Bukele made a pact with the MS-13 gang in El Salvador in exchange for electoral support

A member of the Mara-13 in the prison of Chalatenango, El Salvador.JOSE CABEZAS / Reuters

A journalistic investigation by the digital newspaper

revealed this Friday that the Government of Nayib Bukele of El Salvador negotiated with the Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) prison benefits in exchange for a reduction in the number of homicides in the country.

The newspaper provides records of visits, photographs and official documents drawn up by government officials that point to a pact with the leaders of the gang, considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

Since coming to power in the Central American country a year ago, Nayib Bukele has bragged about his “strong hand” policy against gang violence thanks to which he managed to drastically lower the number of murders.

Between January and May 2019, 1,345 homicides were committed in El Salvador, considered one of the most violent countries in the world.

In the same period this year, the figure was 519.

The documents record what was negotiated throughout conversations and visits to prisons for several months by Bukele's trusted personnel.

In some cases, they were small daily benefits, such as allowing gang prisons to sell products from the Pollo Campero chain, pizzas, pupusas, or sweets, or transferring custodians that the gang members considered very aggressive.

Other broader concessions were reversing the decision made last April to gather members of opposing gangs in the same cells, soften the maximum security regime, repeal laws or give gang members new “benefits” should Bukele gain control of the Congress in the February 2021 elections.

In exchange for all this, the largest gang in the country promised to close the assassination “valves” and “support” the official party in the next elections, according to the prison intelligence documents that

had access to

.

Among the intercepted communications, the jailed leaders of the gang can be heard ordering those who are at liberty to continue "calm", because there is dialogue with the government.

Since coming to power, Nayib Bukele has been characterized by his authoritarian excesses, the permanent confrontation with almost all the powers of the country and even a frustrated attempt to take over Congress.

All this in just 14 months in the presidency.

During this time, he has appointed and dismissed ministers on Twitter and has viciously attacked Justice, deputies, Human Rights organizations and the press.

Although he enjoys one of the highest popularity quotas on the continent, he governs in the minority in the chamber, which is why he aspires to a massive victory in the 2021 legislative elections with which to consolidate his power.

It has been precisely on social networks where the president has responded to the journalistic publication by hanging several photographs of the interior of the prisons where the prisoners are subjected to humiliation.

“Where is there a single proof of some privilege?

Why in prisons there is order, cleanliness, communication with the outside, searches, and multiple punishments?

Where are the prostitutes, parties, drugs, Playstations, internet, cell phones, that there were before? ”, He defended himself on Twitter.

"The Salvadoran people are happy that after a civil war and 30 more years of crime, they can live in a much safer country than before," he wrote

It is not the first time that an agreement between gangs and the government drastically reduces homicides.

In 2012, the government of Mauricio Funes, of the FMLN, also tried to negotiate in secret and in different stages, first a drop in homicides and then electoral support in the presidential elections.

On that occasion there was a drastic reduction in the number of murders for two years, but the failure of these processes made 2015 the most murderous year in the country in memory, with a rate of 103 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

Recently the Salvadoran justice prosecuted the FMLN and Arena politicians who negotiated that truce and Bukele referred to them as "worse than rubbish."

“They negotiated with the blood of our people.

A thousand damn times, ”he wrote on the social network in February 2020.

Added to the publication of

is a recent report by the International Crisis Group, which highlights the reduction in the number of deaths in the country and the high popular approval that Bukele enjoys thanks to the “iron fist” policy.

But "the reasons for success could lie in the quiet and informal understandings between the gangs and the Government," says the report published in July, on whose "understandings" the evidence has been known today.

The revelations of journalists Carlos Martínez, Oscar Martínez, Sergio Arauz and Efrén Lemus are not the only problem the president faces.

Added to the controversy at home are the doubts raised by Bukele in the United States.

So far the Central American president has exhibited his good relationship with Trump, in fact, almost four months after he assumed power, the US president received him in Washington and referred to him as a partner who is doing a great job against the MS-13.

Trump has referred to the gang as a "cartel" of "animals."

“They are the rudest people you have ever met.

They are killing and raping everyone there.

They are illegal, ”he said in December 2016.

However, a cable from The Associated Press published this Friday notes that those relations do not seem so good.

A senior US official told the Government of El Salvador that Washington's aid against poverty may not arrive due to Bukele's confrontation with the Supreme Court and the Salvadoran Congress.

The rebuke from the Trump Administration, the nation's largest donor, came in a May 29 letter to an aide to the President of Thomas Kelly, interim vice president of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, an independent US foreign aid agency that has pledged almost $ 300 million in grants to the small Central American country.

The US Congress is currently evaluating whether to extend the September 9 deadline to spend US aid, and the criticisms reflect growing concern among primarily Democratic lawmakers that Bukele "is leading the country in an authoritarian direction, as when he used military to intimidate the camera or its rejection of a ruling by the Superior Court of Justice against the harsh restrictions due to the pandemic, ”says AP.