How El Salvador Became Safer Than The US

Our Discord Community (FREE): https://discord.com/invite/Efbjh7Qj4V 📚 Review our sources ►https://pastebin.com/dUXc2g4d 💻 Check out our other socials ► https://linktr.ee/2and20 ✋ Get in touch ► [email protected] In March 2022, El Salvador recorded 87 murders in 72 hours. It was the bloodiest weekend in the country's history. That night, President Nayib Bukele went on Twitter and declared war on the gangs. He suspended the constitution, sent the military into entire neighbourhoods, and began the largest campaign of mass arrests the region had ever seen. Three years later, the homicide rate is down 93%, from 106 per 100,000 people to 1.3. That is lower than the United States and Canada. Bukele's approval rating sits above 90%, the highest in the democratic world. And nearly 2 in every 100 Salvadorans are now sitting in prison, by far the highest incarceration rate on the planet. This video traces how El Salvador got here. We start with the coffee oligarchy known as the 14 Families, the military dictatorships they built, the 1932 massacre, and the civil war that pushed half a million Salvadorans into the United States. That exodus is where MS-13 and Barrio 18 were actually born, in Los Angeles, not San Salvador. When Bill Clinton signed the 1996 immigration act, tens of thousands of gang members were deported into a country with no institutions left to absorb them. By 2016 gangs held territory in 247 of El Salvador's 262 municipalities. Then we get into the crackdown itself. How the red zone operations work, why arrests were made on tattoos and anonymous tips, what CECOT actually is, and how mass trials in front of faceless judges process hundreds of detainees at once. We also cover the cost. The state of exception is still in force today, El Faro's newsroom is operating from exile, reporting on gang activity carries a 15-year sentence, and Pegasus spyware was turned on Salvadoran journalists. So which one is Bukele: a sinner or a saint? 00:00 - Intro 01:07 - Origins 07:05 - Saint? 12:04 - Sinner? Includes music by Tom Fox – tomfox.site