El Salvador

[Hygro]

Bumped from 2023: a thread about how El Salvadorians should handle the balance between self defense from their gang war and the abuse of their new prison system.

El Salvador recently has been the most dangerous country in the world. The national murder rate was the highest of any country, including active war zone deaths as murders, and reached over 100 per 100,000 per annum. For comparison, the USA murder rate is like, 5 per 100,000, Mexico at its worst has been around 30. Most of east Asia and northern Europe is around 0.5. Another top 5 country is Honduras, whose violence is the same war by the same two gangs.

The murders are driven mostly by an active war between two cocaine shipping international crime syndicates named for the streets they started on (MS13 and Barrio 18). They are referred to as mafia locally. They get most of their revenue from cocaine sold to the USA, extortion, and arms trafficking. Together, the gangs make under $100 million and have about 100,000 members. These two gangs cause way more violence per dollar they fight over than for example the Mexican and Colombian cartels, which receive billions.

The president of El Salvador, the same nut who tried to make bitcoin legal tender, has been cracking down extremely harshly, imprisoning basically anyone suspected of being a gang member down to their tattoo choices, or even having them, and then housing them a dozen to a tiny cell. The government has built a new super prison, the "Terrorism Confinement Center". Crime is way down as the government wages a police based counter insurgency, but the government is also obviously doing so without due process and is sweeping up many innocent victims of its actions. Tourism has begun to return to the country in a big way.

What do you think, and what would you do if you were in charge of El Salvador?

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

I think people who snort coke should be aware of what their money is doing.
What goes around...

 

[Kyriakos]

1/1000 people murdered each year? Impressive.

 

[Samson]

It is quite mad. That level of police violence, next to no way to find out who has been arrested and what for, and the President is wildly popular. I suppose that is democracy.

Spoiler A youtube about it :

 

[Hygro]

I think people who snort coke should be aware of what their money is doing.
What goes around...

I did some napkin calculations on that a number of years ago, and 1 million grams equates to one murder.

 

[Samson]

I did some napkin calculations on that a number of years ago, and 1 million grams equates to one murder.

I wonder how much petrol you have to use to get to that sort of number?

 

[Samson]

I did some napkin calculations on that a number of years ago, and 1 million grams equates to one murder.

I also have to ask about your sums? This says 2019 production was 1764 tonnes, this says global seizures were 1436 tonnes. Just in columbia this supports more than 119,500 families and they are now being sprayed with glyphosate. I reckon the death toll of just that could be more than 3000.

 

[EnglishEdward]

They could grow food instead.

 

[gangleri2001]

WHAT?!

You whole post is wrong. Here you have some corrections:

El Salvador recently has been the most dangerous country in the world. The national murder rate was the highest of any country, including active war zone deaths as murders, and reached over 100 per 100,000 per annum. For comparison, the USA murder rate is like, 5 per 100,000, Mexico at it's worst has been around 30. Most of east Asia and northern Europe is around 0.5. Another top 5 country is Honduras, whose violence is the same war by the same two gangs.

The murders are driven mostly by an active war between two cocaine shipping international crime syndicates named for the streets they started on (MS13 and Barrio 18). They are referred to as mafia locally. They get most of their revenue from cocaine sold to the USA, extortion, and arms trafficking. Together, the gangs make under $100 million and have about 100,000 members. These two gangs cause way more violence per dollar they fight over than for example the Mexican and Colombian cartels, which receive billions.

El Salvador was like this before Nayib Bukele took office. Since he took office murder rates have been falling down like crazy. Here you've got the figures:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=SV
https://elsalvadorinfo.net/homicide-rate-in-el-salvador/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/696152/homicide-rate-in-el-salvador/

The president of El Salvador, the same nut who tried to make bitcoin legal tender [...]

Tried? Bitcoin IS legal tender in El Salvador. He did not just tried making it legal tender. He succeeded in doing so.

[...] has been cracking down extremely harshly, imprisoning basically anyone suspected of being a gang member down to their tattoo choices, or even having them [...]

Go to Germany and try walking around wearing a nazi armband and see how the police will react to that.

These tattoos show someone's gang affiliation and they require some level of "commitment" to the gang in order to be allowed to have them. Not everybody has the right to have them and if you are ever get caught by the gangs without having earned them you are dead meat. These gangs take stolen valor very seriously. That's why these tattoos are so important in cracking gangs down.

[...] and then housing them a dozen to a tiny cell.

There is a good reason to house a lot of gang members in a single cell and this is because they need make sure gang members are mixed in one single cell. They tried separating prisoners by gang affiliation for their own safety but they soon realized this allowed gangs to run business as usual even behind bars.

In mixing different gangs in one single cell they make sure that no gang can run business as they would outside as they are constantly under the surveilance not only of the guards but also with the members of other gangs with whom they share the same cell. And besides, the cells are not tiny at all. Here's how they look like:

Far from tiny.

 

[Samson]

Tried? Bitcoin IS legal tender in El Salvador. He did not just tried making it legal tender. He succeeded in doing so.

He succeeded in the sense that the law passed. He has not succeeded in getting people to use bitcoin other than the "free" bit they got for creating the wallet.

 

[Kyriakos]

It is quite mad. That level of police violence, next to no way to find out who has been arrested and what for, and the President is wildly popular. I suppose that is democracy.

Spoiler A youtube about it :

Watched the video. So El Salvador is a banana republic with a (for the time being) "benevolent" dictator? I suppose none of the people bothered to think what will happen when his time as leader ends - unless he will be leader for life, as tends to happen in such places.

 

[Hygro]

El Salvador was like this before Nayib Bukele took office. Since he took office murder rates have been falling down like crazy. Here you've got the figures:

Yes that is the whole point of this thread and something I make clear.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Watched the video. So El Salvador is a banana republic with a (for the time being) "benevolent" dictator? I suppose none of the people bothered to think what will happen when his time as leader ends - unless he will be leader for life, as tends to happen in such places.

it doesn't look like they have much choice, absent outside forces somehow doing magic for them and turning them into a functioning republic. a less bad dictator than most is probably the best they can get near term. if he's really benevolent, maybe he'll set up an election process to follow him. the fact that he's still alive after moving so harshly against the gangs is a bit surprising.

i don't know the extent to which they're violating due process there, or how much worse it is than other countries.

 

[Hygro]

Watched the video. So El Salvador is a banana republic with a (for the time being) "benevolent" dictator? I suppose none of the people bothered to think what will happen when his time as leader ends - unless he will be leader for life, as tends to happen in such places.

it doesn't look like they have much choice, absent outside forces somehow doing magic for them and turning them into a functioning republic. a less bad dictator than most is probably the best they can get near term. if he's really benevolent, maybe he'll set up an election process to follow him. the fact that he's still alive after moving so harshly against the gangs is a bit surprising.

i don't know the extent to which they're violating due process there, or how much worse it is than other countries.

El Salvador's southern neighbor Nicaragua has a much lower crime rate, and a dictator. It does, however, have a lot of cocaine trafficking. The lower crime rate existed before the current president took office and turned dictator, but the suspicion is that the government has always been running the cocaine trade as it seems the "communist" leaderships of a few countries do.

El Salvador has a more privileged position in gaining immigrants to the USA, gets way more money to fight crime and cocaine trafficking, and received tons of guns in order to fight Nicaragua back in the 1980s. Nicaragua had to largely go it alone with the help of Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia (the leftist Caribbean/central/south American block). As such, gangs like MS13 and Barrio 18, which really got started in the USA, never really took hold back home. There weren't the channels. There weren't even the guns, the Nica government issued weapons to fight the Contras, but also got those weapons back after the war.

It's not really clear why Colombia is so dangerous, but then Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua are fairly safe, and then the entire next band of countries leading to the USA are so dangerous again.

Variables such as democracy vs dictatorship don't track cleanly. USA involvement doesn't track cleanly, except for the foundation of the total violence dispersed here in the USA and down South. Ostensible leftwing-rightwing doesn't track cleanly. "Rich" like Costa Rica, Panama, a bunch of Caribbean States and Mexico vs Poor like Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, or in between like Colombia and Salvador doesn't track cleanly.

Salvador's new crime policy is working in a big way. The mafia war is huuuugely oppressive. But if you look to the southern neighbor, dictatorships are horrrrible. They don't always start that bad, but by nature result in paranoid individuals on top killing for their survival and instilling discord to maintain balances of power. There is no freedom of speech in Nicaragua and MAGA-style party loyalists are equipped in all black tactical gear and are called the National Police who gun down the opposition. Education is getting completely gutted, with all the teachers and curriculums replaced by pro-dictator propaganda. Your university degree isn't legal until it's printed by the central government, and the president shuts down whole universities, some for years, some permanently, out of paranoid power consolidation, with no recourse. You can't protest it because the guys in black will show up and kill you. So you can be learning straight up hotel management and they will ice you out purely on one man's personal paranoia and maintenance of power.

The president of El Salvador is following the usual playbook of appointing all the right judges and building a military-police apparatus to become dictator-for-life. While the current push is making him very popular and is on the balance improving quality of life, there is no world where he keeps power and doesn't commit the usual compounding abuses. His incentives will be particularly strong as he's made personal enemies with the two most violent low budget international street gang mafias in the world.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

there's no question it's a bad situation, i just question what alternatives can actually be done. it's hard to picture enough people wanting to put their lives on the line to fight the national police...and even if they were willing, they're probably being backed or influenced by the crime organizations in doing so. it's hard to win like that, even if you somehow "win".

if they manage to eradicate the gangs, perhaps sufficient pushback/resistance to national police/dictator ship can change for the better. but it's a lot easier to say that than to find examples of this sequence actually happening.

 

[Samson]

At least 153 died in custody in El Salvador’s gang crackdown

The human cost of El Salvador’s controversial “war on gangs” has been laid bare in a new report which claims dozens of prisoners were tortured and killed in jail after being caught up in the year-long security crackdown.

The NGO said it had confirmed 29 of those fatalities as violent deaths and another 46 were considered. In most of those 75 cases, Cristosal said the bodies of the victims showed signs of torture, beatings or strangulation. Other dead inmates also showed signs of injuries but were classified as having died of “undetermined” or “natural” causes meaning the true number of violent deaths could be higher.

The rights group said it had obtained photographs and mortuary reports showing bodies with signs of “asphyxiation, [bone] fractures, significant bruising, lacerations and even perforations”. Some appeared to have died of malnutrition. Nearly half of the victims were men aged between 18 and 38. The NGO claimed some prisoners had been tortured with electric shocks.

Vilma Mancía said she had been forced to raise her six grandchildren after both her two children, aged 22 and 29, were both jailed during the crackdown. “Nobody helps me, not even to find food … I don’t know what to do,” said the 65-year-old from Apopa who was recently diagnosed with stomach cancer.

Last year the Guardian documented the case of one young Salvadoran who died in mysterious circumstances shortly after being arrested in Salcoatitán, a tourist town in El Salvador’s coffee-growing heartlands.

Juan José Ibáñez García – a 21-year-old restaurant worker who friends claimed had no links to crime – died last May, a fortnight after being arrested.

“We had so many dreams … to be parents; to build a business together; to study together … and it’s all gone,” said his 23-year-old girlfriend, Sandra García, who admitted she had helped elected Bukele in 2019.

“So many Salvadorans put our trust in [Bukele] – and we were cheated,” García added.

 

[plarq]

consider you are lucky if you are still allowed to vote!

 

[Hygro]

The way many countries have gone in the past 20 years, yeah.

The crux of the question is how does on end a level of crime that is basically, in the context of El Salvador, two drug and extortion corporations served by armies of fanatics at war with each other and the populace?

What’s the line? What are the alternatives?

Like obviously we in the USA should end the drug war, and should treat all elected leaders of Latin America as our allies of democracy, that will go a long way. And enough investment that way to have these countries not resort to the devastation of nature and indigenous lands for profit in lieu of real and shared growth.

But that’s not the question for Salvadorians, nor that which I pose to the folks of CFC. The question is what would you do, what do you think should be done, internally?

 

[Samson]

The question is what would you do, what do you think should be done, internally?

It seems to me that the problems of the central/south American countries is that drug smuggling to the US is illegal and profitable, so gangs do it. It the transit countries legalised drugs and set up government run distribution centres they would completely out compete the gangs on price. It is not like the drugs themselves are the core of the issue here.

To look at the current situation with drugs illegal and guns legal it just seems totally the wrong way round, and set up[ to cause exactly this problem.

 

[Hygro]

It seems to me that the problems of the central/south American countries is that drug smuggling to the US is illegal and profitable, so gangs do it. It the transit countries legalised drugs and set up government run distribution centres they would completely out compete the gangs on price. It is not like the drugs themselves are the core of the issue here.

To look at the current situation with drugs illegal and guns legal it just seems totally the wrong way round, and set up[ to cause exactly this problem.

But the outcomes are radically different. Every country from Colombia on North has massive amounts of cocaine smuggling. El Salvador and to about half the extent, Honduras, were basically warzones in some cities. Not that "Chicago is a warzone" hype, but on a comparable magnitude to Syria during their civil war. I think San Salvador hit 200/100k, and Syria in 2013 hit 350/100k, but otherwise was less than San Salvador.

But the three countries between Colombia and Salvador, Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua are all peaceful and full of cocaine smuggling. And Costa Rica, the marginally most violent of the three, is a fully functioning democracy. CR and Panama have loads of US support. Nicaragua, the marginally most peaceful, has an authoritarian government and is antagonized by the US government.

It's not obvious what makes the difference, but what is obvious is no matter how much the drive to violence comes foremost from USA drug laws, there is total agency within a society to produce a manageable level of crime and an out of control quasi civil war.


And that's the question. What can and should be done if such a war emerges as it did in Salvador? What are the options? What are the alternatives?