Murder capital of the world uses special formula to eradicate crime

By Joan Janzen

This week, I’m starting off with a joke that serves quite well as an illustration but is not so great in the humour department. A turtle is crossing the road when he’s mugged by two snails. When the police ask him what happened, the turtle replies, “I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”

In a similar fashion, world leaders watched the smallest country in Central America undergo a transformation. When asked how it happened, they might echo the turtle’s comment: “I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”

Four years ago, El Salvador was the murder capital of the world. Today, it is the safest country in the world, and it is safer than Canada. The country received scant attention in 2019 when Nayib Bukele began his first term as president. In fact, leaders of other countries avoided him. However, in 2024, 110 countries were represented for the inauguration of his second term of office, with the US sending a large delegation. The 42-year-old was re-elected with 85% of the vote.

Bukele was recently interviewed on TCN and asked how their country eradicated the gangs. “I can tell you the official formula and then the real formula,” he replied. The official formula was a series of phases. They doubled the army, built up the police force, equipped the soldiers with guns, drones and vehicles. “We did it in a hurry and it worked.”

As for the real formula, Bukele said, “It was a miracle. When gangs started attacking us back, they killed 87 people in three days. In a country of six million people, that’s the equivalent of 5,000 people killed in three days in the US.”

He said the problem with gangs is they attack anyone, even their own relatives, creating terror. The police go after them with no intention of harming civilians, but it was almost impossible because the gang members were intertwined with the population.

“We were in a meeting at my office at 3:00 am figuring out what to do. We were looking at an impossible mission.” That’s when they applied the real formula.

“So we prayed in the meeting, several times. We prayed for wisdom, and we prayed for low casualties,” he explained. “All my security cabinet believe in God.”

They went on to carry out the impossible mission and didn’t have any casualties. “The gang was also satanic, although they didn’t start that way. They started doing satanic rituals. It’s well documented,” he said. A gang member who was interviewed in prison said he was used to killing people, but when they were about to kill a baby for a sacrifice, he couldn’t do it, so he left the gang.

“There’s a spiritual war, and there’s a physical war. If you win the spiritual war, it will reflect into the physical war. Our victory was because we won the spiritual war,” he said. “But when we arrested 70,000 gang members that were killing so many people, we received no help from any other country and huge condemnation for everything we did. A lot of it was from human rights organizations who were concerned for the gang members. But we had to prioritize the human rights of the people.”

Despite the criticism received from other countries, comments posted by Salvadorians revealed a different perspective. A Salvadorian wrote, “As a native Salvadorian, you know exactly who is a gang member. They speak, act and dress completely different than honest civilians. So it’s not like the police are incarcerating honest regular people. I live in a red zone and have been stopped and searched by police four times, but they immediately know I’m a regular civilian.”

Before Bukele became president, he said their country had a formal government, but the gangs were the real government, so a third of the population fled the country and went to the US.

A Salvadorian wrote in the comment section: “Gangs even influenced polling. They took hostage of people’s IDs in red zones so they couldn’t vote. Both right-wing and left-wing politicians negotiated with gangs instead of solving the problem. The country finally feels safe.”

Another Salvadorian wrote: “The reason Bukele’s government raided the anti-corruption office was that it was staffed with people from the previous party system that had ruled El Salvador and were commonly perceived as being corrupt and paid off by the gangs. This same office was also investigating Bukele for impeachment.”

Bukele said, “62 percent of Salvadorans living in the US want to come back this year. That’s super significant.”

“Bukele has given the country something that people could only dream of - security,” a Salvadorian said. “People aren’t afraid to open a little business now, as they do not have to pay extortion money to gangs.”

This note from a Salvadorian proved those words to be true. It read, “I’m Salvadorian and became a US citizen, but I’m proudly going back to my home country and start my own business.”

“I’m not here to do what others think I should do. I’m here to do what’s best for our country,” Bukele said in a speech.