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        {"code":"26745","sect":"Opinion","sect_slug":"opinion","hits":"2282","link":"https:\/\/elfaro.net\/en\/202303\/opinion\/26745","link_edit":"","name":"Bukele's Pact with the Gangs Lasted Three Massacres","slug":"bukeles-pact-with-the-gangs-lasted-three-massacres","info":"Nayib Bukele boasts of controlling each and every decision of his government and thus was unquestionably aware of his officials\u2019 pact with gang leaders from the beginning.","mtag":"Editorial","noun":{"html":"El Faro Editorial Board","data":{"el-faro-editorial-board":{"sort":"","slug":"el-faro-editorial-board","path":"el_faro_editorial_board","name":"El Faro Editorial Board","edge":"0","init":"0"}}},"view":"2282","pict":{"cms-image-000038714-jpg":{"feat":"1","sort":"38714","name":"cms-image-000038714.jpg","link":"https:\/\/elfaro.net\/images\/cms-image-000038714.jpg","path":"https:\/\/elfaro.net\/images\/cms-image-000038714.jpg","back":"","slug":"cms-image-000038714-jpg","text":"&lt;p&gt;El lunes 4 de abril, en medio del R\u00e9gimen de Excepci\u00f3n, el presidente Bukele, junto al ministro de Defensa, jurament\u00f3 a 1,450 nuevos miembros de la Fuerza Armada, en la cancha de f\u00fatbol de la Escuela Militar, en Antiguo Cuscatl\u00e1n, La Libertad. En esa misma actividad, Bukele acus\u00f3 a las ONGs de no velar por los derechos humanos, y tambi\u00e9n acus\u00f3 a la comunidad internacional, sin brindar ninguna prueba, de lucrarse del ba\u00f1o de sangre que provocan las pandillas en El Salvador. Foto de El Faro: V\u00edctor Pe\u00f1a.&lt;\/p&gt;","capt":"\u003Cp\u003EEl lunes 4 de abril, en medio del R\u00e9gimen de Excepci\u00f3n, el presidente Bukele, junto al ministro de Defensa, jurament\u00f3 a 1,450 nuevos miembros de la Fuerza Armada, en la cancha de f\u00fatbol de la Escuela Militar, en Antiguo Cuscatl\u00e1n, La Libertad. En esa misma actividad, Bukele acus\u00f3 a las ONGs de no velar por los derechos humanos, y tambi\u00e9n acus\u00f3 a la comunidad internacional, sin brindar ninguna prueba, de lucrarse del ba\u00f1o de sangre que provocan las pandillas en El Salvador. Foto de El Faro: V\u00edctor Pe\u00f1a.\u003C\/p\u003E"}},"pict_main__sort":38714,"date":{"live":"2023\/03\/01"},"data_post_dateLive_YY":"2023","data_post_dateLive_MM":"03","data_post_dateLive_DD":"01","text":"\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003E\u003Cem\u003E\u003Ca href=\"\/es\/202302\/columnas\/26740\/tres-masacres-duro-el-pacto-de-bukele-con-las-pandillas\"\u003ELeer en espa\u00f1ol\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003EThe video of thousands of nearly naked gang members subdued and transferred to the new mega-prison was finished by the government\u2019s propaganda team just in time to make the rounds in the media across the continent, selling the idea that Bukele is El Salvador\u2019s strongman. He is doing away with criminals, the narrative goes, and that he will stop at no laws, constitutions, or human rights along the way. The images\u2019 controversy achieved the main objective: smoke and mirrors \u2014 and it\u2019s not the first time that we see them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003EThe footage of gang members sitting in a huge prison courtyard (allegedly \u201cthe largest prison in the world\u201d) was a timely distraction from the Eastern District of New York. A judge had just unsealed a federal indictment of a dozen MS-13 leaders in which prosecutors alleged that the Bukele administration negotiated economic benefits, reduction of sentences, and changes to the law and jurisprudence in favor of the gang, all while sidestepping U.S. extradition requests.\u00a0\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003EIn exchange, the prosecutors wrote, MS-13 reduced the murder rate and supported Bukele\u2019s party, Nuevas Ideas, in the legislative and municipal elections. In summary: Bukele\u2019s government partnered with, protected, and favored criminal groups.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003ENobody in the administration has said a word about the U.S. government\u2019s accusations \u2014 not the president, the director of prisons, the ministers of security or foreign relations, nor the ruling party legislators who, prosecutors allege, were elected in February 2021 with the help of the pact. The indictment not only backs up what El Faro and other news organizations have documented, but also seriously compromises a president who has denied them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003EBukele boasts of controlling each and every decision of his government and thus was unquestionably aware of his officials\u2019 pact with gang leaders from the beginning. In the negotiations, \u003Ca href=\"\/en\/202205\/el_salvador\/0000026177-collapsed-government-talks-with-ms-13-sparked-record-homicides-in-el-salvador-audios-reveal\"\u003Ehe, too, had a codename: Batman\u003C\/a\u003E. When the first evidence of that pact was published, Bukele had the opportunity to publicly decouple himself from the involved officials, in particular Osiris Luna, the director of prisons, and Carlos Marroqu\u00edn, the director of Social Fabric. Not only did he not do that, but he protected them. Thus, none are more responsible than he for the pact.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003ENayib Bukele has lied to us. He has done so over and over again about a criminal pact that withstood at least three massacres. The last one, which definitively broke off the accords in March 2022, claimed the lives of 87 Salvadorans. It\u2019s the one that ushered in the state of exception. But there were two prior.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003EIn November 2021, the gangs killed 45 people in three days. We now know that his officials \u003Ca href=\"\/en\/202301\/el_salvador\/26663\/Gang-Divisions-Provoked-2021-Massacre-and-Almost-Toppled-Negotiations-with-Bukele.htm\"\u003Emet with the gang leaders to quell the crisis and prolong the pact\u003C\/a\u003E. All the while, the security minister publicly insinuated that the political opposition and \u201cde facto powers\u201d were responsible, but he and the president knew full well that those responsible were their political partners in the secret negotiations. A pact was alive and in place, but a lie was simpler than explaining to Salvadorans that he had accorded political benefits for him and for his party over citizens\u2019 blood. The government had granted economic and judicial benefits to criminal groups who had just killed four-dozen people.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003EPolice officers wrote the details of the secret overtures to stem that crisis in reports to their superiors. Like the trove of other official documents that we have published, these confirm this government\u2019s complicity with gangs.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003EBut there was one prior known massacre under this administration. At the end of April 2020, amid the Covid-19 lockdown, gangs killed 76 people in four days. The president ordered the Army to use lethal force against any gang member and his \u003Ca href=\"\/en\/202005\/columnas\/24457\/Self-Portrait-with-Gang-Members-%E2%80%94-On-Bukele%E2%80%99s-Prison-Crackdown.htm\"\u003Epropaganda team produced the first box office hit\u003C\/a\u003E of imprisoned gangsters: thousands of bare-chested, tattooed men with buzz cuts were \u2014then, as last week\u2014 crunched into rows in a prison courtyard, sitting and handcuffed, forming human chains. Those pictures, too, traveled around the world.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003EBukele told the public at the time that they had located any gang member on the street and that those arrested would be sent to mixed prisons, not \u2014as had been policy\u2014 separated by gang allegiance. He tweeted that the human rights organizations\u2019 agenda was to defend \u201cthose who rape, kidnap, kill, and dismember,\u201d while he was the one negotiating with them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003EThose pictures were the first great propaganda exercise to portray the president as having an iron fist to combat crime. But he needed his pact more than ever, with less than a year remaining at the time until the legislative and municipal elections. Bukele pressed on with the lies and with his political alliance with the gangs after that massacre, and the next one.\u00a0\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cbr\/\u003E\u003Cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003EThe third one triggered the talks\u2019 collapse eleven months ago, more than 200 bodies later.\u003C\/p\u003E"}

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