From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Taverny Sea, and this is the Daily.

El Salvador has experienced a remarkable transformation.

What had been one of the most violent countries of the world has become incredibly safe.

Today, my colleague Natalie Ketroev, on the cost of that transformation to the people of El Salvador

and the man at the center of it, President Naib Bukhle, who claimed victory in an election on Sunday.

It's Wednesday, February 7th.

So Natalie, you've spent the past few months reporting on El Salvador. Tell us what you've been finding in your reporting.

Yeah, so I've been really interested in El Salvador since I became the Bureau Chief in Mexico City.

I mean, this is this tiny country, the smallest country in Central America, that now has this broad resonance

across the region because it has undergone a remarkable transformation in the last few years. Now to really understand the magnitude of

this change of what's happened you have to remember that El Salvador was long

known as one of the world's most violent countries.

Government troops in El Salvador.

Nowhere in the world today is there a fiercer bloodier

battle for control of a nation. This is violence that traces itself back to this

bloody civil war that the country fought ended in 1992. It sent hundreds of thousands

of Salvadorans fleeing to the United States where they developed these street gangs.

In El Salvador, they fight against each other but in Los Angeles

they stand side by side on street corners hoping to find a day's work. You know the

MS-13 gang the 18th street gang. This government video shows some of the arrestees getting on a plane, being deported.

And when the US started deporting Salvadorans back home,

in this case back to El Salvador, and leaving the plane free of handcuffs and leg chains.

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