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Comment by maeil | Hacker News Reader

For those who may want to spent an hour or so of their Sunday really learning about what has been happening in El Salvador, I recommend the wonderful Notes on El Salvador by Matt Lakeman [1]. The type of long form content that we all need more of; subjects like these have too many angles to learn from HN comments.

[1] https://mattlakeman.org/2024/03/30/notes-on-el-salvador/

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So, I read that when it popped up on HN a while ago. As someone who know approximately nothing about El Salvador I found it quite informative. Then I checked out an article on the sidebar about a country where I have lots of first hand knowledge, and found a fair bit of inaccuracies, and worse, omissions due to ideological slant. As always, lying by omission is powerful and you’re not even technically lying. Now, I’m not accusing the author of intentionally lying, but our opinions on things are all shaped by biased sources and the author themself is no different, and the point is to not so readily have your opinions shaped by some “wonderful” article online, especially when you know nothing about the topic otherwise.

Very good to know! May I ask what slant it was? From the article on El Salvador the conclusion felt like overall was that the Bukele's approach has probably been a net positive compared to predecessors, though he did point out plenty of negatives as well. Did this align with a particular slant you noticed on the other article?

Very true that it's necessary to keep in mind that even with texts that present themselves as well-researched, there could be plenty of angles omitted that may drastically change the conclusion. Still, I won't hesitate recommending it over random <200 character comments.

Well without going totally offtopic I’ll just say the other article has a typical “Western” slant, is replete with stereotypes and little things blown way out of proportions to fit the narrative, it’s clear the author has no first hand experience and is retelling a source (which is not even a somewhat neutral academic work but something released to fit a narrative), but they have no problem going into a confident meta-analysis of their own.

Since the typical “Western” view of El Salvador, AFAIK, is/was murderous shithole and not much else, I don’t know how that slant(?) could have tilted this piece.

Hard to imagine 1.7% of the population is in prison. In the USA we only have .5% in prison and .2% in jail.

1.7% is terrifying police state territory. I don't see El Salvadore coming back from this without a complete governmental overhaul.

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