You may not have been aware of it, but yesterday, in El Salvador, Nayib Bukele was re-elected president in a victory he described as “the biggest difference between first place and second place in the history" of democratic presidential elections anywhere.
So popular is Bukele in his native country that the trickle-down effect of his win resulted in his party capturing at least 58 seats of the Legislature’s 60 total. He is the first Salvadoran president in almost a century to be re-elected.
What Bukele did to become so beloved was this: in his first term he virtually eliminated criminal gangs. El Salvador went from being one of the most dangerous countries on earth to one of the safest. And the people Bukele will now lead for at least another five years are profoundly grateful.
How he did it is controversial. Under his regime, “authorities suspended civil liberties to arrest more than 75,000 Salvadorans without charges. The detentions led to a sharp decline in nationwide murder rates and transformed a country of 6.3 million people that was once among the world's most dangerous.” Voters, in turn, “rewarded Bukele for decimating the crime groups that made life intolerable in El Salvador and fueled waves of migration to the United States,” according to the Voice of America.
Bukele was tough; there’s no doubt about it. He is widely called “an authoritarian” and “a dictator,” although at least one media outlet, Al Jazeera, called him “the world’s coolest dictator.” With pitch-black, slicked back hair, a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, and a defined, runway men’s body, Bukele has sex appeal, no small part of his appeal. His gang crackdown resulted in El Salvador having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Bukele removed and replaced members of the courts, including the Supreme Court, whom he deemed insufficiently tough on crime. Two years ago, Bukele declared a national state of emergency, resulting in the arrests of at least 76,000 suspected gang members; a new megaprison had to be built to house them. Neighborhoods that had been too dangerous to walk in suddenly are peaceful oases. A National Public Radio reporter who reported on the situation once said, "The gangs terrorize communities. They harass citizens. They turn neighborhoods into war zones. So on these streets, you hear little sympathy. Let them rot in jail. Kill them, people told me."
Let’s now consider Oakland to be the El Salvador of California—the old El Salvador. Crime-ridden, dangerous, with entire neighborhoods off-limits to decent people. People are afraid to go out at night, especially downtown, due to fears of predators who seemingly control the streets. Even during the day, one runs the risk of being attacked, as I was at noon a few weeks ago on Telegraph Avenue. There’s a murder every two or three days. In nearly every category, crime in Oakland is up by double digits.
And yet nothing ever seems to get done about it, which is why we have to seriously begin to have an uncomfortable conversation. If we’re serious about eliminating crime, we need to at least think about doing it Bukele’s way. Don’t just issue standard babble about being tough on crime, like Sheng Thao does. Get tough on crime. The police know who the bad guys are, most of the time. Round them up. Throw them behind bars. If there are soft-on-crime DAs and judges, get tough on them too. They only have as much power as we permit them to have. Of course, if we crack down on crime and gangs Bukele-style, the pro-crime apologists will call us authoritarian dictators too. Let them. Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but names will never harm me.
Steve Heimoff