The war flag against violence is the same: a heavy hand displayed with images of half-naked prisoners, tied and subdued in prisons. However the Ecuador of President Daniel Noboa has little to do with El Salvador Nayib Bukele.
The strategy of businessmen and now rulers is similar, but in different contexts, analysts maintain. The Ecuadorian president himself rejects the simile.
“I think they compare me because of the situation of violence we live in and the heavy hand in this, but I think we are very different in some things“, Noboa told Telemundo, after declaring in “internal armed conflict” to his country in the face of a drug attack that in two weeks has left twenty people dead.
While the Mara gangs in El Salvador specialize in “arms trafficking, migrant smuggling and extortion“, in Ecuador “There is an interest of organized crime in controlling drug trafficking” also infiltrating all spheres of power such as justice and politics, he tells AFP Renato Riveracoordinator of Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory.
The investigation Metastasis revealed in December a network of corruption in Ecuador in which judges, prosecutors and police benefited criminal organizations in exchange for money, gold, prostitutes, apartments and luxuries.
“Drug trafficking has taken over the State in a certain way, (which) is not the case in El Salvador”Adds Rivera.
“Bukele lovers”
The mafias in both countries have a place in common: the overcrowded and violent prisons that are fertile ground for their growth.
“These are not conventional gangs, they are narcoterrorist groups, they are groups of tens of thousands of armed people that operate in several countries and at the same time have quite complex not only criminal but economic structures and have support from cartels from abroad (…) they are more than 30,000 armed people”, assured Noboa, self-proclaimed center-left and supported by right-wing forces.
The plan to build two megaprisons with the same company that built the one in El Salvador fueled comparisons. Noboa He even joked some time ago: “For all Bukele lovers it is an equal prison”.
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In November, the 36-year-old president became the youngest president of Ecuador and came to power with the promise of stopping violence and reducing homicides, which between 2018 and 2023 went from 6 to 46 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Noboa deployed thousands of soldiers in the streets and prisons with spectacular operations, measures that bring him closer to Bukelewho has imprisoned more than 73,000 suspected criminals under a controversial state of emergency.
The Salvadoran began in politics with the left of the FMLN (of guerrilla origin), but now he claims to have no ideology and criticizes both the right-wing ARENA and the FMLN.
The militarizationIt can produce immediate effects in terms of people’s sense of security, from what they see in the media, but it does not reduce crime or substantially reduce the homicide rate in one year.”says Renato Rivera.
popular support
For retired General Luis Hernández, former Minister of Defense, it is not about copying strategies from other nations.
“It is about implementing the law according to what each country has (…) When declaring an internal armed conflict then it allows the use of the Armed Forces“, Explain.
The images of militarization and surrendered prisoners are “an effective communication strategy“, Add.
Photographs of prisoners chained, bare-chested, showing their tattoos and under tight security controls have become the Salvadoran hallmark.
The methods of Bukele They have been rejected by human rights defenders and applauded by the majority of Salvadorans (71%) given the reduction in the homicide rate from 83 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017 to 2.4 per 100,000 in 2023.
Similar photos from Ecuadorian prisons go around the world, under the scrutiny of human rights organizations such as the UN.
For Hernández, when declaring “terrorists” to about twenty drug gangs Noboa “has obtained the support of the population”, at the same time that he was able to deploy the muscle of the Armed Forces.
Prisoners in their underwear, forced to sing the national anthem or erase the symbols of drug gangs from the walls, while dozens of soldiers watch them, are now Noboa’s letter of introduction in the face of a possible re-election in 2025 after triumphing in the elections. anticipated for 18 months.
Bukelewho in reference to Ecuador expressed for X that “It’s not blowing and making bottles”, enjoys wide support for his fight against gangs and is also going for a new term after a controversial ruling by the Salvadoran Constitutional Court, which authorized him to run for a second consecutive term although the Constitution did not allow it.
Source: Gestion
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