SAN SALVADOR – In the middle of a public act this Wednesday, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said that the new prison in El Salvador, known as Terrorism Containment Centerit is a “concentration camp that gives chills”, but that triggers “popularities”, some comments that did not sit well with the president of that country, Nayib Bukele.
“They see the youth in prisons and they believe that this is security. (…) The president of El Salvador feels proud because he reduced homicides, he says, by subduing the gangs that are now in those jails, in my opinion, Dantesque,” said the Colombian president.
Petro added that Colombia has also managed to reduce its homicide rate, “but not from jails, but from universities, schools, spaces for dialogue, spaces for poor people to stop being poor.”
Some statements that provoked the reaction of President Bukele, who told Petro that “the results weigh more than rhetoric.”
Petro proposed to Bukele to appear in an international forum to discuss the results in both countries. “We went from 90 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 1993, in Bogotá, to 13 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022. We did not build prisons but universities. It is good to compare experiences. I propose an international forum,” he said.
To which Bukele questioned: “You governed 30 years? Bogotá? Aren’t you the president of Colombia? Our experience: With more than 100 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, now we are in single digit figures. And the reduction It was fast, because the dead do not recover”, he pointed in another tweet.
The homicide rate in El Salvador went from 18.2 homicides in 2021 to 7.8 in 2022. Which currently makes it the third country with the least homicidal violence in the region.
El Salvador’s mega-prison
On the night of January 31, El Salvador unveiled for the first time the Confinement Center for Terrorism, a prison that Salvadoran officials called a “first world prison“.
In it, Bukele plans to recruit some 40,000 more dangerous gang members after starting a war against the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 in March 2022 through an emergency regime.
To date, more than 64,000 people have been captured in El Salvador accused of illegal groups, maras or gangs. According to the authorities, there are still some 30,000 more captured.
The first 2,000 inmates have already been transferred to the mega-prison, located in the municipality of Tecoluca, in the department of San Vicente.
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