Nine months into a state of emergency declared by President Nayib Bukele to fight street gangs, El Salvador has seen more than 1,000 documented human rights abuses and about 90 deaths of prisoners in custody.
For decades, El Salvador’s main street gangs, Barrio 18 and the MS-13, have extorted money from nearly everyone and taken violent revenge against those who don’t pay. The gangs, which have been estimated to count some 70,000 members, have long controlled swaths of territory and extorted and killed with impunity.
Rights activists say young men are frequently arrested just based on their age, on their appearance or whether they live in a gang-dominated slum. The country’s human rights official, Raquel Caballero, said 2,100 people have been released after arrest because they had no ties to the street gangs. Why are Salvadorans putting up with seemingly unending renewals of one-month emergency decrees that limit constitutional rights and allow police and soldiers wide latitude in searches, arrests and pre-trial detention?
Pastor says he supports the crackdown. But he says Bukele’s government must still be held responsible for abuses and give an accounting of those who died in custody.“They weren’t expecting it, they were caught unaware and they rounded almost all of them up,” said Manuel Torres, who works in a factory in the San José El Pino neighborhood of San Salvador, the capital. The neighborhood was once controlled by the MS-13.
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