By Andres Kogan Valderrama
HAVANA TIMES – Who could doubt that we are at a critical moment in Latin America and the Caribbean regarding the increase in organized crime and large criminal gangs? Countries are becoming increasingly vulnerable, either due to internal corruption or their inability to provide a precise and democratic response, within a context that has millions of people terrified in the region and demands urgent political solutions.
Hence, the name of Nayib Bukele is the most mentioned by major media outlets and right-wing sectors. He presents himself as the great savior to the security problems of the region, after reviewing the figures from El Salvador, which show a systematic decrease in homicide rates, making it today the country with the lowest figures in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This is how the idea of the Bukele model is repeated over and over again until exhaustion, and the possibility of applying it in the rest of the countries in the region is mentioned. It’s as if the current president of El Salvador has invented a magic wand to bring peace to the citizens, and all it would take is to replicate his crime-fighting policies and follow his manual step by step.
However, the problem with that is that Bukele’s surprising decrease in homicides has no relation to any type of preventive p