Murders in El Salvador Keep Plunging, Nearly Vanished in 2024
Gangs and libertarians hardest hit
A lot of people say Trump should have done martial law in 2020 (and I am one of those people).
The thing is: he did do martial law in 2020. But he did at the wrong moment, for the wrong reason.
He did it early on, when he caved in to Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx and all of the goofy morons telling him that he was wrong about the flu, that Covid was very real and scary and dangerous and we had to have lockdowns and we had to rush a vaccine.
All of that was martial law.
Do you remember? We couldn’t go to work.
We couldn’t drive or buy things.
Many of us could not gather for worship in churches.
It was all psychotic. So much so that many people have blocked all of it out.
The right time to do it (and do it right this time) would have been in November 2020, in order to stop the steal of his reelection.
That was an actual government-corruption crime that deserved military intervention to stop.
Trump used his power in insane ways to enforce the maniac lockdowns, resulting in nothing remotely good or helpful for anyone’s money or safety. Then he declined to use his power in an obvious and helpful way by just ignoring the steal and allowing himself (and his supporters) to be disenfranchised.
It was a total disgrace.
I don’t pay attention to media narratives beyond assuming that they are fake and designed to confuse or harm me and my family. And that they will eventually reverse themselves when it’s convenient for the next hoax, or when it’s too late to save anyone or hold the guilty accountable.
That is to say: I will note what the narrative masters say in the media about an issue, but I will never dream of believing it. Too little evidence of the media dealing fairly with news stories. Too long a record of shocking hoaxes that endangered or killed too many people.
El Salvador Is Safer Than Nashville
With something like Bukele’s regime in El Salvador, let’s be honest: you know nothing about South America, and neither do I.
If we lived in a normal society where journalists had a desire to do their very basic job with their readers’ welfare in mind, it wouldn’t be necessary to have a PhD (or really any direct knowledge) of South American culture to read a basic news story about El Salvador.
The reporter would state a few facts and quotes about the news event, refrain from analysis or editorializing, and possibly wrap the story up with a broader recap of any older context about Bukele’s rise to power which might be (probably will be) unfamiliar to the general reader who is just curious about the fascinating fact that the murder rate has plummeted under his regime.
But no.
We don’t live in a normal society, or really in any society. We live in a permanent mass-media, stage-managed government psy-op where no happening is so mundane as to escape some type of Narrative imposition upon it.
In the case of the Bukele government’s undeniable success in cracking down on homicide in El Salvador, not even the MSM can ignore the results. So they report on it. But they have to remind you that it’s problematic because of…
Can you guess the narrative here?
It’s the ‘human rights’ of the gangs involved that are the real issue, do you see?
AP:
El Salvador closed 2024 with a record low 114 homicides, continuing notable security gains under a second full year of a state of emergency that has given the government extraordinary powers and curtailed some fundamental rights.
President Nayib Bukele said via the social platform X that the number announced Wednesday by the small Central American country’s Attorney General’s Office made it the safest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
Not all nations had published their 2024 annual homicide totals, but the 1.9 homicides per 100,000 in population that Bukele said had been achieved would put it below what any Latin American country had reported in 2023. El Salvador’s official total does not include the killings of five suspected gang members in shootouts with security forces.
114?
Dude.
They almost went lower than Nashville, Tennessee.
Understand the scale here (not to mention the cultural differences): El Salvador is a nation of (checks AI) 6 million. Nashville is a city of around a million (depending how you are measuring the city).
The two territories saw similar numbers of homicides in 2024.
Bukele is doing a great job, considering his nation’s recent history of homicide and gang violence. To the credit of the AP, they do eventually mention the context of Bukele’s rise and implementation of emergency measures to contain the bloodshed.
In March 2022, El Salvador’s notoriously powerful street gangs killed 62 people in a matter of hours. The congress granted Bukele’s administration a requested “state of exception” to crackdown on the gangs that included suspending some Constitutional rights and giving police more powers to arrest and hold suspects.
I’ll tell you what.
Experiencing thousands of homicides nationwide in a single year, and then seeing them almost vanish overnight, well that has a way of helping you overlook government “restrictions.”
Ok?
And as for you Covid equivocators…I’ll deal with you next.
More than 83,000 people have been arrested since, the majority jailed without due process. Bukele has said that 8,000 people who were innocent have been released.
Civil rights organizations have reported 354 people who have died in government custody during the crackdown.
What (dishonest) people will say when I defend Bukele’s results is, “Oh okay Greg, you are happy with his actions to stop the murders? And people dying in police custody? But you opposed it when the US government intervened during the 2020 Covid-19 Coronavirus Global Pandemic to Flatten the Curve and Prevent Even One Death!”
“What gives??”
They will ask.
It’s so sad dealing with the infantile liberal mind.
The difference is that Bukele had corpses in the streets when he took power.
Y’all had nothing. You kept talking about over-crowded hospitals and overflowing morgues.
But global death declined from 2019 to 2020. I’ve written about this countless times.
You are more and more and more fake news.
Bukele had corpses. Thousands per year. It was one of the worst homicide rates on earth.
Now everyone walks around safely and happily.
Maybe Nashville should look into this?
If not them, surely Chicago could stand for some Bukele style crackdowns!
Despite the restrictions, the improvements in security have contributed to Bukele’s extremely high popularity.
Can’t tell if this is standard Orwellian snark levels or job-required autism.
“Why oh why is this crimestopper so damn popular??? Come on El Salvador!!! Read a book!!!”
For years, many Salvadorans lived in fear of the gangs that controlled swaths of the country, extorting, killing and forcibly recruiting.
In 2015, El Salvador had 6,656 homicides, making it one of the world’s deadliest countries. In 2023, there were 214 homicides. The advances have inevitably raised the question of whether the state of emergency can still be justified to which Bukele and his ministers have obliquely answered that they have not yet achieved all that they wish.
The congress, in which Bukele’s party and allies hold a supermajority, continues to renew the special powers each month.
The gangs’ repressive control made it difficult and dangerous for residents to travel between neighborhoods, including for work. Now residents say they can walk their neighborhoods without fear.
Two responses: for the covid equivalence people, you all killed millions throughout the pandemic (and ongoing death toll now) with lockdowns, canceled medical treatment and surgeries, suicides, overdoses and ESPECIALLY vaccine deaths that keep piling up.
So get back to me with the “they died in custody” and “they can’t walk around freely” stories once you’ve explained all the blood and tyranny on your own narrative’s hands.
But then more generally: martial law is necessary in a legitimate emergency (which Covid never was), and the libertarian idea of eliminating the government is completely insane.
The point of the government is to keep citizens safe and protect their property (stuff like borders and enforcing laws against violent crime or theft).
That leaves vague whines about “public health” completely out (which is one place I line up with the libertarians).*
But it does not rule out stopping insane levels of violent crime or government corruption.
*The Internet abounds with excellent takedowns of movement libertarianism. Probably my favorite one is Murray Rothbard’s takedown of Ayn Rand. He calls her the maximum guru of a nerd cult, which is perfect. But there are plenty more everywhere.