The Sunday Story: The price of peace in El Salvador

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🗓️ 2 April 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

For the past year, the government of El Salvador has been in the midst of an extraordinary crackdown on gangs. The courts have waived human rights protections, allowing police to detain anyone they suspect of having gang affiliations—even without evidence. So far, they've arrested more than 60-thousand people. Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele has been the force behind the country's "state of exception." His "reforms" have included harsh new sentencing guidelines, which have lowered the point of criminal responsibility from 16 years of age to just 12. The government has also opened a new "mega prison" to house the exploding numbers of detainees, a place where, President Bukele said, "they would live for decades." El Salvador, once a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world, is now safe. But critics of the policies say the human rights costs have been way too high. Today on Up First Sunday, NPR's Eyder Peralta tells us about what he heard and witnessed during his recent reporting trip to the country.

Transcript

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0:00.0	El Salvador was once the murder capital of the world, no longer though.
0:05.6	In the nearly four years, since Nayib Bukhale became El Salvador's president,
0:09.8	homicides have plummeted.
0:11.6	This past year has been especially noteworthy.
0:14.2	In March of 2022, the president pushed for emergency rules that allowed the government to round up
0:20.4	anyone suspected of being part of a gang.
0:23.0	Since then, police have swept through the entire country from urban neighborhoods to farming
0:27.6	communities and they have jailed more than 60,000 people.
0:31.8	I'm Rachel Martin and this is up for Sunday.
0:34.4	In many respects, El Salvador, which was once a country almost synonymous with gangs and murder,
0:40.6	is now safe, but at what cost?
0:43.1	I'm joined now by NPR's Ada Peralta, who recently returned from a reporting trip to El Salvador.
0:48.8	Hey Ada.
0:49.7	Hey Rachel.
0:50.6	So for years, the stories that were coming out of El Salvador have really been difficult to absorb.
0:57.2	Murders, kidnappings, extortion, to get us started in this story.
1:03.2	Can you just describe what it was like when you were there?
1:06.9	Yeah. I mean, first of all, my producer and I, we walked through neighborhoods that were once
1:12.7	impossible to get into, but it felt eerie.
1:17.3	We went to a city called Soyabango and this is where the documentary La Vida Loka was filmed.
1:22.6	I don't know if you've watched it, but it, you know, it portrays the epithet,
1:26.5	center of gang culture, you know, heavily tattooed guys, or smoking pot, they're throwing gang signs.
	...

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