Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 03/28/2026 6:45:44 AM PDT by SmokingJoe
Bukele made a bet that security is the foundation layer. That everything, GDP, tourism, foreign investment, diaspora return, builds on top of safety. The numbers say he was right. The method will be debated for decades.
In 2015, El Salvador had a murder rate of 106.3 per 100,000. The literal murder capital of the world. Six years of failed truces, 16 killings per day, entire neighborhoods paying monthly extortion to MS-13 just to keep their doors open.
Today the murder rate is 1.9 per 100,000. That's a 98% drop. In 2025 it fell further to 1.36. In 2026 so far, the country is on pace for 0.22 homicides per day. El Salvador is now safer than the United States, Canada, and most of Western Europe.
The second-order effects are where the real story lives. Tourism went from 1.7 million visitors in 2019 to 3.9 million in 2024 to over 4 million in 2025. Tourism's share of GDP doubled from 6.4% to 14% in five years. A guy whose father was killed by gang members over $200/month extortion demands left the country in 2014, came back in 2024, and opened an Airbnb.
85,000 arrests. 80,000+ gang members detained. The world's highest incarceration rate at 1,086 per 100,000. A 40,000-capacity mega-prison with plans to double it to 80,000. 94% approval rating. Re-elected with 85% of the vote while the constitution previously banned consecutive terms.
The tradeoff is real and it's worth stating clearly: suspended due process, mass detention, documented cases of torture and abuse, zero transparency, dismantled judicial independence, no free press access. Every human rights organization on earth has flagged it. The constitutional court that allowed his re-election was packed with his own appointees.
And his approval rating went up.
Murder capital of the world to safer than the United States in seven years. 106 per 100,000 to 1.9. Tourism doubled. GDP contribution tripled. The JW Marriott is breaking ground in a city where taxi drivers wouldn't cross certain blocks a decade ago.
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Free enterprise capitalism has to be the next layer. Being “secure” in North Korea or China is not secure.
Amazing turnaround, I’m sure the vast majority of people are ecstatic. All it take was to lock up 40,000 evil people. 🧐
Those evil creatures need to be locked up for a very long time.
The tradeoff is real and it’s worth stating clearly: suspended due process, mass detention, documented cases of torture and abuse, zero transparency, dismantled judicial independence, no free press access. Every human rights organization on earth has flagged it. The constitutional court that allowed his re-election was packed with his own appointees.
Lose the trust in society, and you have to go medieval for a bit to regain the trust.
The U.S. Constitution is not a suicide pact, as much as the left is trying to make it so.
By the leftist anarchist wanna be tyrants. They are also debating whether the methods used to oppose fascism and seek justice against the perpetrators of the holocaust - which never actually took place, some argue - were appropriate.
what a horribly written “Story”. Does not even identify who “Bukele” is.
Our problem is tolerance. We tolerate crappy people. There is no need to list them.....they are obvious and want nothing to do with what most folks would call a Judeo-Christian orderly society based on individual liberty.
It takes time, but we simply cannot give in to crappy people. It took the IOC a bit but they have banned tranny’s in girls sports. This is a winning argument even if folks like Josh Shapiro in PA (Governor) support tranny’s in girls sports/bathrooms etc.
Have faith. Forgive the libtards. Keep working. Have faith.
The terrifying thing is that there is a soon to be 80k locked up army of beserkers not far from the border.
Geopolitics changes and they go free. I hope the militaries in the area have plans to bomb the prisons there if things go sideways.
I have a very favorable view of Bukele. Here is a representative clip of him speaking of the financial truths about "money", when he was a CPAC awhile ago:
“Those evil creatures need to be locked up for a very long time.”
My understanding is that once you’re in, you’re going to stay there.
In the old times they used t execute most criminals.
Even theft was capital offense.
From that point, Bukele is very lenient.
But yes, his method works.
every police officer will tell you, that there are just few bad people, who commit most of the crimes.
Why don’t lock them up forever?
suspended due process, mass detention,
____________________
Yes, in the beginning, when they were under immerse pressure from he gangs, they apparently put in jail several innocents, but after reviews, they released them, pretty quickly.
It seems that locking few innocents for short time outweigh the saving of almost thousand dead, by now.
And people in Salvador can now finally breath freely.
I’ve been to El Salvadore.
Today, it’s a clean, safe, even pretty place with no signs of gangs, etc.
He’s writer is spot on. I would go there again.
IMHO, if Buckele steps down when his time is up, if he doesn’t make himself another Central American despot, that man will go down in history as a legend. He will be in history books, monuments will be erected to him even after his death, he will be seen as an example to emulate for others in a similar situation.
For example, Scheinbaum is weak and can’t really deal with the internal threat she faces. Her solution is to avoid the true problem all while blaming the US, playing on anti-Trump hysteria and media bias as well as Mexican nationalism and pride. But (((NONE OF THIS))) will fix the actual internal security problems Mexico faces.
The tactics were necessary to save that country.
Yup.
.
China's welfare state is a much smaller fraction of its GDP than its counterparts in any European country, and the fraction of outright state ownership is on par with most mixed economies. People talk about China today as though they live in a multi-decade time warp where Mao is still alive and the entire economy is state-owned.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
