outgoing president Bukele, popular and close to re-election thanks to his iron fist against gangs

Nayib Bukele, Salvadoran president and candidate for re-election, achieved a popularity rating of more than 90% after restoring peace to neighborhoods plagued by rival gangs.

Sunday February 4, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is almost guaranteed to win for a second term. His popularity exceeds 90%, thanks to his iron fist policy against gangs which appeals to a population exasperated by violence. He locked up nearly 75,000 suspected members of these gangs, restoring peace to neighborhoods formerly controlled by these gangs of tattooed young people.

On the shores of Lake Ilopango, a two-hour drive from the capital San Salvador, families are seated in around twenty restaurants. Everything seems to breathe tranquility at Concepción López. But according to this boss, the feeling of peace is actually very recent: “Today, tourists come but before they didn’t come, because of the situation we were in with ‘Los muchachos’ who charged the rent, who were there all the time, and didn’t let the tourists in. peace. It was as if we were at war because we didn’t live in peace, but today it’s over. We can work 24 hours a day and it’s peaceful.”

“He uses this policy as a propaganda tool”

“Los muchachos”, as the Salvadorans call them, are the members of the two gangs that have bloodied the country for 30 years. Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 controlled entire territories and fought each other. Since their detentions from 2022, residents can finally talk about the violence they have experienced, as explains Elisa Mejia, a 65-year-old shopkeeper. “They killed one of my sons, it wasn’t very long ago. He lived in the countryside and I was told that they had confused him with someone else. They killed my father too,” she confides.

In El Salvador, you could be killed simply for entering the wrong neighborhood or for being mistaken for someone else. But residents are still afraid of the return of these gangs. President Nayib Bukele based his entire electoral campaign on this terror, as explained by Marvin Reyes, who heads the national police union. “Bukele continues to promote this discourse: ‘If the opposition wins, it will release the gang members who will kill again’. This is blackmail, he criticizes. He uses this policy as a propaganda tool, and no longer as a measure to fight gangs.”

Nayib Bukele will most likely be re-elected thanks to this politics and fear. The fact remains that many innocent people, who have been caught in the same net as gang members, have no chance of accessing justice. Peace does exist in El Salvador, but at what cost?