How has El Salvador changed one year after the implementation of Bukele’s controversial emergency regime?

( Spanish) –– El Salvador celebrates one year this Monday since the emergency regime was implemented, a policy launched by the government of President Nayib Bukele with the approval of the Legislative Assembly, after an outbreak of violence left 62 homicides during a weekend in March of 2022. All in the midst of supposed negotiations, never made official or admitted by the parties, of a truce between the government and the gangs.

The severe policy, which suspends rights and guarantees contemplated in the Constitution, has received applause among some sectors of the population. It has also left, this year, more than 65,000 people detained, amid criticism from human rights organizations inside and outside the country, as well as from relatives of those detained, for unfair arrests and alleged human rights violations.

“This has helped one to be able to go out freely with their children, without any worries,” Alicia Monroy, a resident of the La Campanera neighborhood, a neighborhood in the populous municipality of Soyapango, about 12 kilometers from San Salvador, told .

La Campanera was the place where photojournalist Christian Poveda recorded the documentary “La vida loca”, which portrays what life was like inside a gang. Poveda was murdered in 2009 in that same sector, after his production was made public. At least 11 people were convicted in 2011 for their involvement in the murder with sentences ranging from 4 to 30 years in prison. Three other people were sentenced to 10 years in 2013 for this case, according to journalistic reports.

This neighborhood was one of those that authorities identified as having a high concentration of gang members. Now it is under the control of the military who maintain a fence that allows them to identify who enters and who leaves the area.

“Yes, the neighborhood is much calmer,” adds Monroy.

Despite the change, not everyone dares to speak openly for fear of retaliation.

“You don’t know what might happen tomorrow, the relatives of gang members are still here,” a man told , after asking not to be filmed or photographed.

A tour of the area made it possible to verify that the presence of soldiers is evident in tours in the different passages of the colony. Gang-related graffiti has been removed.

“Gangs in general have been reduced to a minimum expression. And, first of all, God, we are going to reach the point where they no longer exist in our country,” said President Nayib Bukele, during a speech last November.

The exception regime remains in place

The Legislative Assembly, with an official majority, has approved 12 extensions and its president, Ernesto Castro, has advanced that, considering that it has had good results, he will continue with the extensions as many times as the Executive requests.

The exception suspends constitutional guarantees, including freedom of association, the right to defense, and extends provisional detention from 72 hours to 15 days. The regime also allows the authorities to intervene in telecommunications without the need for authorization by a judge.

The authorities say that the implementation of the security plan, called “Territorial Control”, and the emergency regime have allowed the homicide figures to be reduced.

According to official statistics, in 2018, the year before Bukele assumed the Presidency, El Salvador registered a rate of 50.4 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. By 2022, that rate has dropped to 7.8. For this year, the authorities project that the average will be close to 2, Defense Minister René Merino Monroy said in a television interview.

“327 accumulated days without murders since Nayib Bukele was president. There are only 38 days left to reach a year without homicides,” said deputy Christian Guevara, head of the ruling Nuevas Ideas faction, a party that has a large majority in the Legislative Assembly, in a tweet Thursday.

Criticism for alleged violations of DD.HH.

A report by Amnesty International pointed out in June 2022 that the emergency regime violated human rights, for which reason it unsuccessfully asked the government of President Bukele to end this emergency measure.

These accusations have been joined by local human rights organizations and other international ones, such as Human Rights Watch, who consider that the regime has arbitrarily imprisoned some people without gang ties.

“It is an injustice because they are taking a lot of working people, without saying a word they are taking them away,” Lilian Laínez told , while holding a sign in front of the headquarters of the Office of the Ombudsman for the Defense of Human Rights to request the release of his life partner, arrested last January.

Like Laínez, many families have denounced before human rights organizations what they consider arbitrary detentions.

The government says that since the emergency regime came into effect, more than 3,000 people have been released by judges, since no evidence was found that they have participated in any crime or have a relationship with the gangs.

“All the innocent will be released, but the guilty will go to jail and have to pay,” Bukele said during a speech on January 17.

The government has indicated that the emergency regime will remain in force until all the gang members are arrested, without specifying how many members of these structures would remain to be arrested.

Given the increase in detainees, the Bukele government built a prison with a capacity for 40,000 prisoners, the largest in Latin America. The General Directorate of Penal Centers has already transferred some 4,000 detainees to this mega-prison, most of whom have been sentenced by Justice. Human rights defenders have criticized the conditions in which they are being held, since the cells have three columns of metal cabins in which the inmates must sleep, without the opportunity to have mattresses, according to the authorities.

Bukele has accused those who criticize his security strategy of defending the rights of criminals over those of the population.