Nayib Bukele has come to be known as the face fighting against gang violence and justice. However, a new ProPublica investigation reveals that image may be misleading.
The bombshell investigation comes from ProPublica, which gathered information from a long-running U.S. investigation of MS-13 as an effort to dismantle the gang’s leadership and later expanded to focus on whether the Bukele government cut a secret deal with the gang in the early years of his presidency.
According to ProPublica, Bukele’s allies blocked extraditions of gang leaders whom U.S. agents viewed as potential witnesses to the negotiations and persecuted Salvadoran law enforcement officials who helped the task force.
Further, the investigation suggests that the Bukele government may have diverted U.S. aid funds to the gang as part of the alleged deal to provide it with money and power in exchange for votes and reduced homicide rates. In 2021, agents drew up a request to review U.S. bank accounts held by Salvadoran political figures to look for evidence of money laundering related to the suspected diversion of U.S. funds.
Where do you think Trump’s son get his coke from?
No fucking shit. The gangs didn’t just suddenly give up and end the violence. They made a deal, they allowed lower level and some mid level criminals to get arrested as a show of force for the big prison. How many higher ups got arrested? How many leaders? Now they just continue doing what they had been doing just with government backing, requiring less violence.
What are you talking about?
El Salvador has been cracking down on gangs hard for years, so hard in fact people are blaming them for going too far.
What would convince people like you that someone is arguing the gangs “suddenly” gave up and ended the violence, as though there was no crackdown and only a deal was cut?
the literal 98% drop in the murder rate? That does not happen, ever, in normal every day statistics. No amount of “police” crackdown can cut a murder rate by 98%
It can when you lock up a sizeable portion of the population of a country where murder is very gang oriented.
It seems like it was more a rival gang getting turned in.
sounds about right
These journalists need to make sure they don’t end up in El Salvador or any of their allies, or they run a greater than zero chance of getting the Jamal Khashoggi treatment.
One of the many kings of the world masquerading as a “president”. Autocrats gonna autocracy.
Your comment implies El Salvador was any better off under a different leader.
It wasn’t.
Your comment implies there’s only two options.
