Is El Salvador the Safest Country in Latin America? | Hacker News Reader

Is El Salvador the Safest Country in Latin America?

unherd.com

26 pointsbarry-cotter25 comments

El Salvador shows that the classic Western idea of civil rights has problems in certain societies.

Example: the judicial system only works if there are people willing to testify and judge. And of course there must be evidence.

Without those things the judiciary is pretty worthless. The idea is that most people are willing to testify and the criminals are unwilling to threaten witnesses etc is in line with Western European norms...but Western Europe is small and getting smaller every day.

Honestly, then the fix is to educate your population and make them feel safe enough so they will testify. Maybe a massive decrease in crime is just one way to get to that point after which you can return to a more sane equilibrium. Are you actually advocating for a permanent end to your civil rights?

> The idea is that most people are willing to testify and the criminals are unwilling to threaten witnesses etc is in line with Western European norms

Not many westerners are willing to testify against Western war crimes in middle east and Africa, for example, and the ones that do go to jail for many years. I'm latinoamerican, btw.

Western ideals explicitly allow for suspension of civil rights in times of emergency.

People talk about a tradeoff between freedom and security, but El Salvador shows this framing is incomplete. When you are extorted, robbed, confined, gunned down, etc., it doesn't matter much whether the culprits wear gang tattoos or police vests. El Salvador appears to have traded one group of thugs for a new, much more pleasant set. Full civil liberties would of course be ideal, but failing that, this is a massive improvement. Bukele is a true hero!

Enlightened dictatorships and associated authoritarian measures can work extremely well but with the risk that things go for the worse when the leadership goes mad, corrupt or impotent. They are efficient but fragile systems. Democracies and associated soft policies are less efficient at solving problems and might not work at all if the society is too corrupt but seem to be more robust long term.

It turns out that imprisoning criminals keeps people safe. If only we had someone who would have known

Doesn't seem to hold up with other examples of countries with very high per capita imprisonment rates -- like the USA and Brazil.

It would work if you indiscriminately jail anyone that “looks” like a gangbanger. But I would guess 30% of those jailed would be innocent even if the mass arrests were made in good faith (they almost certainly won’t be at least in the US).

The US is much safer than Mexico. Mexico has a much lower imprisonment rate, lower unemployment rates, and more gun control.

> more gun control.

yes, on paper

There is pretty much a free flow of US guns going into Mexico.

Open borders

This is not exactly what happened and an ignorant hot take. People were rounded up without any due process and disappeared into secret, dystopian human warehouses with the express intention of no rehabilitation and throwing away the key: an industrial-sized Gitmo. Regardless of how many criminals were caught or not, how many innocent people who committed no crimes and had no chance to defense themselves have to lose their rights and possibly their lives in the name of "safety"?

Yes, the premise is absolutely ridiculous here. A country where you might be safer from homicide (doubtful) but where the government can just imprison anybody at will, and is abusing that power daily - this is not the safest country in Latin America, not by a long shot.

Great! That's fantastic. Despite some obvious flaws, the government has significantly improved the quality of life for most citizens.

And now, Bukele needs an off ramp. There needs to be a clear plan to transition the country away from authoritarianism while maintaining a strong security stance against gangs.

If they can't pull off a soft landing then we'll see the flaws in this type of approach.

A ridiculous statement. It is based on data provided by a police force controlled by a dictatorship who is promoting indiscriminate mass imprisonment.

Bukele's 90+% approval rating (as measured by independent pollsters not controlled by gov't, AFAIK nobody claims those numbers to be wrong) supports the claim. If ordinary Salvadorans weren't seeing a massive improvement in their daily lives, he wouldn't be so popular. Also murder is easy to track, it's hard to hide a death, community and local news will notice. (El Salvador has independent media critical of the gov't, for example https://elfaro.net/ )

Chavez had similar approval ratings at some point. He even won fair elections actually. I don't believe for a second that thee numbers are real. It might hard to hide a death, but not recognising it as a murder is actually pretty easy.

Chavez approval ratings could be tied to oil prices and declining poverty rates. As long as oil prices were high approval ratings followed. It worked until the collapse of oil prices.

If the numbers are so obviously fake, then why do even strident critics of the government not allege it?

> (El Salvador has independent media critical of the gov't, for example https://elfaro.net/ )

We did for a long time, but availability of independent media is declining. Some months ago El Faro moved its headquarters to Costa Rica

Reply on news.ycombinator.com