zury riosthe daughter of former President Efraín Ríos Montt, is the candidate for the presidency of Guatemala who has taken her aspirations the furthest in replicating the onslaught against gangs in Nayib Bukele, one of the presidents with the highest approval in Latin America. This week, Ríos visited several projects of the “territorial control” plan in the Salvadoran capital although, according to local media, he was unable to meet with any government official. Several candidates who will compete for the Guatemalan presidency next June 25 They praise Bukele’s policies, without taking into account that, according to experts, the criminal contexts are different.
Bukele’s policy focuses on the mass capture of suspected gang members, prosecuting minors and a prolonged Exception status that limits constitutional rights, such as the inviolability of communications and the freedoms of assembly and association. For Flor Salazar, the coordinator in Guatemala of the Cristosal organization, Bukele’s strategy rests on all a communication strategy to create “an action movie” which shows the arrests of people with tattoos but does not clarify how many of these people were sanctioned as a result of an investigation or how many died in state custody in the middle of a “serious and systematic violation of Human Rights”.
Attracted by Bukele’s narrative, Ríos traveled to the Salvadoran capital “as one more citizen” to learn about the Urban Welfare and Opportunity Centers (CUBO), without seeking any official meeting, her communication team assures. However, during her tour of the centers that offer reading spaces and recreational activities for children and youth at risk, the candidate recorded several spots in which he asks for the vote, praises the Salvadoran president and promises to replicate his projects in Guatemala.
Like Ríos, several candidates for the Guatemalan presidency such as the ex-wife of former Social Democratic president Álvaro Colom, Sandra Torres, and Amílcar Riverawho takes advantage of wearing a beard like Bukele, they show admiration for anti-gang policies and offer to do the same if they manage to govern Guatemala.
One of the Salvadoran president’s promises was to get gang members off the streets and after one year of the emergency regime, it is claimed that there are more than 58,000 incarcerated and that the homicide rate has dropped to 2 per 100,000 inhabitants. In counterpoint, organizations such as Cristosal and the Movimiento de Víctimas del Regime denounce Human Rights violations that have led to the death of more than 150 people detained during that period.
In Salazar’s opinion, under no conditions can the “system of repression and systematic violation of human rights” nor the capitalization that politicians try to make of the Salvadoran government’s communication strategies, because “each one of the news that it broadcasts about its achievements is the trailer for an action movie,” he points out. A recent report by Cristosal details that during the emergency regime for more than a year in El Salvador it has caused “more than 66,000 arbitrary arrests, has encouraged systematic practices of torture and mistreatment harmful to the privacy and honor of persons deprived of liberty and has caused the death of 153 people while in state custody”.
The part of the script that is not shown, explains Salazar, is that in El Salvador reformed the penal and criminal procedure code so that investigations can last up to two years. In Guatemala, criminal laws establish that a person cannot spend more than 24 hours in detention without their situation being resolved; In El Salvador this can take up to 15 days, Salazar details.
In addition, the criminal problem of gangs in Guatemala is different, says Salazar. Until April in Guatemala, there are 16 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants and in several of its studies, the Dialogues Association has indicated that the majority of violent deaths occur from interpersonal conflicts that do not have to do with gangs.
During 2022, Guatemala registered 14,725 extortion complaints and according to calculations by the prosecution, 60 percent of the extortions are charged by gang imitators, that is, people who take advantage of the fear of Barrio 18 or the Mara Salvatrucha, the two criminal organizations that operate in the country, to demand money to one of their neighbors or victims that they capture on social networks.
Former anti-gang investigator Mario Bosos believes that the contexts are different; criminal power in El Salvador is far superior to that of Guatemala, both in number and in the systematic form of territorial control. “In Guatemala, the criminal incidence in homicides is minimal in relation to the total number of acts and in extortions, the majority is committed by common criminals,” he details.
In conclusion, the differences are very marked, mainly because In Guatemala, the gangs do not have political interference, says the expert. Bukele’s anti-gang policies, which appeal to more than one candidate, were implemented after the breakdown of the pact with the gangs and a weekend in which 87 people were killed.
By Evelyn Boche Ventura -The nation