But the government has taken other actions: After a dramatic spike in killings here over a single weekend last month, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's reaction was swift — and extreme. He sent soldiers into poor neighborhoods to round up thousands of people who he claimed were gang members, then paraded them in front of news cameras in their underwear and handcuffs. He tweeted pictures of detainees who had been bruised and bloodied by security forces, suggesting they "maybe fell" or "were eating fries with ketchup." And he started feeding the nation's prisoners two meals a day instead of three, warning that if violence continued, "I swear to God that they won't eat a single grain of rice."
It is a distinct look for the man, who has been focused on presenting himself to the world as a modern tech innovator on a quest to turn El Salvadoran into a criptocurrency paradise. The murder spree that left 87 people dead in three days was used as a pretext to suspend civil liberties and attack the press by the mano duro techniques of past Latin American leaders.
In recent days, Bukele and his loyalists in the Legislative Assembly ordered a state of emergency that restricts freedom of association, suspends the norm that detainees be informed of their rights at the moment of arrest and denies prisoners access to lawyers.... That Bukele would use the spate of homicides as a pretext to further consolidate power is no surprise to many of his critics, who believe he may be preparing to stay in office past 2024, when he is supposed to step down, even though El Salvador's constitution bans consecutive presidential terms.They say that he may have diverted attention from the failure of his experiment by changing his stance on crime.
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