Accumulates 70,000 arrests of gang members

Photography/Presidency of El Salvador
El Salvador. – The President of the Republic of El Salvador, Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez, recalled a conversation with a representative of a multilateral, top three in the world, where he was warned not to eliminate gangs so much at their roots, so as not to harm the economy.
They told him that there are 70,000 gang members, which are equivalent to 70,000 jobs, and it’s not just them, since their families would also no longer have that income, so regardless of whether they are legal jobs or not, the country’s economy would feel that capital stoppage.
Even though they sell drugs, weapons, extortion, homicide, etc., but they also support a legal economy, they buy money, motorcycles, beers, meals for their family, televisions, clothes, all those bills will fall.
They warned the former mayor of San Salvador that the gross domestic product would fall, but he preferred to let it fall a little rather than stop in his fight against the gangs.
He explained that young people who preferred to study were threatened and forced to belong to gangs without being able to do anything, that people with businesses could not grow, because if they did, the extortion charge would go up, all the incentives were for the wrong ones.
“I can’t imagine how they’re going to be able to recruit, how they’re going to find, where they get to say, look among the gang. Now young people have the incentive to study, work, make an effort, get ahead,” he said.
In the end, he preferred to stick to his anti-gang ideas despite the advice he had been given:
“So we decided at that time, according to the advice given to us by the multilaterals, to confront crime directly, despite the economic cost it might have. Surprisingly, the year 2022 ended and the GDP did not fall, rather it rose, not what we would have wanted, but it rose, it did not fall and now we are going to finish 2023 and the GDP did not fall either, rather it rose,” he stressed.

Original source in Spanish