Fourteen people were killed on Friday and 62 were killed on Saturday, a scale of violence that has not been seen in years. In comparison, there were 79 homicides throughout February.
Boukele announced the request on Saturday on his social media accounts, and Congress approved it early Sunday. The decree would suspend constitutional guarantees of freedom of assembly and loosen arrest rules for up to thirty days, but could be extended.
The homicides appeared to be linked to the country’s notorious street gangs, which effectively control many of the capital’s neighborhoods. The National Police said they had arrested five leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13, who claimed to have ordered the killings over the weekend.
While Bukele has tried to show a tough stance on crime, the country’s extremely powerful street gangs have proved to be a double-edged sword.
“We must remind the people of El Salvador that what is happening now is due to the negligence of those who protected the criminals,” the conservative Arena party said in a statement.
This was an obvious reference to a December report by the US Treasury Department that said the Bukele administration had secretly negotiated a truce with gang leaders. This contradicts Bukele’s denials and increased tensions between the two nations.
The U.S. government claims that the Bukele administration has purchased gang support with financial benefits and privileges for its imprisoned leaders, including prostitutes and cell phones.
The explosive allegations cut to the heart of one of Bukele’s most notorious successes in power: a dip in the homicide rate in the country.
The president sarcastically responded to the accusations via Twitter. “Cell phones and prostitutes in prisons? Money in gangs? When did this happen? They did not even check the date? How can they make such an obvious lie without anyone disputing it?”
Bukele categorically denied the allegations when he was quoted in August 2020 by local news website El Faro.
In 2020, the Bukele administration “provided financial incentives to the Salvador MS-13 and 18th Street Gang (Barrio 18) gangs to ensure that gang violence and the number of confirmed homicides remained low,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. . “In the course of these negotiations with Luna and Marroquin, the gang leadership has also agreed to provide political support to the Nuevas Ideas political party in the upcoming elections.”
Bukele’s New Ideas party has a majority at the El Salvador congress.
The revelations increased tensions between Boukele and the Biden government. After the new Congress ousted the attorney general and the judges of the Constitutional Court in May, the US government expressed concern about the direction of the country.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has announced that it will transfer aid from government agencies in El Salvador to non-governmental organizations.
El Salvador’s new attorney general announced in June that the government was canceling the US State Department’s anti-corruption mission in the Central American country.
Bukele is extremely popular. It entered a political vacuum left by discredited traditional parties from the left and right.
