The Underworld Podcast - El Salvador's War on MS-13: Nayib Bukele Goes Hard

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Since 2019, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has smashed the country’s two main gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18, throwing almost 80,000 people into megaprisons and implementing a harsh but effective “state of exception,” aka martial law. Murder rates have plummeted and, for the first time in years, Salvadorans can live without the fear of violence, extortion, or death. But the sneaker-wearing “world’s coolest dictator” has also gerrymandered El Salvador’s political map, silenced the press, and packed out the judiciary with sycophants and wallflowers. And as human rights NGOs cry foul, Bukele has gone full-tilt, telling citizens not to call him a dictator, but a “philosopher king.” Is his fragile peace about to come crashing down? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. March 27, 2022, in the Central American State of El Salvador, a Sunday, the day of rest for this Catholic majority nation of 6.3 million people. But just as it's been for decades, there's no rest at all for those caught in the crosshairs of El Salvador's brutal, omnipresent street gangs.

Barrio diaceoooo and Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13. And on this particular Sunday, they're not just hell-bent on money-making violence. This time it's political. See, the homicide rate in El Salvador had been dropping, fast. And not just since the 2019 election of Salvador and President Naib Buckele, an enigmatic millennial strongman with a ponchant as much for self-importance as hair gel. But Buckele had swept to power on a promise to slash El Salvador's homicide. rate. And that is exactly what he's done, from almost 2,400 in 2019 to under half that in 2021.

Some folks have been sounding the alarm about Buckeli's dictatorial tendencies, from stacking the judiciary and piling sovereign wealth into Bitcoin to stuff a bit more on the nose, like calling himself the dictator most cool del Mundo Mundial, the coolest dictator in the world. But most Salvadorans don't care. They're just happy they're not living under constant threat of extortion, violence, or death. But in recent months, Buckelli's relationship to the gangs has been exposed to something a little less combative than he's willing to admit. Reporters of enough evidence of meetings in 2021, in which Buckelly offered major gang leaders' amnesties, cushy prison conditions, or even sex workers to back his leadership and keep the murder rates down. The uneasy pact is held until that November,

when 40 people were killed in three days. Since then, Buceli had been pondering laws to restrict the right to gather, monitor communications and carry out arrest without a warrant. Moose's opponents have warned could send El Salvador back to the darkest days of its awful civil war. The threat, though, it clearly hasn't worked. By March 2022, the relationship between Buckeli and the gangs has fallen apart, and mobsters are looking to stamp their authority back on the streets. in typically psychotic fashion. On the 25th, MS-13 and Barrio di Cioch

unleashed the worst wave of violence since the war. That day 14 Salvadorans have murdered. The following day, all hell breaks loose. The gang's rampage across the nation. They kill vendors, bus passengers, market goers, men, women and children. Anybody they don't like the look of, anybody who's in the way. By Sunday 27th, the massacre is in full swing. 87 Salvadorans are dead in just 72 hours. Cops and security forces swarm major towns and cities and the deaths subside, but nobody expects to come to last.

This is always the case, says one resident in the capital, San Salvador. Homicides rise and operations are strong and soldiers walk in. But in about 15 days, they will leave and everything will return to normal. This time, though, it's different. Buckelet pushes through his so-called state of exception, martial law of sorts, suspending rights, placing prisons on lockdown and sweeping up thousands of suspected gang members in massive police raids. The president takes to Twitter to address those already behind bars.

Because of your actions, now your homeboys won't be able to see a ray of sunshine, he writes. What comes next is one of the biggest police operations the world has ever seen, with mass incarceration more reminiscent of a sci-fi movie than a Central American democracy. And that's precisely the point, say Buckeli's critics. El Salvador is barely a democracy to begin with. Now, they say, Buckele is just replacing the gangs with the brutal manor d'o or iron fist of dictatorship. Welcome to the underworld podcast.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the weekly podcast that dips into the baggie of global all over those crime with an annoyingly big key. I am your host, Sean Williams. Pretty good. In Al-Diota, thank you, thank you, in New Zealand. And I'm joined today by Intrepid Reporter Danny Gold in the United States. We are rats on the good ship journalism, and it is sinking. AI is taking over, and we are going to podcast until Peter Till takes that from us as well.

I have been having a lot of fun watching lots of bare-knuckle boxing in the last couple of weeks on YouTube. And I think it's making my friends and family nervous. I'm having a breakdown. Any similar warning signs your end? I think you should actually get into doing bare knuckleboxing because like CTE would go a long way to explaining some of your jokes and behavior in general. But I mean, look, my entire existence since I turned 35 is a warning sign. You know, what can you do? Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

I reckon it would probably be better to beat up a 14-year-old Kiwi kid down the local gym than to annihilate my family. But anyway, as always, like and subscribe on all the underworld socials. We put out a lot of shorts and picks and all kinds of stuff there. And do please hit the follow button on Spotify because podcast discovery is a complete nightmare. And it helps us leap, frog past wonderies, true crime, cold cases, volume 254 or whatever. Yeah, also, we've got a ton of new listeners lately. Thank you all for joining us. I'm sorry I left you to listen to, you know, Sean's rambling is with our audio producer Dale last week,

who I heard we're spreading all sorts of nonsense and defiling my clean reputation. Just relaying the effects. Yeah, make sure you go back through the archives. There's plenty of great stuff. Sign up for bonuses here or on patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. Yeah, I think my latest one, it might be out today. Is it out today? I don't know.

But I actually went up to a place called Hawks Bay and New Zealand and spoke to this life member of one of the gangs. Really interesting guy. Yeah, listen to that. I'm going to go up to a place called Hamilton next weekend as well and speak to some more gang members. So, yeah, if you like that kind of stuff, sign up to the Patreon. It is solid a.F.

Anyway, this week's episode might be a little bit controversial, as my last one on Indian state hits was partly for the same reason, basically. And that is that both India and El Salvador are currently ruled by colourful strong men who've built a pretty solid personality cult around them. But also, because as I mentioned in the cold open, El Salvador's homicide rate has plummeted, and its terrible street gangs, the Barrio Dio DiSiocho and MS-13, they've had their wings well and truly clipped by a naive Buckele's sweeping state of exception, which is still going strong today. I think it's been extended into 22 consecutive months. And in case you're in El Salvador, or you're a fan of Buckelé, and you're already typing out some angry YouTube comment about Wotlibs, knowing nothing about living in constant fear, well, A, you're right, I don't. And B, listen to the show.

Because while it's just easy to point at the homicide rates, there is way more to it besides. And there's like a real rot at the heart of Buckelé's government that should have anyone with a passing knowledge of Central America, more than a little bit nervous. Yeah, see, I mean, it's actually tough. for me because I, you know, I spent a fair amount of time there. I made three documentaries, one in 2015, when the homicide rate there was over 100, which is insane. I think I'm nuts. I looked it up

right before the show, and it's 2.34 right now. So 100 is like six times what Chicago is. You know, it's just brutal. And I spent a lot of time there with people who were, you know, living in constant fear because of the gang. So on the one hand, it's easy for me to recognize that Buckele has done some real worrying things, but on the other, if you're one of the people who had to live under the gangs for decades, like decades, who had family members killed and there's a lot of them who got extorted every day, who lived just constantly, you know, afraid to go outside, and now you can walk the street safely. You know, I think we need to acknowledge that his actions, they look a lot different to them than it does to people, like journalists in the West and NGOs

in the West and things like that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair if people want to like, take to YouTube after this or whatever and say like, I don't know, these two gringoes don't know anything about living in constant fear of these. One one gringo. And you're really living in fear of the YouTube comments here. It's a little different. All right. Lost the Mohicans over here.

Yeah, I mean, of course, I don't know what it's like to live in El Salvador. I think I could say that fair. But there is way more going on beneath this like state of exception, which is basically martial law. I'm talking mass incarcerations, corruption, death squads, press freedom, state catcher, all that tasty stuff. So, yeah, if you just want to log on and type

Viva Vuele, Audio Gringos or something, you know, just save yourself some time. Stop it, right now. Yeah, there's some really interesting stuff going on here and I hope you guys enjoy it. Actually, if you want to write those comments, go ahead because that's engagement and, you know, we need that. Actually, yeah. So, you've done

a bunch of work, some really, really great work in El Salvador, but I will just bore you with a background on the 43rd president of El Salvador, Naib Armando Bukele-Oltes. Buckele is born in 1981 in San Salvador, the fifth child of Armando Buckele, an entrepreneur of Palestinian descent. Armando is raised a Christian, but he converts to Islam in the 80s and he actually found El Salvador's first mosque. Naib's mother is a Roman Catholic with Jewish heritage, and he follows her into her faith. But in business, Naïbe's father is the leader. An age 20, Naïbe drops out of university, to join Armando's advertising agency.

In 1999, Naib found his own agency, and he runs political ads for the presidential campaigns of the Fronte Farabundo Marti for La Liberation Nacional, or FMLN, El Salvador's biggest left-wing party, which came out of its grueling guerrilla conflict, more on that later. Puechle is hardly the Latin Don Draper, though, and he bounces between roles at a nightclub

and as the head of a Yamaha dealership. But in 2012, he shifts over to politics, and he becomes the mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlan, a suburb of San Salvador. Here's the newspaper El Pace talking about those formative early days. Quote, shortly after taking office, he began cruising through the streets in a pickup truck with tinted windows accompanied by bodyguards. He made impromptu speeches to the people of Nuevo Cuscatlan about paradigms and abstract concepts with the confidence of someone born into privilege.

His audience was often left speechless, captivated as they watched the young mayor. So we got this kind of nepo baby, bit prodigious guy, hopping between professions. He's looking for the right fit, unlike both of us who landed in the wrong place at the wrong time. And suddenly he's in charge of this small but historic place, the first capital city of El Salvador. He's got a purported $2 million budget and he's keen to make his mark. So first thing he does is start a youth scholarship fund, donating his own two grand salary to the cause. He also sets up a radio station encouraging young people to stay on in education. and he builds a massive highway.

This is good stuff. Only Buceli pays for it with the help of a company owned by Venezuela's state oil company. More on that later too. For now, though, boyed by his successes in Nuevo Cascatland, Buckele sets his sights a few miles away at the mayorship of San Salvador,

the country's bustling capital, its metro area home to around a third of El Salvador's population. He's only 33 years old at this point, and he swapped suits and ties for unbuttoned shirts and trainers with a trademark Vantamante black beard and slick back hair. Apparently this is cool, but yeah, what do I know? I was 29 then and still prancing around in women's drainpipe jeans and tatted denim shirts so I was in the fucking Libertines or something.

What are women's drain pipes? I just don't understand English culture, though the Libertines do rule. Skinny jeans, basically, but I used to get girls' jeans to make them even more skinny, which is, I think we can both agree that it's cool as. Never. In 2015, yeah. In 2015, Buckelé wins the Merrill race on an FMNL ticket, with populist phrases like,

Teemos to can be our history, or we must change history, and he employs his family members in key positions. Almost from day one, Buckele takes aims at the gangs. He builds or renovates a bunch of market plasas and vendor spots to get locals selling in the streets again, without fear of getting terrorized by goons associated with MS-13 or Barrio Diciocio.

He backs this up with a Rudy Giuliani-style plan to put streetlights on every corner and CCTV all over the city. The vendors thing in the markets is actually big because the gangs actually earned the majority of their income in El Salvador by extorting literally everyone from, you know, bus drivers to papusa sellers. So markets were a huge target for them and trying to take away that level of income from them is an effective thing to do. Yeah, I think this is all really good stuff. So far, I mean, Diva Bukele, like he's doing, he's doing cool stuff, he's making the street safer. There's also whispers, though, at this time he's done a sweetheart deal with gangs to go soft on them if they stay off his shiny new turf. And that he's behind a plan to undermine two of El Salvador's biggest newspapers by creating fake mirror sites at their homepage, something known as the Troll Center case. Yeah, I think Neil Brandvold, who I had on talking about what happened in El Salvador, maybe like six months ago.

Maybe it was him or someone else was always telling me about like Bokele just having like a huge presence online with all sorts of people on his side like troll farms basically on Facebook. And this is like 2015, 2016, I want to say. Maybe 2016, 2017. But he was really known for that sort of, you know, just online fighting. Tomfoolery. But like not him. Yeah. People like backing him up.

But the rumors that of making a deal with the gangs is something that I feel like has dogged everyone in El Salvador in any position of power for like a decade. or two. Yeah, yeah, for sure. There have been like so many stalled kind of abortive attempts to get on the gang's side in some way in the dark. Yeah, and as we're going to learn, and as you know, they have not worked very well at all. So yeah, Buekele is making some pretty, you know, shifty dealings at the time. He's kind of pissing off the press and maybe doing some backroom deals with people who he shouldn't, but I mean, that beard, the hair gel and all those CCTV cameras, like, how could you not love him? I mean, despite the cronyism, the dubious financial backing and the press scandals,

Buckel is still the darling of media and think tankers all over the world. And he speaks at tons of these wonky events about how he's helping turn San Salvador around from its gang misery. And, you know, to some extent, he's right. But there is plenty of misery still for the city's residents themselves. I mean, Danny's episode on MS-13 has already gone into the gang's history, so head back to that one if you want a big, comprehensive rundown of all the terrible shit they've been up since the 1980s, and that's when they emerged from the Salvadoran expat groups in Los Angeles. And why are their Salvadoran expats in the States?

Well, that's course war, a very bad one. I think it's really important at this point to give a quick rundown of El Salvador's insane history because it's so deeply woven into what's happening right now. Under Spanish rule, the territory had been cleaved into plantations of various luxury commodities like cocoa, indigo and coffee. El Salvador wins independence in 1841, but control of the plantations, stays in the hands of a rich white oligarchy, who basically relegate the 95% of the population

who are indigenous or mestizo to surfdom. These so-called 14 families then rule via military dictatorship all the way up until 1932, and that's when left-wing peasants revolt. But later that year, the family striped back with a colossal revenge called La Matanza, the slaughter. 30,000 are killed, particularly indigenous people who are marked for death by their traditional dress.

The thing is, the war never really ends. The military keeps the country in a vice-like grip until 1979, and that's when a cadre of officers lead a coup and install their own hunter. Right-wing death squads then go on a rampage against the hunter, bombing state buildings, newspapers, kidnapping and murdering civilians, all of that bad stuff. The leader of this anti-hunter-hunter is a fascist named Roberto de Obisant, aka Blow-Torch Bob,

whose psychopath men spark all out civil war when they assassinate an archbishop in 1980. Do not do that. We've heard plenty of stories about doing that in this show. Snipers attack the Archbishop's funeral. Probably don't do that either. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus. Let's go. Get ready for a new case. We're going to crack this case and prove for the greatest partners of all time. New friends. You are Gary Destinic.

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You think that would be a big no-no in a Catholic country? And yeah, it is. But later that year, leftists formed the FMLN, that party, and fight the fascists in a war that leaves 75,000 people dead. Oh, and guess which side our country's wrong? Yeah. The fascists. Love that Cold War. The FMLN is for many people a revered false, intertwined with Catholic liberation theology and the gatekeeper for Salvadoran leftism. You know, there have been reports or studies done, and there were like 95% or 90% of civilians killed during the war were killed by the right wing, and like 5% or 10% were killed by the FMLN. So it was kind of just, they were definitely more popular in the mountains.

Yeah, and actually people can actually have a look at the notes on the Patreon that will come out at some point soon because I did a bunch of research into this. It's like really fascinating. I didn't know a huge amount about it, but that was a real grubby, horrible conflict. In 1984, El Salvador elects its first civilian leaders in 50 years. But thanks in parts of Western intelligence agents, he is toppled by right winger in 1989, and the newly installed Arena Party escalates this conflict. On November 16, 1989, members of the Akla Kato Brigade, a paramilitary group, storms the campus of the University of Central America in South Salvador, drags six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter from their beds, and murders them. This killing shocks the world, finally. And by 1992, peace accords end the war, beginning a UN-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

But really, by this point, the people of El Salvador are so damaged by the wars indiscriminate bloodletting, and thousands more have fled north to the US that the country is a complete basket case. Salvadorans abroad are poor and they stick together, forming gangs including MS-13, which sometimes also includes refugees from other wars in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. It's hardly surprising that a group of deeply traumatised men

with almost no familial ties in the US and access to heavy weaponry would do pretty well on the black market. And soon, many of them drift back home to cause chaos. that's not entirely accurate right 18th Street had been there for for a while and it had other sorts of Guatemalans Hondurans Mexicans even in there so Salvadorans ended up joining that MS-13 was formed organically by Salvadorans there when they were getting picked on by other black and Latino gangs and they rose up there but they kind of started out as like just like headbangers they were into like heavy metal and like drew you know devil signs and smoked

weed and got into fights and then they slowly grew and grew into worse and worse elements. But it really got started back in El Salvador because the U.S. started deporting some of them when they were arrested for crimes, deported them back to El Salvador, which is this country that had, you know, maybe small groups of gangs, but nothing really violent or national or even international like that. So when these gangs who, you know, were fully immersed in L.A.'s gang culture and in prison gangs and all that got sent back to El Salvador, the country was just basically had a vacuum of power, didn't know what to do, and they sort of took advantage of the chaos. and started forming up and really just taking over the country.

Yeah, yeah, that's, I mean, what you're saying there is that people who like loud music and have lots of tattoos are to be, what, feared or worried about? I mean, those are red flags. Who do we know? I don't know, do we know anyone's like that? But, yeah, I mean, these street gangs, right? The MS-13 and Barrio Deciocho are 18th street gang. They're not as powerful as the Mexican cartels or the Italian mafia.

They're like, they're so volatile that the big cartels use them. them sparingly to ship gear up and down Central America. But in El Salvador, they are a menace. Like you said, they really are into shaking people down. That's their moneymaker. MS-13 is thought to have up to 50,000 members. Barrio DiSiochio is reckoned to have 22,000. That's according to Insight Crime.

I mean, that is a crazy number of gangsters on the books in such a small country. And yeah, beside the drugs, they make their money from auto theft, property, money laundering, just terrorizing local people into extortion. I mean, they shake down everyone from Coca-Cola vendors to bus drivers, and they get millions of dollars each year from this. Politicians are often in their pockets, or they're cowed into letting them run amok. Cabinet and military leaders with ties to the drug cartels down south,

often let them do whatever they want. Small kids are employed as lookouts, and initiations often include torture, rape and murder. I mean, these are pretty depraved groups. successive governments have tried facing down the gangs of course. In 2003, President Francisco Flores implements what he calls the Mano Dura, or Iron Fist, and that empowers cops and the military to arrest and random search suspected gang leaders. His successor ups the ante to something called supermanor Dura

by allowing authorities to reach into gang's financial dealings. But these are ineffective, and prison overcrowding just leads to a hardening of both of the main. gangs behind bars. In 2012, President Marizio Funez instead brokers a deal with the gang leaders, alongside the Catholic Church, to transfer mobsters to lower security prisons and the christening of Hampstadam-a-s, so-called peace zones. But again, the gangs have friends in higher places than the Salvador presidency, basically, and the deal is soon punctured by a spate of killings. By 2015, when Buckele takes office as mayor of San Salvador, El Salvador has registered 6,657 homicides.

Yeah, that was the first year that I went to El Salvador to make a documentary. It was really something else. You know, we, I think the first night, you know, you need to film murder scenes for the doc. It's like, it sounds weird to say it, but it's like a traditional scene that you get for a doc like that. And the first night, we didn't even have to look far. We were just driving around, coming back from somewhere else, and we were able to find that. You know, like, you would just go, you would go tag along with the guys who work at the morgue. And you'd be sitting there for like half an hour, an hour before you got a call to go out there into the city.

I mean, think about it, 6,657, I think you're about to mention 6.3 million people in the entire country, right? New York City in its worst year in 1990, right? There's a city of 8 million, 9 million people, 8.5 million maybe. And its worst year, I think, had like 2,200, right? So New York City's worst year ever when it was like the bloodiest crack wars, all that was... And that's bad. That's really bad. Yeah, yeah.

It's horrific. I mean, you're talking five or six murders a day in the city. El Salvador is smaller and had three times. as many murders. Yeah, I mean, I think 2015, right, so I guess there's plenty of wars kicking off in the Middle East. ISIS is on the run. And the 103 homicides per

100,000 people, that year the El Salvador registers, that is like higher than most countries that are at war. Like, it's by far the worst in the world. The next worst is Venezuela with 90 per 100,000. Below that is Honduras with 57.

So, like, El Salvador's not even close. I mean, to put that in context, that year, the US rate, it's 2015, right, it's 4.9. And that's not even that great. The UK is just one. So, yeah, this is fully awful. The murder rate is appalling. And El Salvador's people living near constant fear. I mean, we did that episode with Jason Motlack a few weeks ago about the guy in Haiti,

who said his boys to school on the bus. They both got killed in a single day. I mean, so sad. But that was happening in El Salvador every single day, I mean, every few hours during this period. So as Buckelé's star rises, though, this homicide rate drops significantly. In fact, by 2019, when he runs to become the country's president, it has dropped to just a third of what it was. Still sky high by most standards, of course, but not the war zone it has been. And this is key.

The rate was already plummeting before Buckele came to power. And most experts agree it had pretty much nothing to do with him at that time. Yeah, I mean, again, like I kind of disagree. At that time, yeah, maybe. The highest year ever was, like we said, 100. It usually averaged in those years, I think, 70, 80, and it was down to what, like the low 40s to that point. If you're looking at where it is right now,

they had less than 200 murders last year total. The murder rates around like two or three. So it's kind of like, you can say what you want about him, but it's impossible to deny how much the stuff that he's done has caused the murder rate to drop. Yeah, yeah. I think also it's important to note, like, the extortion and all that shaking down,

that's still going on. the murder rate might be going down, but the gangs are still really, really powerful in this period. Oh, you're talking about 2019, but not now. Yeah. Okay, sorry, yeah. No, not now. No, no, they're on their ass now. But yeah, back then, they're still like sort of sky high in her power.

So Buechle's cult of personality grows through his eagerness to paint fellow politicians as corrupt or working for the gangs or worse. I mean, you know, not untrue in many cases. He calls one lawmaker a treidora or traitor and another one at Brouha. which anyone who loved Juan Sebastian Varon will know means which. Having already kind of bluffed and threatened to ditch the FMLN, in 2017 the party expels Buckele for defaming female party members. I mean, fine. You might think being jettisoned from the FMLN,

this sacred cow, Salvadoran politics, might puncture Bucle's ambition somewhat. No, none of it. That year he found his own party, Neuas Idias, new ideas, before switching to the right-wing Ghana party for a 2019 presidential run. Buckelly goes hard on social media. The guy is like a top poster, and he doesn't bother with debates at all.

No debates, no problem. In February 2019, Buckele wins the vote, and he's inaugurated at San Salvador's National Palace that June. Gangs at this point, they still controlled and estimated 80% of the country's territory. That is mad. And he's come to power, promising to smash the... them once and for all. And to be fair to,

not that he'd expect him to, he doesn't just sit around styling his hair and buying aviators all day, just like Danny does. Later that month, he launches what he calls a seven-step plan against gang violence,

beginning with the preparation of police and special forces for raids and mass arrests. He also stations officers in places known to be major gang extortion hotspots. Then he opens a youth program, similar to the one he'd done before,

staged three, Three is a leveling up of law enforcement, weaponry, vehicles and tech. Stage four, actually begins two years later, so there's a bit of a gap. That involves security forces patrolling gang-controlled areas, boots on the ground, basically. People can see Buckello's plan in action. Stage five, called extraction, is essentially besieging gang-held cities and smoking out their gangsters and chucking them all in jail. Six, Buckele calls this stage integration, and it's combating gang crime at source,

aka jump starting employment and anti-poverty drives. Good stuff. And seven, Gwidif Paltrow is heading a box? No. It is, well, we don't actually know what stage seven is. Bekele hasn't told us yet, but he's been busy elsewhere. Take this. In 2020, he gets 40 members of the military to invade.

Yes, that's right. Invade the Legislative Assembly to scare members of Congress into approving a massive loan from Washington to bulk out the seven-stage plan against the game. He clears out swaths of the judiciary, which he claims the gangs have corrupted, but which opposition leaders claim is just basically a judicial coup to pack the Supreme Court in his favour. Then Buckelly embarked on a period of, quote, extreme gerrymandering, not my words, the words of

Washington analysis. Basically, he redraws El Salvador's map to wipe out around 70% of its elected positions. I guess that's like if you've got Atlanta and Georgia or Phoenix and Arizona and Biden just goes, You know what? Get rid of all these rinky-dink rural counties and just have them all vote in the city. I mean, anyway, folks call these new congressmen quote button pushers because they're so keen to approve anything the president does without question. I mean, now we're starting to sound like a proper Central American regime, Cold War style. Constitutional dictatorship, here we come. And the thing is, sure, some people in El Salvador care about this.

Journalists, opposition politicians, NGO, you know, like the woke brigade, those guys. But Buckelet's popularity is just soaring higher that Danny's pulse when he's writing angry comments below Drake's music videos on YouTube. Oh yeah, this is like the stick that you guys started last episode. It's good stuff, good stuff, real topical, real funny. Yeah, I think we've already established that my cultural references stopped at about 2008. So, yeah, this is about as good as it gets. And anyway, this is all because of that falling homicide rate. Like I said, it is falling through the floor.

It's 44% down on 2019, which itself was way, way down on the previous year. In fact, the 2020 rate of 21 might still be high, but it's now less than half that of Venezuela, already half of Honduras, and well below Colombia, Belize, even Mexico. I mean, you know what's better than a supermano Dura? That's right. Super Mano Dura Alistillo Buceli deal. I don't know if it's all just because of the murder rate, though. I think that's obviously like the biggest decider because that, you know, now the economy. he's doing much better. People are able to walk in the streets and their neighborhoods. They're

under their control. But Buckelly also has like, you know, the sort of Trump populist rhetoric that I think appeals to certain, I mean, there it looks like it's appealing to a lot of people. Here it appeals to certain people. But he's like, you know, he talks his shit and he's kind of funny sometimes. You know, he got into this spat with an American, I think Senator or Congressman I'm not sure, like two weeks ago where he had moved, a painting had been moved in the airport of Archbishop Romero, who was that Archbishop who was killed. And they were like an... So one of the American politicians was saying how concerned he was about the painting moving.

And Buceli answered back. He was like, we moved it like down a different corridor in the airport. Who do you think you are telling us how to run our country? Something along those lines, which I think, you know, for a country like El Salvador that's been through a lot and I think has put down a lot, you know, people like having this brash president who like doesn't take crap from people, even if it's an American politician. Yeah, I mean, he's like, he's epically good on Twitter. Like, he really knows how to push out the Zingers. So, I mean, I guess like, yeah, he's just a, he's just a proper tough guy.

And that speaks. I mean, people hadn't really seen the effect of the state during all these different, like, plans from previous presidents. Now they can see boots on the ground. They can see the gangs retreat into the shadows. Like, they can actually see it with their eyes how the gangs are being pushed aside and they like it. I mean, it's fair enough. But yeah, this big, spiky stick that Buckelos being wielding in public, it might actually be a particularly on carrot instead, right? Because in 2020, Central American newspaper Elfadl publishes an explosive series of exposés about a series of clandestine meetings held between the Buckele administration and leaders of the gangs behind bars. The result? A truce. If the gangs toned down their

violence and, according to US sources, agreed to provide political support to his party, Nueva Cidias, Buckelé promises them a bunch of goodies. Some of these guys are just straight up giving cash, other cell phones, some were allowed visits by sex workers, in one case an official is even caught on tape saying he's freed an MS-13 kingpin and escorted him across the border to Guatemala. This is right as COVID is sweeping the world too, and according to El Fado, Buccele is even able to get the gangs to support his tough pandemic lockdowns, which were success, basically. I mean, these things are working. We're into 2021 now when you actually did your

show on MS-13, which is bonkers, but Buckel is just getting started. Late that year, he fires dozens of judges and appoints over 150 replacements, shockingly all of them very big fans of his seven-step plan, congressional overhaul and the COVID lockdowns. He also tears up a rule forbidding presidents to run for two terms, which, uh-oh, that doesn't sound good. But the hair gel The suit and sneakers combo. Oh, and Bitcoin, of course. And in 2021, El Salvador becomes the first country on earth to establish Bitcoin as legal tender. Because of course, the world's coolest dictator is also a crypto, bro.

Buckele even sketches out plans for a tax-free crypto haven, powered by geothermal energy from a volcano. And he calls this utopia, Bitcoin City. Okay, I guess you can't buy class. Buckelly says he'll build this Shangri-Lar by issuing a $10 billion dollar bond. bond that will be invested half in Bitcoin and half in building infrastructure. And look, I'm not going to get into Bitcoin too much. People like Bitcoin. I don't like Bitcoin.

Buckele says El Salvador's holding of it is worth almost half a billion dollars. That is not actually a huge amount of money. I mean, who doesn't want to live in a smart city carved into the side of a volcano? Let's just leave the crypto bit there. The point is Buckele is cooking. A human rights watch official warns that, quote, democracy in El Salvador is on the edge of the abyss. But Salvadorans, in the main,

they're just happy not to be hunted down daily by thugs. I mean, turkeys will actually vote for Christmas when Bernard Manning's bearing down on them with a kitchen knife and a stiffy. Sorry, sorry, I should translate that joke for our American listeners. Turkeys will even vote for Thanksgiving when the Tyson Foods guy is bearing down on them with a kitchen knife and a boner. Got it? I don't.

That's actually probably worse than the first one. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Minsterfer.

And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history. From Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult. and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day,

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The gangs haven't just disappeared, of course. I mean, they are still about, they're keeping their heads down because there are cops and paramilitaries everywhere and they've had directives from the leadership behind bars that they're going to be in deep shit if they go or Escobar on the state. They are still extorting though. They're picking on small fry, the cabbies, the street vendors and bus operators, they can still make hundreds of thousands, if not millions, each month for squeezing poor locals out of their hard-earned colognes. And while they might not be killing in large

numbers, they're still all over the streets with collaborators, lookouts and informants making sure residents live by their laws, not the laws of the land. They're just intimidating at this point. A Bucello's fragile piece, the one he's brokered with cell phones and prostitutes and cash and furtive drives across the border, this is all going to come down crashing with. bad in typically Salvadoran style, because now we're up to spring 2022, where I began the episode. The gang truce is already teetering when an MS-13 leader is arrested while traveling in a government vehicle. This reportedly sends the gangs over the edge, and 72 hours later, almost 100 Salvadorans are dead, and the truce is as over as Jinko Jins. Buckele ditches the carrot,

and he goes full stick. He announces a 30-day so-called state of exception, martial law. essentially, that suspends a bunch of constitutional rights to go after and lock up as many gangsters as possible. Unsurprisingly, the legislators Buckele has gerrymanded into office, they back the plan. Buckele then takes to Twitter. Don't think they're going to be set free, he writes. We are going to ration the same food we are giving now to inmates. And if the international community is worried about their little angels, they should come and bring them food, because I'm not going to take budget money away from the schools to feed these terrorists.

Finally, Buckele adds, going on a bit, I guess he's got a verified account. They're not about to go out to the patio, a message to the gangs. Because of your actions, your homeboys will not even see one ray of sunlight. I mean, this guy is not bluffing. 30 days pass, Buckelly gets another month-long extension. In the first two months, Salvadoran authorities arrest over 33,000 people, which is a third of the entire prison population of the UK, which has over. over 10 times the population of El Salvador.

Here's insight crime with a description of the state of exception. Quote, The emergency laws deprive Salvadorans of basic constitutional rights, including the right to legal defense and the freedom of movement, while loosening rules on making arrests and allowing the state to intercept civilian communications. The state of emergency has also suspended constitutional rights to defense, meaning detainees can be held indefinitely on vague charges

without the need for an arrest warrant of evidence to back up criminal allegations. Under the emergency laws, detainees also lose the right to a court hearing within 72 hours of arrest, and lawyers and civil society organizations have said they cannot speak to those detained. Uncooperated raw intelligence, rumors, and information source from social media profiles have formed the basis of arrests. I mean, kids as young as 12 can now be tried for gang-related crime, and at least half those arrested a nab for, quote, unlawful association, basically any displays of gang tires or association with anybody in the gangs. The state even picks up young folks their intel suggests

will soon try to enter the gangs, so-called Chequios. Basically, if you know somebody in MS-13 or Barrio di Cicot, you're basically going to get picked up by the feds. Writes Insight Crime again, quote, this is paradoxically the most troubling and the most effective aspect of this crackdown. Yeah, that's a great quote, huh? It really just kind of captures the conflicting aspects of all this. Yeah, yeah.

And that's kind of the crux of all of this, right? Because guess what? I mean, if you get the gangsters off the streets, gang crime goes down. A lot. Extortion plummets, as does that already falling murder rate, which drops almost 60% again. By the end of 2022, I think you mentioned this. El Salvador actually has the lowest homicide rate in the region. In fact, it's worked so well, the state of exemption has never ended.

Buccelli has extended it 22-2. times since the bloodshed in March 22, sweeping up almost 80,000 suspected gangsters, shaving their heads and confining them in a giant mega prison built in 2023 called Seckott, or the Centre for the Confirmament of Terrorism. It's around 20 miles away from San Salvador. Built in a single year, it has capacity for 40,000 inmates, and it's the largest prison in Latin America. Nobody has been released from it yet. Inmates eat with their hands and sleeper cells in dozens of other men on four-story bunk bids. Yeah, I mean, look, all the prisons there have been bad, like, really bad.

I mean, this one seems like, like, you know, Alcatraz type of deal, but, like, they're all really bad. The ones in the villages were worse, because they were kind of just, like, holding cells, and they'd be, like, you know, 20 yards by 20 yards, and there'd be, like, hundreds of people stacked in there on top of each other. Those are the ones, if you've seen, like, the famous photos of prisoners in El Salvador, that's usually what they're of. But, yeah, gnarly, gnarly stuff.

It's not Norway, for sure. Yeah, it reminds me of some of the stuff I've done drug war in the Philippines as well a few years ago. Yeah, like over 100 guys

in like a provincial police station jail cell is like absolutely insane. Pretty bad. And like, yeah, I guess it's like not so much the conditions

in this place. It's just the scale of it is unbelievable and people should check out. I think there's a BBC video of it where they got access to it and it's like,

it is like something out of a sci-fi movie. I mean, there is no ventilate. Only two toilets to each cell, which is like hundreds of guys, and they're using it in front of each other. So imagine that smell after a breakfast of freehold is. Jesus. Naturally, international prison guidelines have been thrown out the window.

Well, I mean, there isn't the window, but yeah. Critics have called it a quote, black hole of human rights. I mean, guess how many chits the prison director gives? Here are the psychopaths, the terrorists, the murderers who had a country in mourning, he tells the visiting BBC crew. pretty well rehearsed, I would imagine that line. Salvador in prisons are already running at 150% capacity today, and some say Secott is just a place Buckele can throw undesirables instead of giving them the death penalty.

But there is growing proof he's doing that off the books as well. Amnesty International has reported 327 cases of enforced disappearances since the state of exception was inaugurated. Yeah, I mean, that's been a thing too for a while, right? The sort of extraditional killings, the bodies never turn up. That's nothing new. Yeah, the police do not have a good record in El Salvador, going back a long, long time. Quote, reducing gang violence by replacing it with state violence cannot be a success,

says Amnesty's America's director. If this course is not corrected, the instrumentalisation of the criminal process and the establishment of a policy of torture in the prison system could persist. Which is, you know, that's what amnesty has to say, right? It's not what I'm saying, it's what amnesty is saying. But Kelly has gone after the media too because, you know, how are you supposed to be a cool dictator without shitting on the press? Reporters are threatened frequently and they're barred for covering events. El Salvador now ranks 115th in the World Press Freedom Index.

Bekele has sort of yeah but gnawed it by telling delegates in the American CPAC conference this year that, quote, to enjoy that membership of the press, you must do your duty as a reporter, report the facts and not be a puppet of those who finance them. Cue a lot of cheers, I would imagine. El Farrow launched a legal campaign against the government, then it relocated to Costa Rica when it was revealed Pegasus spyware had been installed on its reporter's phones. Does Buckele care? Nah.

His lawmakers have responded by approving a new law, allowing digital spying and levying sentences of 10 to 15 years for news media that reproduce messages from gangs. Basically, he goes after anyone by saying they associate it with the gangs, which, again, historically, kind of is. the case. Funny enough, this seems to extend to reporting on alleged corruption among Buckeli's own rank and file. Take his chief of staff, who's accused of involvement in a massive money laundering scheme channeling money from Venezuela's state oil firm into Nueva Cidius. Or the former security

and justice minister who's given his own construction firm a bunch of lucrative contracts whose costs have just happened to then balloon. One former Buckele's security advisor who had leaked info to reporters about stake ties to the drug trade has actually turned up dead. His body showing signs of torture. One source has told a New Yorker that Buckele is building a quote, cyberpunk banana republic, which that is brilliant, adding that, quote, I worry that when they want to act will already be a Nicaragua. And if you don't know about Daniel Ortega and Nicaragua, I'll just say that is pretty bad. Pretty, pretty, pretty bad. However, Buechle's popularity is still sky high. This February, he won his second newly legal term with almost 85% of the vote.

Not only that, he's super popular too across like the rest of Latin America. Yeah, he's like, he just kind of oozes that machismo, right? That's so popular in the region. I mean, he announces his win before the ballots have even been cast and he toast the victory by saying that El Salvador is now the quote, first time there is a one-party state in a fully democratic system, which is tiny red flag. His VP adds, even more ominously, that, quote, we are not dismantling democracy. We are eliminating it,

replacing it with something new, which, yeah, I guess it's kind of a tropical East Germany. But, yeah, Puechle isn't letting up with all of this. He's vowed to keep hammering the gangs and filling prisons with anybody associated with them, or maybe not. His legislature has approved mass trials of up to 900, people at a time, and the VP has said that he wants a cumulative sentences in the hundreds of

years for anybody who's been in the gangs. Last month, Bukle even announced he was investigating his entire executive branch for corruption, live on TV, because of course, quote, somebody once asked me, are you afraid of death? I said, of course, nobody wants to die. I don't want to die, but I know that I'll die one day like everybody else. Death is the one thing we can't escape. A hundred years from now, none of us here will be alive. It's likely that nobody here knows their grandfather's father's name. But if there is one thing I fear, it is leaving a bad legacy. There are some presidents, some in prison, some on the run, but most are remembered as criminals. That's not how I want to be remembered. So I don't steal, because I don't want to be

remembered as a criminal or corrupt. I mean, there's a theory the US isn't going too hard against him because they see him as a useful anti-communist bulwark against China's incursions into Latin America, which I guess holds a grim mirror to the atrocities carried out in the 80s in the name of beating the Reds. Yeah, I don't know if I agree with that entirely because he's kind of playing both, right? He's involved with the Chinese and the US as well. And it's kind of like not to, you know, downplay what's going on, but it doesn't seem that serious in that regard.

But also, I think the reason, well, you know, he's still fighting with the US about other stuff, right? Like about the painting with the, what the U.S. Congress, or Senator, whatever it was. But I think one thing that would explain it better, in my opinion, is that migrants coming from El Salvador has dropped tremendously since Buckele cracked down on the gangs and the streets just got safer, right? People are staying because the economy is working better now. And a lot of people who were fleeing, I don't even like calling them migrants. They were practically refugees. They were fleeing violence. They were fleeing the violence of the gangs. That's who you know, I did a bunch of stories in that in the second half of,

you know, 2015, 2016, 20, 70, 20, all that. There are a lot of Salvadorans that were leaving and coming to the U.S. So since his crackdown has started, it's way down. I don't know the percentage, but I know it's significant. And that's like a top one or two issue in America right now for the upcoming elections, right? It's like that and inflation are the two biggest issues. So like I would assume that has a lot more to do with it. You know, China, I think is also on everyone's mind. think also what he's done really sort of cutely is he's played on the partisanship in the US so a lot of the stuff you'll see hammering him comes from like quite overtly democratic stuff yeah and then he's been i mean one of the quotes that i gave a while back was like that was at a sea pack conference he's really like tying his wagon to the republican horse i mean this is like it is a lot of stuff that would fall into the more republican side of the debate right like the immigration i i guess that's kind of bipartisan thing but he's really tried to sort of position himself as being a sort of friend to Republicans. And I think the guy that he was shitting on on Twitter,

wasn't that a Democratic senator or something from Massachusetts? I think so. I think like the people that are, yeah, the people that are piping up about him tend to be on the blue team. And I think he's like going for the red team a bit. But yeah, I mean,

I'm not judging anybody who's lived under the constant threat of the gangs or even just lived off a few bucks a day in some Salvador. and Village with like no future. I can see why everyone has turned out to vote for Buckele. I mean, he must be an incredibly ex- Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants to switch you to MintMobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch.

Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. It's a exciting thing to have after so many disappointing leaders. But Buckelly is also 100% turning into a constitutional dictator. I mean, he actually wants people to stop calling him the world's coolest dictator this year.

Now he's a quote, philosopher king. And maybe the gangs are finished, but, you know, that would be great. But now you've got the world's highest incarceration rate. by a mile in a country sandwich between the world's biggest drug producers, distributors and consumers, and a prison system already buckling, and which must be costing an absolute fortune, not to mention all the powers and policemen everywhere. As a chief as the US Institute of Police said recently, quote, a clash between Buckelé's ends and methods seem inevitable.

And that should worry anybody. Look, buddy, I got my own problems to worry about, okay? Well, we can worry about that when it comes to it. But also, one thing I wanted to point out, which is, I think says a lot about El Salvador's leaders, as you just mentioned, have mostly been ineffective. I think before Buckele, three out of the four before Buckele were convicted of corruption, like massive, massive levels of corruption. One I think fled. I don't remember exactly. I should have looked it up when I knew we were doing these episodes.

But it's three out of four, I believe we're convicted of corruption. Yeah, it's like, it's weird. I mean, your show gets into it from, from 2021 quite a bit, but like their relationship to the major cartels in the region as well, right? They're like, you know, the MS-13 and the 18th Street gang, they're not really moving big shipments for the cartels, but the politicians in El Salvador are kind of working alongside the bigger dudes, right? So it's like that's where the big corruption and like, you know,

the allowing of transshipment and stuff like that is happening. It's in that like elite class. And so those are not good politicians. So yeah, I mean, just another reason that people should be on Buckelet's side, really. I mean, he's doing stuff, finally. I don't know, man. I don't know. I should probably stop talking now.

Yeah, tune in. Patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. Sign up on Spotify or iTunes for more bonuses. Next week, I believe I'm doing an episode on a insane biker gang war. Oh, yeah. From our friends up north that it's a barn burner, I believe, is what they say. Anyway, next time, sign up, do things.