Amazing to see Freepers here jumping on the hate bandwagon for this guy as if El Salvador should be governed like some small town in Nebraska.
It’s been a gangland state run by gangs for decades. The solution will not be pretty, just like the solution to get rid of the Nazis and Japanese Imperials was to essentially level their cities until they gave up.
Luckily it won’t get THAT bad, but modern sensibilities viewing a developing country from thousands of miles away even clouds the judgement of conservatives apparently.
When we were seeing the caravans coming north to get away from the gangs (and coincidentally bringing the gangs with them) people blamed their home countries for letting it get so out of hand. And rightly so.
But the problem has been that the gangs are ruthless, and its a country the size of an American county. The gangs know where the cops and judges live. So more than the cops and judges (and politicians) being bought and sold by the gangs and mafia, they actively fear them. The only way to fight them is to be equally ruthless, and do it in such a way that they can’t retaliate against the families of the cops and judges.
And do it in such a way that their allies in the government, and the press, do not dare to defend them.
They are not giving the gangs the full protection of the law, because in a world where the judges are afraid of the gangs it would be impossible to take them down. Thats why they needed, in effect, a declaration of war by the congress.
The NGO’s are squealing, State Department is squealing, because they would rather see a country destroyed than see the problem solved. Bukele answered State by calling for Guantanamo to be opened and its prisoners to be given their full rights. “You have your terrorists” he said, “and we have ours”.
The lucky thing is, that they most all of them tattoo themselves with gang tattoos, which make it obvious who is who. Such a tactic might not work in, say, Mexico. But if you sincerely wanted to take down the Cartels there you’d have to be every bit as ruthless, and quick, and you’d have to deal with the fact that half the government is in league with them. You would have to go to war.
In the words of the great philosopher Sean Connery (in The Untouchables) “What are you prepared to do?”