez explains:

"The gangs have a long history, but the modern history of these groups really starts in the 1990s... This created a space where these gangs began to recruit and grow, eventually controlling entire neighborhoods."
(06:20)

Nayib Bukele’s Ascendancy to Power

Bukele emerged as a non-traditional candidate in 2019, breaking the dominance of El Salvador’s two major parties. His youthful image and anti-establishment rhetoric resonated with many Salvadorans who were disillusioned with the existing political system.

"Bukele frames himself as an anti-establishment candidate... His unique and youthful communication strategy, especially on social media, has reinforced his image as different from the old system."
(17:05)

The Crackdown on Gangs: Strategies and Execution

Since March 2022, Bukele has implemented a state of emergency granting the government expansive powers to arrest and detain suspected gang members. This crackdown has led to nearly 70,000 arrests in a country of 7 million, meaning approximately 1% of the population is currently imprisoned.

"Over the past 12 months, El Salvador has conducted about 70,000 arrests... This crackdown has succeeded in defeating these massive, violent criminal groups, at least for now."
(04:54)

Public Perception vs. Human Rights Concerns

Despite reports of widespread human rights abuses, including torture, inmate deaths, and overcrowded prisons, Bukele maintains a high approval rating exceeding 80%. Manuel attributes this paradox to the population's prioritization of security over civil liberties.

"88.2% of Salvadorans say they currently feel very safe... 95% attribute their sense of safety to Bukele's crackdown."
(43:10)

Bukele’s Communication Strategy and International Relations

Bukele leverages social media, particularly Twitter, to project a modern and relatable image both domestically and internationally. His savvy use of memes, English-language tweets, and direct engagement with global figures like Elon Musk has bolstered his international reputation.

"Bukele is able to frame himself as a head of state that's very modern, very forward-looking, very hip... This has been incredibly effective for his standing and reputation internationally."
(24:35)

Comparisons to Global Populist Leaders

Manuel draws parallels between Bukele and other populist leaders, notably comparing his communication style to that of Donald Trump while emphasizing Bukele’s unique ability to resonate with younger audiences and effectively utilize digital platforms.

"Bukele is part of this wave of populist, anti-establishment leaders... His use of social media is a match made in heaven with his personal qualities."
(27:04)

Potential Long-Term Consequences and Future Outlook

While the crackdown appears successful in the short term, Manuel expresses concerns about its sustainability and potential future repercussions. Drawing comparisons to Peru’s political crisis in the 1990s, he warns that the erosion of democratic institutions could lead to prolonged authoritarianism.

"The lesson from Peru is that democratic institutions are very easy to throw away during a crisis but very difficult to restore once the crisis has passed."
(66:36)

He also highlights risks such as the possible resurgence of gang activity, the infiltration of larger international cartels, and the societal challenges posed by mass re-incarceration.

"Is it possible that the Salvadoran government is going to face a situation similar to the 1990s when a massive influx of people released from prison could lead to new criminal activities?"
(61:19)

Conclusion: A Cautionary Tale for Democracies

The episode concludes with a reflection on the delicate balance between security and democratic freedoms. Manuel underscores the importance of safeguarding democratic institutions to prevent the slide into long-term authoritarianism, using Peru’s experience as a cautionary example.

"Once you've thrown out your democratic institutions, those things are very hard to get back... El Salvador now finds itself in a situation where it no longer has democratic institutions."
(72:06)

Notable Quotes

• Manuel Melendez Sanchez on Gangs:
  "The gangs have a long history... they begin to recruit more members and they begin to grow."
  (06:20)

• On Bukele’s Popularity:
  "Bukele's approval rating never seems to dip under 80%. That is incredible."
  (30:05)

• On Human Rights Abuses:
  "There is mounting evidence of violence inside of these prisons... conditions inside of these prisons must be extremely dire."
  (40:44)

• On the Future of Democracy in El Salvador:
  "What happens in Peru is before long, after a couple of years, Fujimori really has more or less defeated these guerrillas... El Salvador now finds itself in a situation where it no longer has democratic institutions."
  (66:36)

Implications for Global Democracy

Bukele’s tenure in El Salvador serves as a microcosm for broader global trends where leaders prioritize security over democratic norms, often leading to the erosion of institutional checks and balances. The discussion emphasizes the need for vigilance in protecting democratic institutions to prevent similar scenarios worldwide.

Final Thoughts

The episode offers a comprehensive analysis of Nayib Bukele’s strategies to combat gang violence in El Salvador and the accompanying democratic challenges. It serves as both an informative case study and a warning for other nations grappling with similar issues, highlighting the fragile interplay between security imperatives and the preservation of democratic freedoms.

Transcript

[Caroline Cornett]

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[Quinta Jurecic]

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[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

With an episode from the Lawfare archive.

[Quinta Jurecic]

For March 22, 2025.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Last week, the Trump administration appeared to.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Defy a court order prohibiting deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. The administration deported migrants to El Salvador in a deal with President Nayib Bukele.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Who interred them in a mega prison notorious for its crowded conditions and alleged.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Human rights violations such as torture, inmate deaths, and mass trials.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

For today's Archive episode, I selected an.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Episode from May 9, 2023, in which.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Quinta Jurassic spoke to PhD candidate Manuel Melendez Sanchez about Bukele's prolonged attacks on El Salvador's democratic institutions and his efforts.

[Quinta Jurecic]

To crack down on gangs.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

While his regime has engaged in human rights abuses, Bukele has succeeded at curbing.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Gang violence and enjoys high popularity. They discussed why Bukele's crackdown on the.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Game seems to be working, why it.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Might fall apart in the long run.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

And what Bukele's rise means for democracy.

[Quinta Jurecic]

In El Salvador and around the world. I'm Quinta Jurecic, a senior editor at Lawfish, and this is The Lawfare Podcast, May 9, 2023. Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of exception as its president, Nayib Bukele, seeks to crack down on the country's powerful gangs. Bukele, who once described himself on Twitter as the world's coolest dictator, has engaged in a prolonged attack on El Salvador's democratic institutions, and the crackdown has resulted in a range of human rights abuses. At the same time, Bukele really does seem to have been successful in curbing gang violence, and his popularity is sky high. To understand the situation in El Salvador, I spoke with Manuel Melendez Sanchez, a PhD candidate in political science at Harvard University, who has written about Bukele on Lawfare. Manuel and I discussed why Bukele's crackdown on the gangs seems to be working, why it may fall apart in the long term, and what Bukele's rise means for democracy in El Salvador and around the world. It's The Lawfare Podcast, May 9. El Salvador's President cracks down on gangs and democracy. El Salvador has had a chaotic year. There's been a massive spike of violence in the spring of 2022, and then there was a dramatic and extremely effective but in other ways very troubling crackdown on gangs by President Nayib Bukele. Can you give us an overview of what's been happening?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah. So, as you said, about a year ago, In March of 2022, El Salvador's criminal groups, street gangs known as maras, they went on a sudden and very violent killing spree. In its aftermath, Nayub Bukele, the Salvadoran president, and his allies declared a state of emergency, which basically gave the government widespread powers to carry out mass arrests and to imprison those suspected of being gang members since then. So in the 12 months since, El Salvador has conducted a massive number of arrests, nearing 70,000. This is in a country of 7 million people, which means that about one in every 100 Salvadorans is currently behind bars. The sort of headline development in the past five or six months is that as far as we can tell, this crackdown has succeeded in. In defeating these massive, violent criminal groups, at least for now.

[Quinta Jurecic]

So let's talk a little bit about the gangs and what kind of role they have played in El Salvador until this recent crackdown. How is it that they became so powerful in El Salvador such that the country got to this point? And you know what's kind of the everyday person's interaction with them.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Sure. So the gangs have a long history, but the modern history of these groups really starts in the 1990s. So this is a decade when El Salvador is coming out of a long civil war. That war had created thousands upon thousands of refugees. And after the end of the war, many of these refugees started returning, not always out of their own volition. Thousands of them were forcibly returned from the United States. And what this created, if you think about it, is you have this war torn country that is still recovering, a fairly weak government, a fairly weak state, and suddenly you have this massive influx of sort of young men who are returning home, often for the first time since they were toddlers. And this population, as well as people who had been in el Salvador, who had been displaced by war internally, who had suffered from the war, they basically become a place where these gangs, these street gangs, begin to recruit their members. And so what happens in the 90s is that these groups that used to be very small, very neighborhood based, they begin to recruit more members and they begin to grow. The sort of second turning point happens in the early 2000s. At this point, these groups are starting to become a problem. They're starting to become a little bit more violent. Politicians are starting to worry, and so they institute the first of many crackdowns. What happens is that this backfires. The government begins rounding up these mostly young men who were members of these gangs, and they begin to throw them in prisons. Now, interestingly, what happens is that although these people have been captured from across the country, they meet each other in these prisons, they begin to form networks, they begin to organize within the prisons. And so suddenly, what had been a number of still relatively small local criminal groups, they form into these national organizations that have the power to coordinate and have the power to really wield quite a lot of violence and influence. So coming out of that process and fast forwarding a little bit, what El salvador ends up with is basically three large. We call them street gangs, really, they're criminal organizations. And these are The Maras Albatrucca, Ramach 13, which I think american listeners will be quite familiar with, and two factions of the barrio de xiocho gang, the revolutionaries and the sudanese. So in terms of the everyday life of sort of everyday salvadorans, these gangs become a very big deal. In particular, these gangs grow to exercise authority and control over entire neighborhoods. And so what that means is that if the neighborhood you're living in is controlled by one of these gangs, they can restrict basically anything you do. You know, if you want to open a small business, they will charge you, quote, unquote, protection, taxes. In some cases, if you want to enter and leave the gang turf, they will ask for id, for example, or they might simply not let you enter rival gang turf. And above all, they become very violent. So they use violence to settle scores. They use violence to intimidate. They use violence to these violence to exercise this control. So for a long time, really starting around 2010, maybe a little earlier, for thousands of Salvadorans, these gangs were really sort of the ultimate authority. Right. It wasn't the state, it wasn't the police. It wasn't the military. It wasn't politicians. It was these street gangs. And this is sort of the situation that Nayib Bukele, the president, sort of inherits and encounters when he gets elected in 2019.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Yeah. I mean, in some ways, it sounds like what you're describing is really. And collapse may be too strong, but an existential crisis for the Salvadorian state, insofar as traditionally, one of the ways that we describe a state is the entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. And what you're describing is an environment where there isn't a monopoly on the use of force, and gangs are able to kind of control people's lives and regulate them in the way that we typically think of governments doing. Is that fair?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

I think that's fair. And not only that, but as time goes on and as the state is actually able to become a little bit more capable and they start to try to exercise that power, try to control the gangs and take back some of this power and control, it ends up backfiring. It ends up making the gangs stronger and more organized. But, yeah, I think that's a fair characterization, especially during the 1990s. So during those early years, right after the civil war ends in 1992, when the gangs really sort of start to start to develop.

[Quinta Jurecic]

And so what is it exactly that Bukele has done over the past year to crack down on the gangs?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Right. So the really, the biggest part of this crackdown strategy has been conducting mass arrests. Actually, I should pause here to say that for reasons we'll probably get into, a lot of what's going on here is really shrouded in secrecy and sort of by design. There isn't really a lot of transparency around data. But as far as we can tell, over the past 12 months, the government has conducted about 70,000 arrests. That has been possible for a couple of reasons, the biggest being that during this state of emergency, which now has Been ongoing for almost 13 months. The state of emergency basically suspends a whole host of constitutional rights and allows police and the military to conduct these arrests. This has had many effects. One is that it has resulted in a lot of these gang members ending up behind bars. And that's a. That's a massive blow to these organizations. Another aspect of Bugawa's policies is that it's changed conviction guidelines for crime related crimes, for gang related crimes, and they've also lowered the age of criminal responsibility. And so what that means is that it's not only easier than ever before for the Salvadoran government to arrest people, it's also a lot easier for them to keep them behind bars for longer than before.

[Quinta Jurecic]

So you mentioned that there's been a real secrecy and a lack of transparency here. Talk a little bit more about how that's played into all of this.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, so I think to really answer that question, you have to understand that this president, Nayeli Bukele, is a little bit of a PR genius. And so he is by far the most popular president in Latin America, arguably the most popular president in the world. And there are many reasons for that. One reason is that he is a master at essentially hiding the ugly bits of policies and promoting the popular or the appealing bits of policy. And so, in this case, for example, what that means is, you know, we don't really have access to many court files. We don't really have access to information about what's happening inside of prisons. We don't really have statistics on, well, exactly how many people have been arrested here. And so that lack of information then allows the government to turn around and basically cherry pick what's being presented. So if you were to scroll through Nayib Bukele's Twitter account or through the Twitter accounts of any number of Salvadoran government agencies, you'll see exclusively pictures of people who look very scary and very dangerous being held behind bars. You'll see graphs and charts that show that there are basically zero homicides and zero crimes in the country. And so that ability to manage the image of this policy is really important, because this crackdown can only be sustained for as long as it's been sustained if it remains popular. So this idea of very carefully managing the information that's being filtered out not only to Salvadorans, but to the international community has been really important in terms of sustaining. Sustaining this crackdown policy, which I think is important to emphasize. Crackdowns against criminal groups are fairly common in Latin America. This is, as far as I know, by almost any reasonable Measure. This is the most intensive and getting close to the longest crackdown the region has seen, certainly in the past 20 or 30 years against criminal organizations. And one reason why I think it's been so sustainable is because of the way its image has been managed. And that in turn relies on basically blocking off access to information.

[Quinta Jurecic]

So I want to go back to the mechanics of the crackdown, its popularity, and the really troubling human rights implications. But before we do that, I want to make sure that we talk a little bit about Bukele himself, because as you say, you know, he is really the figure at the center of this, and his, let's call it unique communication style has really shaped how people see and understand it. So just to start off, who is Bukele? You know, there's. There's been a lot of critiques that he's moved El Salvador toward authoritarianism. What has his presidency been like so far?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Sure. So Nayib Bukele is elected in 2019, and the first thing to know about him is that he is the first president from outside of El Salvador's two major parties to be elected in over 20 years. So he frames himself as an anti establishment candidate. He sounds and talks like a populist, and he's really able to position himself as sort of the antidote to a system that many Salvadorans saw as having failed them and as being very resistant to change. It helped that Bukele is very young. At the time of his election, he was either 38 or 39. And as you mentioned, it also helped that he has a very unique and really very youthful communication strategy. So social media is his. Go to Twitter is how he communicates with the world and with actually the people who work for him. He's known for wearing backwards baseball caps, hating ties. He posts memes, he chimes in on popular culture. He tags and retweets Elon Musk quite frequently. And so I think this sort of useful Persona that he's able to communicate really reinforces this sort of idea. He's selling that, oh, I'm not like this old system that's failed everyone. I truly am different. And Salvadorans love that. They respond to that. They elect them with 52% of the vote, which may not sound like that much, but remember, this is essentially a third party candidate, and the runner up ends up with 32% of the vote. So Bukele beats the runner up by 20 percentage points. Now, from the time he's elected, I think it's easiest to sort of think about Bukele's presidency so far in two stages. So when Bukele first gets elected in 2019, he doesn't have control of Congress. And so Congress is still in the hands of the opposition. And for those first two years, basically, Bukele isn't able to accomplish much by way of policy. So there aren't really any blockbuster policy changes like we'll see later. But what happens is that he basically enters in this near constant conflict with the other branches of the state, with the courts, but especially with the Congress, with the legislative assembly. And there's this sort of famous episode in February of 2020 when he marches into the Congress surrounded by the military, and he sits at the chair of. At the chair that is generally reserved for the president of Congress. And he sort of says words to the extent of, you know, I wonder if I should just shut you guys down right now, but I'm going to pray for a moment and see what happens. And so he does, you know, this is all being televised. And he closes his eyes, and he apparently prays for a few minutes, and then he opens his eyes and he says, well, you know what? It's your lucky day because God has asked me for patience. So I give you one week to see the light and to start supporting, supporting what I want to do. And he leaves. This sort of becomes emblematic of those first two years of his presidency. Sort of constant conflict, constant concerns that he's angling for some sort of power grab. Eventually, we sort of reach the second chapter of the Bukele presidency, where he is basically able to sweep midterm elections, and he ends up with a super majority in the legislature, and he also ends up with a majority of local governors. And within hours of the new legislators being sworn in, he fires El Salvador's highest court, he fires the attorney general, and he packs both of those institutions with his loyalists. What that means is that by May 2021, Bukele has suddenly gone from being a very popular president with no support in the other branches of government to being a very popular president who now essentially controls all three branches of government. And this is when we start to see him roll out these sort of blockbuster policies. One of the most famous is the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender. Many listeners will be familiar with this happened in September of 2021. And then really, this sort of crackdown has become his signature policy. So that's kind of an abridged version of where Bukil came from and sort of what his presidency has been like so far.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Yeah. And there's also recently he sort of secured a Supreme Court ruling that allowed him to run for reelection in 2024, despite the fact that that had previously been unconstitutional under the Salvadorian constitution. I will say that I was on a bus in D.C. the other day and I saw a guy wearing a Bukele 2024 hat. So make of that. But I mean, that suggests to me that there's, you know, there's a certain amount of control he has over the Supreme Court as well. Is that fair?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, no, I think that's totally fair. As you mentioned, the Supreme Court that he, you know, essentially put in power ruled that he could run for reelection. This happened in September of 2021. So about four months after Bukele fired the old court. I think it would be fair to say that at this point in time, Bukele has either corrupted, undermined, or shackled basically every major institution that was designed to hold the Salvadoran presidency accountable. So this is many things. This is blatantly anti democratic, but it also gives him a lot of power. And that has played a crucial role now during this crackdown.

[Quinta Jurecic]

So let's talk about the PR aspect of this a little bit. As you mentioned, Bukele often tweets in English, and a lot of his comments seem directed toward an international audience as well as, or perhaps instead of his own constituents. So I was looking at his Twitter this morning, and on April 16, he tweeted, Strong men create good times. At one point, he changed his Twitter bio to read coolest dictator in the world. So how should we understand his approach to communications? Not only as a way of communicating with people within El Salvador, but also around the world and particularly an American English speaking audience.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, absolutely. So there's a lot that we can say, as you mentioned, there's a lot that we can say about how his communication style impacts the way Salvadorans feel about him. But even putting all of that to the side, it's very clearly also kind of an exercise in international relations. I think the place to start is to remember that we're talking about a country that is both relatively small and very interconnected. So this is a country of just under 7 million people, an area about that of the state of Massachusetts, but a huge chunk of its population. Estimates vary wildly on this, but anywhere around 40% of Salvadorians actually live abroad. They don't live in El Salvador, and many of them live in the United States. This is also a country that's dollarized. And so the fates of El Salvador and the United States are Intricately linked. So I think Bukele has recognized from very early on that being able to manage his relationship with the rest of the world and especially with the United States was going to be extremely important. Now, if we remember that he is an anti establishment leader, he is, I think, genuinely incredibly skeptical of international organizations and many governments, certainly the Biden administration, I think he sees Twitter as a way of bypassing what someone might call the institutions of globalization and speaking directly to the people, speaking directly to Salvadoran immigrants who are outside, speaking directly to opinion makers and leaders in opposition parties such as the Republican party in the U.S. and overall, what he's been able to do really is to frame himself as a head of state that's very modern, very forward looking, very hip, very active, and for lack of a better word, I think people sort of look at his tweeter feed and they think, hey, this guy is really cool. And that's what in sort of international relations we might call self power.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Right?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

People sort of looking at Bukele and thinking, either, hey, I kind of want to be him, or hey, I kind of want to have a president or a leader like him. And that has been incredibly effective for his standing and his reputation internationally, certainly across Latin America, certainly in the US and beyond.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Yeah, I mean, the way you describe his Twitter use as a way of kind of cutting through institutions and speaking directly to people, I don't want to fall into the trap of comparing everyone to Donald Trump, but it does sound a lot like Donald Trump. And I wonder how you think about Bukele in the context of this kind of broader populist, authoritarian movement that we've seen around the world recently. Does he sort of fit into that?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, I think so. And that's funny that you bring up Donald Trump. I remember, you know, at some point reading the headline, donald Trump is the Twitter president. And I remember thinking, oh, just you, there's a way to meet this guy. So, yeah, I mean, certainly I think Bukele is part of this wave of populist, anti establishment leaders. I think what sets him apart is it's Donald Trump in terms of, hey, let's use Twitter to cut through these institutions, to cut through the noise, to reach people directly. But he's young and he's cool and he gets there. Right. This is sort of his native environment. Right. He understands memes, he understands trends, he understands hashtags, he understands what goes viral. And he has a whole team of people who also understand this. And so it's a little bit as if there are Many leaders out there who try to use social media more or less in this way, I think Bukele is a case of the tools and sort of the personal qualities of the man using them are really sort of a match made in heaven and they really do complement each other very well. Now what is going to be really interesting moving forward is are we going to start seeing other leaders actually learn from Bukele? And already in pretty much every Latin American country from Mexico to Argentina, you can find leaders in these places. In some cases people who are running for president, in some cases important party leaders who have, especially in the past few months, started to say, hey, look, this guy Bokehle, he's great. He's the role model, he's the person we should follow. And so over the next year, maybe a couple of years, we might start to see Bukele as being sort of less, as a symptom or another instance of this wave of anti establishment populists and actually almost more of a contributor, more of a cause, more of an inspiration for future leaders. So that's definitely something to keep an eye on.

[Quinta Jurecic]

It seems like he's also become kind of a source of inspiration for American politicians and right wing commentators. So Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican of Florida, has spoken with great admiration of Bukele and the gang crackdown. You see figures like Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk talking about how great Bukele is. I'm curious what you make of the love for him within the U.S. right, right.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

You're totally right. And I would sort of say this comes down to three things. Let's start with kind of the more obvious ones. So the first thing is this is a president whose approval rating never seems to dip under 80%. That is incredible. That is almost unprecedented. Right. Sometimes you'll see presidents or prime ministers reach those approval ratings maybe for a week or a month or maybe a couple of months, usually in the aftermath of some sort of event that rallies people. But this is a man who's been able to maintain 80% approval rating since at least 2019. And so I think that alone would make almost any politician in the world look at Bukele and go, what does this guy have? How can we get some of it? How can we become more like him and be closer to him? So that's number one. But number two, and especially for the Republican party, I think there's what I would call a clear kind of ideological affinity between especially the sort of right flank of the Republican party and Bukele. So we were just talking about social media. Consider sort of three hashtags that we might associate with kind of the way, again, the right wing of the Republican party thinks these days, right? It's like, hashtag make America great again, hashtag America first, and hashtag Blue Lives Matter. Those three ideas, those three hashtags are in the Salvadoran context with its own idiosyncrasies and quirks, perfectly exemplified by Bukele. Right? So this narrative of, hey, look, this country has been taken over by a corrupt cabal of political and economic elites, and we need to wrestle power back and give it to the people. That is make El Salvador great again. This idea of, hey, the rule of law needs to be enforced no matter the cost, no matter the human rights violations. This is not that different from law and order Republicans. And this third idea, Bukele often says in different ways. Bukele will often say, look, I don't care how big or virtuous of an NGO you are. I don't care how big or virtuous of a government you are. You have absolutely no right to tell me or my fellow Salvadorans how to. How to run our country. Our first and only responsibility is to ourselves. This is El Salvador first. This is America first. And so there is a very clear affinity between some of the underlying ideas that motivate the right wing of the Republican party and the things that Bukele seems to believe in and push and tweet. The third part of this is that as far as we can tell, there has been sort of an active strategy of Bukele's where he has invested quite a few resources into sort of creating networks and ties and relationships with the Republican party. Appearing on Tucker Carlson, for example, hiring lobbyists to talk to Republican lawmakers. So if you combine these three things, right here is an extremely popular politician. We all kind of want to be him. Not only that, he seems to believe in a lot of the underlying things we believe in. And he's over here actually trying to talk to us and befriend us. It's sort of a match made in heaven when you think about it.

[Caroline Cornett]

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[Quinta Jurecic]

Yeah. Which is. Which is really concerning. And I think, you know, the the United States obviously has been having some Democratic backsliding recently, in large part because of the Republican Party. And if you say, you know that there's an ideological affinity, part of what there's an affinity with is, as you say, this sort of extreme law and order rhetoric that has led to really astonishing and egregious human rights violations that have led to a lot of condemnation from around the world. There's a lot of reporting about a sort of mega prison that the government is Building or has built that, you know, would be incarcerating people in very close proximity and sometimes in extreme darkness. Can you talk a little bit more about the sort of human rights abuses that have taken place as part of Bukele's crackdown?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah. So under the state of emergency, basically what the state of emergency does is that it gives the government a blank check to arrest anyone, basically for any reason. From the very beginning of the state of emergencies, since March of last year, there have been reports from both local and international organizations of many wrongful arrests. And it's very difficult to put a number on that. As we were mentioning earlier, basically, there's no data transparency here. So the number could be anywhere between 2,000 or so wrongful arrests, all the way up to 20 or 25,000 wrongful arrests. In addition to these wrongful arrests, there is mounting evidence of violence inside of these prisons. So the number of reports of people dying inside these prisons, apparently being murdered inside of these prisons, those keep going up. And you know, just to point you to one of the few sort of data points we actually have in September of last year. So this was around the height of the state of emergency. This is when the. This is when arrests were happening at a pretty breakneck speed at that point. According to a survey, three in 10 Salvadorans said they knew of someone that they knew, someone who had been wrongfully arrested in the past three months. So when you think about that, that's pretty astounding almost by any measure. And, you know, those are major human rights violations. And the follow up question is, okay, well, thousands of people have been wrongfully arrested. What is happening to those people and to people who were gang members who've been arrested. What is happening to them inside of these prisons? So we know for a fact that these prisons are massively overcrowded. They already were overcrowded before Bukele went and arrested 70,000 people. We can only imagine, because we can't. We're not allowed to actually see inside them, but we can only imagine that the conditions inside of these prisons must be extremely dire. Truly dire.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Yeah. I mean, I have to say, one of the things I've been puzzling over when it comes to Bukele's popularity is the amount of people who have potentially been wrongly arrested. You said three in 10 Salvadorians say they know someone who was wrongly arrested, and yet his. His popularity rate ratings are sky high. I mean, they're in, like, that, the high 80s, low 90s. So what explains that? Like, how does that math work? Do people Approve of him, even though they know people who have been wrong, really arrested. Do people who don't approve? Are they just not answering in these. These polls? What explains that?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, I think that's a. That's a big puzzle. That's a big question that we should. We should all sort of look into. And, you know, there's a couple of possible explanations or theories out there. One of them comes down to a different data point that shows up in these surveys, and it's the following. 88.2% of Salvadorans. So almost nine in ten Salvadorans say they currently feel very safe in the place where they live. This is up from about 6 in 10 Salvadorans before the state of exception. And of those 8 to 9 in 10 Salvadorans who say they feel safe or very safe, when you ask them, hey, why do you think you feel so safe? Like, what happened? What changed? 95% of them tell you that it has something to do with bugela's crackdown. And so when you put all of those data points together, I think the picture that emerges is it looks like many salvadorans have kind of evaluated this trade off between, hey, there might be some wrongful arrests, there might be some human rights violations, but we get security and we get safety. And it sounds like when presented with that trade off, a majority of salvadorans have said, yeah, we'll take it. We'll take it, and we'll like it. And, you know, that has all sorts of implications, certainly for democracy and for human rights. But as far as I can tell, again, and acknowledging that our access to data and information is really limited. But as far as I can tell, based on these sort of surveys, that seems to be what's going on.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important and really troubling. And I mean, it's worth underlining. You know, it's not just. Or my understanding is that it's not just, you know, Salvadorians who might have approved of Bukele ahead of time, who feel this way. Alfaro, which is a publication that has really harshly criticized Bukele, has been targeted by Bukele in numerous ways, published a long article saying that Bukele dismantled the gang presence in El Salvador and doing a lot of reporting to that effect. And I mean, I will say I have struggled with this because as someone who is in favor of democracy and human rights, seeing that someone can actually make people accept the trade off between liberty and security and say, yes, I want security, and that it's seems to have actually worked is, like, profoundly troubling on, not only on a human rights, but on kind of an intellectual level for, for what it means for El Salvador, for what it means for democracy generally.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, one thing to keep in mind, and we sort of point this out in the piece, is that this, this, this isn't really a new story. Right. There are plenty of examples certainly in Latin America of moments when a country faces some sort of crisis, usually some sort of security crisis. And you know, people appear more than willing to kind of give up their democratic institutions, in some cases their human rights. They appear willing to give up those things so that this crisis can be addressed effectively. And sort of. I think the clearest example of this is Peru in the 1990s, which happy to talk about and get into. But this is not unprecedented. Right. This is sort of a, this is sort of, for lack of a better term, a bug with democracy that we, that we sort of know about and that we've seen before. When security is at stake, when crisis is happening, people maybe, understandably people seem, at least in some cases willing to kind of put those democratic institutions, put those checks and balances, put those human rights in the back burner and say, please go take care of this, make it safe again. Now the problem with this is. Yeah, I mean, that tends to be popular in the short run, that in some cases helps governments deal with crisis. But once you've thrown out your democratic institutions, once you've done away with your checks and balances, those things are very hard to get back. And so the crisis might pass and the enemy might be defeated and the smoke clears and you look around and you no longer have a crisis, but you also no longer have democracy. And at that point people might change the way they feel.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Yeah, I definitely want to go back to the Peru comparison because I think it's really striking and thought provoking. But before we get there, I mean, so let's talk about why you think that at least in the short term, this crackdown has worked when others haven't. And then we can go on to discuss why it is that might break down.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Sure. So as we mentioned earlier, Latin America is a region that, especially over the past 20 or 30 years, has seen a lot of organized crime. And with that have come a lot of exercises in really tough anti crime policies. The sort of shorthand for these policies in the region is manolura, which literally means stronger, heavy hand. Now what the region, history teaches us is that these criminal crackdowns, they almost always fail. And in Many cases, they actually backfire. And you know, this can happen for a number of reasons, and no two cases are exactly the same. But the story that most clearly applies to the Salvadoran case, or I should say should have applied to the Salvadoran case, is that when the state cracks down on criminal groups, when it declares all out war on criminal groups like Bukele did, it creates really powerful incentives for these criminal groups to fight back. To fight back, not only to protect themselves and their members and their assets, but also to sort of turn the heat up on the government and the state to take a step back and go, whoa, okay, okay. And not only that, it sometimes actually motivates criminal groups to do things like recruit more members, diversify their sources of income, gain more income, even form alliances. And you put all that together and basically what sometimes happens when you crack down on these criminal groups is they become more violent and they also become stronger. That is, if you had asked any number of political scientists, any number of people who study organized crime in Latin America, if on the day before the state of exception was declared, on the day before Bukele declares war on these groups, if you had asked any number of political scientists, hey, how do you think this is going to play out? That's the story they probably would have told you. Oh, the criminal groups are going to fight back quite violently. They might even end up becoming stronger. And eventually the government is probably going to have to make a U turn and criminal groups are going to fight to see another day. That is sort of how this should have played out. It isn't how it played out.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Yeah. And so why not? What did Bukele do differently?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

So I should start by saying that there are, there are several theories about this. What I argue in this piece is that the key to understanding what's different here has really nothing to do with the crackdown itself. It has to do with what happens before the crackdown, which is a covert non aggression pact between the Bukele government and the three major criminal groups. So we know both from really great, really brave investigative reporting, but also by some indictments that have been handed out in the U.S. actually, we know that as early as 2019, when he's first elected, Bukele begins to negotiate with these criminal groups. And the way these negotiations happen, by the way, which ends up being really important, these negotiations happen behind bars. A sort of interesting quirk of El Salvador's criminal groups is that its leaders have long operated from behind bars. So even from behind bars, they've sort of been able to kind of control what happens on the outside. But anyway, from at least the moment he's elected, if not earlier, Bukele or Bukele's representatives basically begin to negotiate a pact with the leaders of these three criminal organizations. And the general idea of the pact, as far as you can tell, is, look, the government says, hey, we need to keep violence down. Violence is not good for us politically and violence is not good in general. So stop using it, stop killing people, stop, quote, unquote, disappearing people. And in exchange, the government, among other things, basically also agrees to kind of hold back on its use of violence. Right. So we're not going to, we're not going to go hunt down gang members. But it also agrees to a number of concessions that are especially good for gang members and gang leaders who are in prison. Right? So everything from relaxing security conditions in prison to in some cases actually letting gang leaders leave prison well before their sentences were completed. So between 2019, when Bukele becomes president, and really until everything kind of implodes in March of last year, this was really the centerpiece of Bukele's security policy. Bukele's government negotiated a non aggression pact, a nonviolent pact with the leaders of these three gangs. Now to understand how that then shapes the way the crackdown plays out, it's important to understand two things about how this pact worked and what it did to the criminals. So the first is that it trained the criminal groups to think as follows. As long as we, the criminal groups, don't use any violence, the government is not going to come after us. And if we do use violence, the government is going to come after us briefly. But as long as we sort of hold back, we don't fight back, we don't shoot back, the smoke is going to clear and we can go back to the negotiating table. Now this happened a couple of times. So for example, In April of 2020, these criminal groups suddenly went on this violent killing spree. They killed about 80 people over a couple of days back then Bukele sort of came out and said, we are going to end these criminal groups, we're going to pursue them with everything. We have conducted some arrests. But then a few days later, everything was back to normal. The pact was back in place. This happened again in November of 2021. These criminal groups suddenly went out and they killed upwards of 40 people in the space of a couple of days. Bukele comes out and he says, we are going to end these criminal groups, we're going to come after them. With everything we have, he conducts some mass arrests, he puts this cruise on some of the gang members who are in prison. But then a couple of days later, the smoke clears, everything is back to normal, the pact is back in place. So this pact really taught these criminal groups that that's how this worked In March of 2022, when the criminal groups once again went on this violent killing spree, they had every reason to believe that history would repeat itself. And sure enough, Bukele came out again for the third time and said, hey, we are going to end these criminal groups. We're going to come after them with everything we find. But the criminal groups had been taught by this process of the pact, they had been taught that, hey, this is exactly the way the government reacts. We just need to hold tight for a couple of days and then everything will be back tomorrow. Of course, this time was different. But by the time the criminal groups are able to realize, hey, government isn't backing down this time, it's been a week, it's been two weeks, they're arresting us by the thousands. By that point, it's too late for these criminal groups to really respond, to really wage a war, to really defend themselves. So let's say the first thing that the PAP does, the second thing the pact does is that it drives a wedge between the criminal leaders and what you might call the rank and file. So if you think about the way the pact was set up, the big benefits of the pact were really going to these gang leaders. So here we're talking primarily about prison. Conditions were better. Little things like visitation rights, little things like, do I now have access to cell phones? But also big things like, hey, I might be able to leave prison 20 or 30 years early. So the pact in that sense is really good for criminal leaders, but it's the rank and file who actually have to pay the price. The rank and file are in a straight jacket. They're not allowed to go about their normal business. They're not allowed to use violence to settle scores, they're not allowed to use violence to extract rents, they're not allowed to use violence to establish their authority. They're paying a pretty high price for benefits that seem to be going mostly to their leadership. This presents a problem for these leaders. How do you enforce a pact that benefits you at the expense of your rank and file? And how do you enforce it from behind bars? That's no easy task. The evidence suggests that what these leaders did is that they made moves to centralize as much power as possible over the criminal groups in their own hands. So they either removed or refused to. To appoint sort of surrogates. Surrogates or second seconds in command. And a very small number of gang leaders, probably a handful, suddenly accumulated pretty much complete sort of organizational power over these criminal groups. This becomes crucial once the salvadoran state decides to fully crack down on the gangs in march, because, remember, these gang leaders are imprisoned. And so it's suddenly very easy for the government, as soon as the crackdown starts, to cut off the leaders from the rest of the gang. And because the leaders had opted not to appoint any surrogates, not to appoint anyone who could fill that vacuum, suddenly the gangs were at war and headless. A lot of the things that you would do if you're a criminal organization to respond to a crackdown, they require leadership. They require organization. Coming up with strategies, coordinating with gang members and gang cliques that are in other regions, increasing your income, forming alliances. All of these things require leadership. And because of what the pact had done to the leaders of the gangs, because of what the pact had done to sort of the organizational chart of the gangs, suddenly they were leaderless. There was no one who could kind of do this job of essentially serving as a wartime commander or wartime leader. And this gave the salvadoran government a decisive upper hand. So if you put all that together, my explanation for why this crackdown seems to have succeeded when so many like it backfire, the explanation seems to be. It seems to be in this pack.

[Quinta Jurecic]

So so far, this has been quite successful. At the same time, you know, you. You indicated that there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that it will hold in the long term, and we've talked about that at a high level. But are there any particular things that you'll be keeping your eye on to see if this is all going to fall apart?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, for sure. So there's a couple of things that I think it's important to keep an eye on. One concern is, you know, criminal organizations, they never emerge in a vacuum. In the salvadoran case, there were a number of conditions that motivated and enabled young people to join these criminal organizations. Lack of opportunities, poverty, lack of protection, a lack of security. One concern is that those underlying conditions haven't really changed. It seems possible that this is still a context in which criminal groups, maybe the same criminal groups, maybe different criminal groups, could emerge or re. Emerge. Now, if that begins to happen, it's likely that the way we would know this, the sort of signs of this would be spurts of violence. So right now, if you Believe the. The Salvadoran authorities, the daily homicide rate is anywhere between 0 and 1. If we suddenly start to see days where that spikes a little bit, days with four or five homicides, that could be a sign of, hey, there is. There's something happening in sort of El Salvador's criminal landscape. Someone appears to be shooting here. Someone appears to be organizing. So that's one concern. Another concern that some people have put forward has to do with new groups moving in. And so in particular, you know, the region's big drug cartels, and I'm thinking here primarily of Mexican cartels. They've always been conspicuously absent from El Salvador, even as they. Even as they sort of stretched into Guatemala and Honduras right next door. Kind of the conventional wisdom among people who study this case has always been that the gangs had basically a monopoly over El Salvador, but the cartels didn't really see them as reliable business partners. And so if cartels had a choice between sort of getting into business with these gangs or conquering these gangs so that they can set up shop in El Salvador, cartels basically just decided to go set up shop elsewhere. There are some concerns, particularly among international observers and diplomatic corps, that this is now an opportunity. If the gangs truly have been wiped off the map, this is now an opportunity for cartels and from other criminal organizations in the region to start moving in. So that's a second concern. That's something to keep an eye on. The third thing is, if it is true, and it appears to be true, that there have been thousands of unlawful arrests, what is going to happen if and when these thousands of people who were all arrested at around the same time, what is going to happen when they come back into society that is not too different a scenario from the 1990s, when suddenly El Salvador had this huge influx of young men who were coming back from wartime exile, and there really wasn't much for them to do. There really weren't many places for them to go. And so criminal groups and criminal enterprises presented one option. So is it possible that whenever we start to see kind of a massive flow of people leaving prison, is it possible that the Salvadoran government is going to have a similar situation? That's another thing to keep in mind.

[Quinta Jurecic]

So I want to close by turning back to Peru, which you mentioned earlier, that what happened in PERU in the 1990s and then over the course of the last two decades is sort of a cautionary tale for what might happen to El Salvador under Bukele and after Bukele and I found this particularly striking Because Peru is currently in the midst of a protracted political crisis. They've had five presidents in the last seven years. The current president's weathering a serious legitimacy crisis after directing the military and police to violently attack protesters after the last president was impeached. It's not stable by any means. Walk me through that comparison a little bit and how you kind of see and what happened in Peru, a possible dark future for El Salvador.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Right? Yeah. So again, you know, no country is like any other country. But I do think there are some truly striking parallels between these two cases. So Alberto Fuhimoni, much like Bukele, was a president who was elected on an anti establishment populist platform, vowing to do away with sort of this decrepit establishment to address many of the issues that frustrated Peruvians. And much like Bukele, he comes into power, he comes into office, and he's hit with a pretty significant security crisis. In the Peruvian case, this was really a guerrilla insurgency. A Maoist guerrilla known as the Sendero Luminoso was starting to wage a really pretty brutal and scary war in Peru. And Fujimori turns around and he shuts down Congress, he shuts down the court. He essentially concentrates as much power as possible under the presidency, in part under the guise of, listen, we have a security crisis. This is getting out of hand. I am the president and I need to do whatever I have to do to keep Peruvians safe. All of that has some striking parallels to Bukele's situation in El Salvador. Here's another striking parallel. Most Peruvians supported this. Fujimori's sort of power grab in order to fight the security crisis was extremely popular. It got him reelected. Even as evidence of widespread human rights abuses began to mount, a vast majority of Peruvians continued to support him. And again, that is very much analogous to what's happening in El Salvador now. What happens in Peru is before long, after a couple of years, Fuyimote really, for all intents and purposes, has more or less defeated these guerrillas. The insurgency is clearly not going to succeed. Safety is for the most part restored, but Fujimori is still around. And not only that, Fujimori has really been able to completely undermine all checks and balances. He has an iron grip on the state. He gets himself reelected for a second time, so he gets a third term, and he ends up staying in power until 2000 when he's, when he's forced to resign in the middle of a corruption scam. One concern is that something similar might end up happening in this case. Right. So it's possible. Bukele seems to have defeated the gangs by concentrating power, by getting rid of checks and balances, by walking over human rights. It's possible that these fears that you know is crime coming back, it's possible that that's not going to happen. But El Salvador now finds itself in a situation where it no longer has democratic institutions. It no longer has checks and balances that can hold the presidency accountable. Bukele is running for re election in 2024. He will almost certainly win that election simply because of his popularity rating. He can win, play completely fair and still win that election. I don't know that he will play completely fair, but he could play completely fair and still win that election. The question then is what happens next? You know, you still have a president much like Fujimari Mburuc, who is extremely powerful. Security crisis is long gone. The power is still there. You know, you could. It's very easy to imagine a scenario where Bukele stays in power not only for a second term, but also a third term, which would put his tenure at about 15 years. And if Peru is any indication, what we're likely to see is widespread corruption. At the time Fuhimoti steps down, he sort of famously made Forbes list of the 10 most corrupt leaders of all time. Now, I will say it's now been over 20 years since Fuhimori stepped down. I don't think it's fair or accurate to see in Fujimori the root of Peru's current problems. I do think it's a factor. I do think reasonable, very well informed people might disagree with this. I would argue that Peruvian institutions, even now, they never fully recovered from the Fuimoi experience. So again, I think if there's a lesson to gain from Peru, it's that democratic institutions are very easy to throw away when there's a crisis, but then they're very, very difficult to get back once that crisis is passed.

[Quinta Jurecic]

Let's leave it there. Manuel, thank you so much for joining us.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Sure. Thank you.

[Quinta Jurecic]

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[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

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