El Salvador has sentenced hundreds of gang members as part of President Nayib Bukele’s unrelenting campaign to crack down on the nation’s criminal gangs.
The Central American nation’s Attorney General’s Office announced on X on Sunday that 248 members of the violent Salvadoran street gang–Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13–have received “exemplary sentences” for dozens of murders and disappearances, among other violent crimes, spanning across recent years.
Bukele, who won re-election in February of 2024, securing a second five-year presidential term, is in the fourth year of an aggressive law and order campaign, often referred to as mano duro, to rid the nation of its past crime epidemic and restore stability in a country previously tormented by civil war, political violence, and the scourge of drug gangs that terrorized its citizens.
Since 2022, over 90,000 Salvadorans suspected of committing crimes, or of being associated with violent criminal drug gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18, have been rounded up by authorities and jailed, often without trial or legal representation.
Critics of the Bukele government and outside human rights organizations have condemned the government's approach to reducing the nation’s crime rates, accusing Bukele of abusing the civil liberties of thousands of Salvadorans and not providing a right to a speedy trial for detainees.
Of the 90,000 individuals detained by Salvadoran authorities, 8,000 have since been released after being found not guilty, according to sources.
In 2016, El Salvador held the highest murder rate of any nation in the world, with rates of theft, extortion, and armed robbery among the highest of any country in the Western hemisphere, terrorizing the civilian population.
Bukele touts the achievements of mano duro, declaring his nation free of crime, and now markets El Salvador to investors, foreign businesses, and tech start-ups as a business-friendly Central American paradise and the safest country in the region.
Bukele’s election victory in 2024 was a landslide, winning 85% of the vote.
Bukele is now viewed by detractors as the emblematic new-era strongman of Right-wing Latin America, and by admirers as the Latin American success story of conservative populism, heralding the strong-on-crime approach that has become so popular in the region.
According to the government of El Salvador, criminals from the nation’s street gangs like MS-13 are responsible for the killings of over 200,000 people over the course of three decades following the bloody Salvadoran civil war that ended in 1992.
President Bukele has warned that the nation’s new war on gangs will not cease until each and every offender has been brought to justice, also vowing to track down known associates of these organizations in neighboring countries in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.
In February, the Trump administration declared MS-13 a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and later this year, in September, labeled Barrio 18 the same.
