SAN SALVADOR.- President Nayib Bukele described as “satanic” the gangs that operate in The Savior and considered it a “miracle” to have appeased the country, by imprisoning more than 80,000 of its alleged members, in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson broadcast this Wednesday.
“As the (criminal) organization grew, it became satanic. They began to perform satanic rituals”Bukele said about his fight against the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs in the Central American country.
He mentioned that the “official formula” for the success of his “war” against these criminal groups is that he managed to strengthen the police and double the army, but that the real key was that it was “a miracle.”
“In a couple of weeks, the country was transformed,” he defended.
“We are safer than any other country in the Western Hemisphere and if I had said this five years ago, they would have told me I was crazy. This was literally the most dangerous country in the world,” he said.
The president recalled that in March 2022 the gangs began to attack and “killed 87 people in 3 days, which for a country of 6 million people is crazy.”
After this escalation of violence, Bukele asked Congress to decree an emergency regime, which after 27 months is still in force with more than 80,000 alleged gang members captured.
This measure, which allows arrests without a court order, is criticized by humanitarian organizations for the detention of “innocent people who suffer” in prison.
In three decades, the gangs subjected the population to extortion, created a parallel state and, according to official figures, committed 120,000 homicides, more than the 75,000 deaths left by the civil war (1980-1992).
Bukele maintained that these organizations killed “any person to generate terror” and clarified that “(the State) has no intention of attacking anyone other than the gang members.”
The president commented that the gangs emerged in the 1980s in the streets of the American city of Los Angeles and then arrived in El Salvador, “grew” and have a presence in Italy, Guatemala, Honduras and in cities in the United States.
Asked in the political sphere if he believes that Donald Trump will win the November presidential elections in the United States, Bukele responded: “Well yes, he can win,” recalling the difficulties that he himself faced for the 2019 elections in El Salvador.
Tucker asked him for advice for a former president who is seeking re-election and who may face a criminal conviction, as is the case with Trump. “If there is no way to prevent him from running, everything they do will give him more votes,” Bukele said.
Source: With information from AFP
