Homicide rate in El Salvador: The Justice of Bukele? \ stacker news ~charts

Homicide rate in El Salvador: The Justice of Bukele?

3665 sats \ 23 comments \ @oliverweiss 19 Mar charts

The following chart appears in a blog post of Bryan Caplan on the justice of Bukele.

I think this is a really great achievement, in Caplan’s words:

Since he [Bukele] assumed power in 2019, El Salvador has gone from a murder rate of 36 per 100,000 to 2.4 per 100,000. Granted, when Bukele took office, the Salvadoran murder rate was already in steep decline. Still, going from the most murderous country in the world in 2015 to the second-least-murderous country in the Americas in 2023 is an absolute miracle.

The way Bukele achieved this is imho questionable, isn’t it?

A absolute miracle achieved by indefinitely jailing over 70,000 on mere suspicion.

Caplan breaks the morality of the case down into pieces. See the blog post.

view all related items

176 sats \ 0 replies \ @Atreus 19 Mar

32 sats \ 14 replies \ @Undisciplined 19 Mar

I'm hesitant to give someone credit for a trend that was already in place. It seems like El Salvador's population finally decided to stop tolerating their situation, leading to both the declining murder rate and Bukele's election.

Still, I'm very happy for the families of all those people who didn't get murdered.

32 sats \ 2 replies \ @oliverweiss OP 19 Mar

Yep. I see it similarly. I have my own personal opinion on Bukele and El Salvador as such. Still, I read somewhere that Salvadorians are not really pleased if someone calls Bukele a dictator.

31 sats \ 1 reply \ @Atreus 19 Mar

You might have read that here, because I wrote about it (lol).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @oliverweiss OP 19 Mar

Could be. See, what impact you have?

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @TNStacker 20 Mar

That trend was solidly in place, but that 19-20 drop was seriously significant. The question is did he really make the difference? Extremely hard to argue statistically with that trend line set.

22 sats \ 9 replies \ @knorozov 19 Mar

You know he was mayor of San Salvador 2015-2018?

0 sats \ 8 replies \ @Undisciplined 19 Mar

I didn't know that. So, is the story that the decline in national murder rate was driven by his cleaning up crime in the city and then he gets elected nationally to continue those policies?

241 sats \ 7 replies \ @Atreus 19 Mar

No, Bukele wasn't really elected on an anti-gang platform, but on anti-corruption. The presidents before him made treaties with the gangs to keep the homicide rates at politically acceptable levels, while keeping crime out of the “good neighborhoods.”

The gangs always used murder and large-scale attacks as a political tactic to influence the government (in the USA we would call this "domestic terrorism"). When they tried this under Bukele's administration, and killed 80+ Salvadorans in multiple attacks over a single day, he issued a state of emergency and deployed the military to (finally) end them.

0 sats \ 6 replies \ @Undisciplined 19 Mar

Ok, but is he credited for the decline in murders that happened while he was mayor?

283 sats \ 5 replies \ @Atreus 19 Mar

The decline in murders that happened while he was mayor of San Sal (the capitol city) was a very relative thing. It was relative to the absolute murder storm in 2015, when the city and really whole nation was paralyzed for a while under waves of attacks, but murders didn't decline to anything near what a functional nation could consider acceptable. El Salvador at the time was simply not a functional nation, though.

Ever see The Wire?

Politicians in Baltimore, just like politicians in El Salvador, gamed the murder rate to maintain their credibility. The murder rate would drop when the governments made agreements with the gang leaders, and that's why it "dropped" under Sanchez Ceren. However, the gangs still held power over Salvadoran neighborhoods during those truces, and still murdered each other and people who wouldn't pay them "rent" (extortion).

The guy I work with in El Salvador was paying almost half his $700/month salary to MS-13, for the entire period I've worked with him (since 2007) and would've been killed if he'd refused to pay, truce or no truce—he just wouldn't been added to the "acceptable murder rate" statistics.

22 sats \ 4 replies \ @elvismercury 20 Mar

That all makes sense, but I think one of the things @Undisciplined is wondering about is if the popular perception is that Bukele was responsible for a decline in murder rate, both before he was elected President, and after? Does he get credit for more than what happened during his presidency?

164 sats \ 2 replies \ @Atreus 20 Mar

He's only credited in El Salvador with shutting down the Maras during his presidency, i.e., in the last few years. Salvadorans don't actually give a shit about the "declining murder rate" in 2016/2017/2018 because they were still being killed (it was only declining relative to 2015) and because they hated the government for negotiating treaties with the gangs instead of actually dealing with them.

Since Bukele actually dealt with them, he's credited for that.

view replies

27 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 20 Mar

Thanks, that is what I'm trying to understand.

reply on another page

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @doofus 19 Mar

They are hiding bodies and not reporting murders to make the number seem lower.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @oliverweiss OP 19 Mar

Hope not.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @erict875 19 Mar

2.4 is respectable, compared to other countries homicide rates. Definitely one of the safest places in the region.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitByBit21 19 Mar

This is the ONLY homicide I care about in ES:

https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/el-salvador-ex-security-adviser-who-accused-ruling-party-of-corruption-dies-in-custody/

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 19 Mar

Yes, indeed he's questionable but the stats seem to favour him.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 19 Mar

Who was in charge before Bukele?

100 is insane

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Atreus 19 Mar

A series of corrupt administrations who made "treaties" with the gangs to keep them out of aristocratic neighborhoods, help them win elections, while having a free hand over the other parts of ES.