El Salvador's Security Revolution: Myth or Model?

This episode explores the complex security and political landscape of El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele, featuring insights from expert José Salguero. We discuss the history of gang violence, the security policies implemented, and the implications for democracy and regional influence.

Nayib Bukele's rise to power was marked by promises of security and stability. However, as Salguero points out, the current security situation cannot be attributed solely to Bukele's policies. Instead, it is a culmination of various factors, including previous government actions and historical trends.

Looking ahead, the question remains: will El Salvador ever exit this state of exception? Salguero suggests that the historical context reveals a pattern in which authoritarian regimes maintain power by manipulating public fear and securing compliance through promises of stability.

Hailing from El Salvador, José Salguero is a PhD candidate at the Philipps University of Marburg, a Development Economist and Peace and Security Researcher.

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Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the Latin News Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogota, Colombia, journalist Richard McCall. This is the Latin News Podcast. I am your host, Richard McCall, here in Bogota, Colombia. This week, after we've been talking about security in the region, of course, we've mentioned Colombia, we've mentioned Ecuador. This week we're discussing El Salvador, never far from the headlines, because of the somewhat controversial president in place in Nayib Bukele. So we'll be talking about that and the security issues. And what is the plan going forwards? And I can think of no one better to discuss this with than someone from El Salvador himself, is Jose Salguero, a PhD candidate at the University of Marburg in Germany. He's a specialist in development economics, security, and conflict, and has also authored a paper on myths of security policy in Latin America, in addition to being part of the Red Ica Centroamericana. Jose, welcome on the Latin News Podcast. Thank you for having me. Jose, it's always a pleasure to talk about El Salvador, a country that obviously never used to really make the headlines since the 1980s, because of course the civil conflict there, and then obviously in these last few years has been very much a talking point, and it has become, I would say, amongst some people, a point of jealousy in Latin America because of the security figures and, of course, the popularity of Naeb Bukele. Maybe we could just put things into context as we stand here in May 2026. Yes, indeed, I see what you mean when you're talking about jealousy from other parts of the country. I myself have traveled along Latin America and other countries in Europe and this myth of Bukele being the sort of security paragon and how things should be done, that could be done, in order to improve just the ability to go outside the street, walk around. And maybe to put things into perspective, let's see how El Salvador was before Bukele. And this is a matter that should be stressed because the situation was dire, right? And if you're talking about, for example, the ability to go outside a certain uh hour in the day, that was restricted in the country. The ability to put up a to put up a shop, right? To start a business. That was all arrested development, if you will, right? You have to put some caveat into that, and this is sort of where things get a little bit muddy into the whole myth of security. How much was it a problem for the people who could actually pay for defending themselves, for protecting themselves, who just by the virtue of living in certain gated communities or spending the day in specific areas where, you know, if you visit, for example, a maquila factory, right? It's not as if you could actually reach it and do uh do a robber within those facilities, right? So there were levels of protection of security by those who could pay for it, right? So private security has been, uh at least in the last 20 years of Salvadoran history, very important to know who was actually more affected by those that by that wave of criminality. That is not to say that it wasn't there, it was, right? So the perception of security was important. And just the ability to do basic stuff, like as I like I was saying, going out to the street, putting a shop, going to school, those things were extremely prohibited, right? There was always the threat of you being victim of a crime, be that extortion, be that homicide, robbery, you name it. So that was a reality. Now, what if the first thing that you have to think about how the current situation of coerce pacification that El Salvador is living through, right? It wasn't attained solely by Bukele, right? It wasn't solely by his particular government. Let's say he came to wrap up this long trend that began in 2015. So if you want to talk about a specific period in time where there was a war against gangs, it actually started from 2015 to 2018. So this is particularly the period where gangs were, let's talk about military terms, right? So the military capabilities of the gangs to actually sustain long protected, protracted conflicts was severely diminished through throughout those years, right? This is the same years where other agencies of human rights and of human rights protections and so on, they were putting evidence of how there were extrajudicial killings by police members. There was already a situation of military, there's a boots on the ground speaking, the militarization of security in the country. So this is particularly the time where, if I just say it bluntly, where gangs lost, right? The war in gangs was lost by about 2018. So that's even before Bukele arrived to the picture. Now you have to add to that the very credible evidence on uh negotiations with the gangs, right? That he and parts of his government had sustained all throughout his uh tenure as a mayor of San Salvador, as a mayor of Nabacuska clan, and now as a president of the country, right? So there's a big combination of security policy layers, right? You would have the negotiations, you would have how he inherited that particular victory, military victory against the gangs by the time he arrived. So when this combination of negotiations and militarization, I know there's a lot of Asians there, but the thing is that you have to understand these particular elements to create a larger picture of what this of what the Spukele security model actually is, right? It's a combination of all these things, and this is how we arrive to the situation nowadays, right? After those negotiations broke down, and there's a lot of details that we still do not know, right? What the media and what journalistic research has put forward is that at some point maybe the higher-ranked gang members basically betrayed the rank and file of those gang associations, right? So organized crime associations. So when that happened, that's basically when you get the headlines, right? You see the regiment deception, the state of exception, right? You would see those all of those civilian rights been put on pause. So it can assert two things at the same time, right? You would have the ability to prosecute without a proper trial, without the proper channels of stipulated by the law. And at the same time, you you know you have the big club, right? You have the club. If everybody comes around, if you threaten my power, if you don't like what's going on, I can coerce you. All right, I can't, you know what's there for you if you don't follow or you don't you actually show dissidence. Yeah. It it seems like Bukele then obviously the platform was set for him to come in to and to manipulate a situation. And now we're looking ahead and we're we're into the fourth year of this state of exception. Any chance that he El Salvo might actually leave the state of exception at some point? Well, why would he? I'm asking frankly, why would he? This is not the first time in Salvadoran history history that something akin to this has happened, right? There is a very interesting presentation done three years ago by historian Héctor Lindo. I really recommend it to you if you have a chance. For all of your audience who has the who are lucky enough to speak Spanish, right? He did that in the Universidad of Costa Rica, and he basically compared Alfonso Quiñones and then Maximiliano Nan Martinez and then Bukele. So comparing what were the mechanisms that they used to stabilize their autocratic regimes and what things have changed, what things have not. Technology plays a part, the lies that you can spread out with technology, especially with regards to the media, and terror, right? We have just been discussing about that, how the security policy has also become a tool of terror. But I think you really have to focus on the third part of this whole analysis. What about economic prosperity? Right? And it was really interesting when this historian, Dr. Lindo, was talking about how uh the previous longer, uh longest-serving autocrat in the country was actually casted out, Maximiliano Martinez, when that happened, it was a leaderless sort of social, broad social movement, right? And I think this is really important. And even when he gave an interview, um, again, I'm not a historian, this is what I know, maybe we could fact-check it after the afterwards, but and he was interviewed already outside of the country on what happened, basically, what happened at this particular demonstrations and protests, and also how people stopped working, basically, in order to protest his regime. So he said there was no there was no target to shoot at. And that is perhaps one of the most important lessons in Salvadoran history, at least from the 20th century. The only time that we have effectively removed an autocratic head from government was through a broad social movement that you might call leaderless, but leaders were there. But they were it wasn't just one single person like shouting on the street, you have to do this, but rather they all got collectively against this feeling, this is one of the problems, and we should try to mobilize against it. And just to bring it to the present, just last week and then in the past few days, there's been a lot of commotion on this movement to save a specific area, a natural area, in the capital city, right? It's called Bosca L Espino, so that's Espino Forest. So this is one of the areas that still holds major uh environmental importance for the capital as a drainage area, just the ability to process all the pollution that that's also being produced in the city, right? To be honest, it has taken me quite by surprise that something like this, even from those sort of figures and actors that you wouldn't actually imagine or you wouldn't expect to be involved in such things. Or you would see influencers, right? Who at one point are talking about, I don't know, selling burgers or selling any type of gentrified restaurant in the city center, and they're now they're talking about protecting birds, talking about protecting rivers and so on and so forth. So it is it was a nice, let's say, surprise. And let's see how it progresses, because this is something that that Bukele's regime might be fundamentally prone to take notice about this. I even saw a particular video of them appealing to him directly, as if I don't know, I don't know if you like fairy tales, but back in the days, peasants would arrive at a king's court and may their plea, please do not do this, please, king, whatnot, and whatnot. Right? So, from that side, I think there's a lot of things that I do not like, how it's going on, but at least you would see that that the movement, people organizing and trying to create a voice, trying to generate this is the problem, and maybe we can find a solution, even within, even within the limited democratic spaces that are left in the country. Yes, this is that this is the point, isn't it? The limited democratic space that remains. Obviously, there's little to no, obviously, opposition exists, but it's stifled. And if we talk about technology, as you say, almost like a tool of terror alongside the security policy. But what you're s what I find very interesting is we take we've taken one thing, like a small but very important environmental issue in San Salvador, in this Bosque Elpino, and it has shown a certain degree of vulnerability of Bukele and his and like it, let's say his entourage in this. They haven't thought about anything beyond maybe just the security policy. Is that could you say so? I do not share that particular view. I think they have they have been very pragmatic on the things that complement security. And maybe I'm gonna go a little bit off topic now, but if you indulge me for a second, I I don't know, I'm a big fan of Hannah Arendt, right? And when she did an interview on the topic of the 1933 Hitler's, I think it's Gleichschaften, that's how you say it in German, but basically is how he took power. We're gonna summarize it really quickly. When he took power, and that particular year was really important for it. And she was talking about it, and she she's basically describing how we came from an academic, a very academic circle, which you might include journalists, you might include nowadays people who do kind of this kind of podcast, right? Maybe you would talk about human rights activists. And she was talking about so I came from that particular circle. And in 1933, when Hitler took power, and they didn't need anybody to explain to them that they were the enemy, right? That they were not democratic, that they were trying to pursue the closure of all those public spaces, of debate, of democratic procedure. Now, that that wasn't that was evident, right? She says in a really strong German accent, it's really nice. You should see the interview, it's somewhere else in YouTube, right? And but she then she concludes the problem was not that we didn't know about the enemy, we knew who was disenfranchised in democracy. We knew it. He was uh the push against it was there, and we recognized it. The problem was what our friends did, who we thought would be there to defend democracy, who would until then, you know, what did they do? What did they do? And that's that's a long track to go back to to the particular point. How do we go about uh changing things in the country? And there I have a really pessimistic sort of reading of what's been going with what's been going on. If you take a look at the literature, just by the and I think this is really representative, by 2018 there was a paper on elite networks and how El Sabr was a captured state. It was written by Harald Vaksanaka, something like that. Right? So if you check the literature, it appeared really clearly that even though the, let's say, the bureaucratic and official institution of the state and all the state chambers and all the branches of the state were controlled by two uh parties, Marina and FMLN, right, there were other forces that matter for how things came about, what public policies were actually implemented, and what sort of political discourse actually could be allowed to take off. And but somehow this figure of Bukele and his electoral victory in 2019 or 2018, and then his government, right? So it's removed that particular discussion, which by 2018 we knew that it was really important. And I'm telling you all of this because most of the ways that that let's say people got together, be that NGOs, be that think tanks, and so on, happened to the this particular process by which there are gatekeepers, right? So imagine you want to put on a project to bring fresh water to a particular school in the country, right? You would need funds for it, you would need a knowledge on how to implement those things, right? And then you would see that international corporation agencies or multilateral agencies, they would need people on the ground to do these things, right? And so, there, in my opinion, and that's also a research that I've done in the last couple of years on elite philanthropy, these particular gatekeepers were actually members of big corporations, of big family business groups. Right? So, in a way, even though they lost like the direct intervention through their vehicle of Arena or ANEP and Fusadis, for those of you who don't know, those are basically pro-business organizations that do they do matter for Salvadoran history, but for now, let's say they have been dismantled. They were also dismantled by Bukele. This is something that is not often taught, at least not in international media. They we focus more on the most the security policy and also how he took power on the three branches of government, but there was an unofficial, just as important, say, power source in a country which were elites, right? And we could go about the chronology of how he actually dismantled those institutions and how he came about his bilateral agreements with certain renowned business people, right? But the main thing is that before him, before Bukele, we knew that there was this sort of third government that was also gatekeeping the way that we went about change. And the change that was accepted, the change that was allowed to occur, had to follow those lines of not been, do not disturb power, right? Do not talk about, let's say, the high concentration of wealth. No, you have to talk, let's fight poverty, right? Let's fight poverty. Let's not talk about let's change the taxation brackets, let's make it more progressive. No, that was never the point. You're allowed to do super superficial things that do not alter those, let's say, structural inequality of elements in the country. And from the very start, from the very beginning, Bukele has been aligned with those particular ways of thinking, ways of working. And if you think about how he goes about social policy, fairly enough, a lot of the international media has focused on there's no transparency, the points that he has chosen, they're good, for example, like renewing infrastructure for schooling and so on and so forth, right? So they're saying there are good things about that, there's bad things about that, like lack of transparency, as I was just saying. But the whole notion of how he goes about it resembles elite philanthropy. Think about how they do things, right? I gifted you something, so why would you even complain about it? Right? I'm gifting you this building, I'm gifting you this particular project so you program so you can learn English better, so you can learn computational skills better. Uh, there might even be programs where you have specialized psychological attention. And from the international corporation perspective, that sounds great, right? We are actually, as they say all the time, we're having impact, right? We are actually improving people's lives. But then I, Richard, I'm just gonna ask you a really provocative question so we can, you know, I've not been talking, I've not been talking a lot so far, but what does it mean? What does it mean to work within an autocratic system? What does it mean to improve the social capabilities, in a sense, the social policy outlooks of an author authoric regime, right? What does that mean? I do not have a question. I don't have an answer, sorry. You don't have an answer. I'm far from an answer to this one. My my concern when you talk about the autocratic regime, obviously we focus, of course, on the security policy, but as you talk about this fascinating option of the elite philanthropy, I just wonder how long that this can extend for. I don't know. I mean that that is my actual my my real answer, right? Because in this in Salvadoran, maybe there is a more recent example in Salvadoran history to what's going on after the war. I think the notion that the economic inequalities, the economic issues that started the whole conflict in the 1980s or 1970s, I should say, they had not been resolved. They were still there. And what was established after in the peace agreement, to say social contract, did not account for that particular economic model. It was neoliberalism, right? It was established the privatization of a lot of the social services and ownership. So that wasn't really discussed. I think it's very telling that when Bukele arrived to power, he used all these talking points from the left. He was talking about concentration of wealth, he was talking about elite, but all of that disappeared once you he got into power. Right? All that is it's gone. Now what you have is tax exemptions, tax exemption, sorry, uh growth, economic growth as an imperative. That's why there's been a lot of interest into attracting foreign investments, right? And this is where. Um, we might go down this particular discussion of how people who live abroad, myself included, might chip in into this whole project, right? You're allowed to now we were gonna be we're gonna be allowed to vote, right? We already did, but now I guess we're gonna have a specific representation in the National Assembly. Uh but first and foremost, they're looking for people to invest, right? To inject liquidity into the system. So that is very important. And maybe I should go back to the whole point that I was saying about how autocratic regimes achieve or pursue equilibriums, right? And one of the main factors there is that economic prosperity myth. And then there, even there, you have to break it down. This is not, let's say, a fairly distributed sort of growth. It's not a tide that raises all boats. It's not what we've seen. We're talking about a country with, I don't have the number, but I would I would I think it's about 1.5 million people live under the poverty line, right? And maybe one-third of that, so five hundred thousand, are under the extreme poverty line, right? And at the same time, we don't even know how many, how many people are actually millionaires. I looked it up. If you see Oxburn research, you would think there's somewhere between 120, 160, right? So it's very difficult to know. In the world of this high concentration of wealth, we don't really know it, right? That's sadly that's the best assessment that I can give it. We do not know the specific, and I'm not talking about incomes, let's say. I think there is a national survey where you can broadly know about incomes, even though you don't actually interview the person who owns a lot of the a lot of the uh, I don't want to say specific names. So let's say specific businesses, right? So you don't you cannot actually reach them to interview. So how much do you earn, right? So you don't know that. But wealth, the the amassment or the accumulation of particular assets and so on, that is definitely unevenly distributed. And when you're talking about how long can this last, how long can he stay in power, it very much depends how much this economic prosperity myth can go on, right? Because if people have already galvanized towards this issue of environmental degradation and the risk that brings, maybe they also could mobilize against people being hurt in their wallets, right? If I cannot afford things, maybe I would have the incentive to do something about it, to complain. But then again, as I was saying, in El Salvadoran would perhaps inflict it upon himself, kind of say, I am at fault, right? If I haven't done that, sorry, if I had worked harder, if I had tried my best, then I would be in a better situation. Curiously enough, and funny enough, I think there's a lot of meritocratic minds in the country. And I don't know how much that plays a role in how long this autocratic regime might last. This podcast is brought to you by Latin News, the leading source of political and economic news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean since 1967. Access Latin News' full portfolio of reports at www.latinnews.com. It's a fascinating situation, certainly, and I guess this economic prosperity myth will come to the fore at some point at some point before long, because of course everywhere is suffering from the cost of living crisis and so on. So if people are hit in their wallets, what I want to move on to though on this one, if we talk about the view on El Salvador from overseas, and in particular Latin America, in Mexico, in Colombia, in Ecuador, that it's always, and especially in places where, in particular, Colombia, where I am right now, obviously, discussion of needing a Bukele style model. And I noticed in, I think it was El País newspaper the other day, the vice president, if I'm not mistaken, Felix Ujoa, was talking about how everybody wants to export this model as an El Salvadorian. How do you feel about this model? Is it something that should should or could be replicated elsewhere? I think there's two questions there. Could it, right? Can it effectively be replicated? And should it? And even before those two questions, now that I think about it, what is it even the Buchanan model? What is it? What's new about it? Putting people to prisons without specific rights, having a lot of people who are innocent also being arrested, mostly because they come from a poor profile, right? They come from a marginalized context. I don't see business people being arrested. I don't see people from this particular area in the country that you would have luxury and nice rest. They were not arrested, they were not even targets. This is also some of the research that I did while I was doing field work in the country. So there was a specific target that was easier to arrest, to apprehend. And I evidence is overwhelming that gangs were disarticulated. I think that's even the word that El Faro uses when describing this particular thing. So they are operationally nullified, have been nullified, right? So it worked in that sense. As I mentioned, it comes from this particular time period period of time period where they had already lost the capability of engaging in long protracted armed conflict. But praise were praise is due, right? It was accomplished, it was disarticulated. But this the devil's trade that occurred in the country is like, okay, you give me power, and I'm gonna get rid of this problem, and you don't have to think about it. How it was actually achieved doesn't really matter. I took care of that problem for you, now you can do whatever you will. And people support that, right? People support that. But if you take a look at the technical side of things, can this be replicated in larger countries? Can this be replicated without at the same time creating a bukele? And I think that maybe this is a good way of looking at things. Can you replicate Bukele's model without Abu Kele? Without having one single figure that sort of removes all those pretenses of a division of power, of transparency. No, can we actually be effective when reducing crime rates without losing democratic checks and balances? I don't know the answer for that, but I can tell you that many of the other governments in the region, they are facing this view of inefficacy, right? They cannot get things done through this particular, to this particular uh with this particular tool set. And maybe if I could just add something to the could before I move on to the should. You know, I did research on on the economics of gangs. So I knew that there was another alternative to to let's say pursue the money, follow the money. The problem is that they never could actually accumulate enough capital to be effective. So again, I think Alfaro actually did a particular note, uh piece on this, that they call it it was a mafia of the poor. And that was in practice true, right? So and again, this is not to diminish the brutality of the things that they did. I really have to stress that out. But they didn't have this sort of ability as narcos in Mexico could, right? So the drug trade isn't so the money that they actually managed to get from extortions, often they wouldn't reinvest that sort of you will, right? So they wouldn't reinvest in a certain extent, they did, right? So buying more drugs, they could buy weapons, and they could reinvest a little bit into their criminal enterprise. But uh most of what they actually extracted from people, from regular citizens, that was reinvested into some sort of social security, criminal social security networks. There were even accounts of paying for diapers and so on. So they weren't as powerful, and again, this is a relative thing, they weren't as powerful as other criminal organizations in the region, right? So you have to take that into account. And so another alternative would have been so we knew that they were moving uh extortion funds to digital apps, right? That that were connected to specific uh banks. So they were somewhere in the banking system. And there was even a report by Fusadis in 2014 of how extortions actually work. And so the ones that were, let's say, more uh excruciating for businesses, they had to follow a specific pattern, right? They had to be uh taking they had to be taking place at specific times and with a certain uh frequency. So there wasn't there was at least a chance of doing police work and uh and prosecuting those particular cases and pursuing that defunding the malas, defunding the gangs through other means. And when I've asked some of the people who are in positions of power about this, why didn't you go about this? Why didn't you try to do no use the democratic tools to the fullest of their extent? We actually came across resistance. Why would a bank allow you to look at their accounts? This lack of cooperation, this lack of being able to actually get things done is also important for other countries in the region. And that's why the Bukele model, or just Mano Dura, if you want to put it into perspective, it's really appealing because as if you I can have my cake and eat it too. And sadly, I don't see how that is not appealing for multiple governments in the region. Now, you should another question, should you do this? The matter of fact is that many are already attempting to do it, right? So you would have in Honduras, for example, the a similar type of state of exception, and it didn't work there, and there's another history. You might want to go and read my article on that particular topic. Also in Ecuador, we have seen a version of this. Should you do it, it would really depend on the democratic culture and institutions and how strong they are in that particular country, right? In order to actually replicate within the democratic framework the sort of extended coercive practices. Can they work? And I believe that just to wrap up this whole could and should situation, every security policy needs a level of coercion at this point in Latin America, right? There has to be some sort of ability to be effective, but that doesn't mean that it has to be unlawful, right? It doesn't have to be it has to protect people who commit torture, right? And the big, let's say, challenge is like how do we stop criminality without becoming criminals ourselves? That is the main challenge. And I cannot tell you, I cannot give you one single recipe that might work, but I do believe in the democratic process. And I think that if enough people from all sectors get along, sorry, get together and talk about these things and debate, we might come to specific compromises and set of policies that could work for everybody. Yes, I there's a lot in that final intervention there. I just think you again we could come back to the point of you need a Bukele figure to be able to enact what he has enacted. And when you talk about the lack of cooperation between, let's say, institutions such as the banking institution, I don't I can't think of many Latin American countries, if any, that where the banking industry would allow um restricted access into their accounts and where the cash comes from. So you you become stymied on both sides. It's like you're trying to do the right thing, but of course, then you've got uh, let's say, institutionalized uh resistance uh to do this. I don't know. But uh so uh we I know that we need to wind this down now, Jose. Uh people will immediately react to the way I've been talking about this. It's like you just see Bukele as negative, uh, you should have seen the country beforehand, now we can go outside. It's always the same conversation. We can say that in terms of security, he's got things right, but there are plenty of other things that need to be addressed at the same time in order to go forwards in El Salvador. Yes, and maybe I would add to the I was there, I lived there, I lived during those years in the country, I know how it was. Uh you know that feeling of dread just going outside. So I know how it feels to just being able to breathe, to go outside, not not to fear being robbed or being killed. That was there, we lived it. I come from a middle-class background, so I wasn't as affected or as endangered as other groups of the population. I know that, right? But this is a very big bug. But at the same time, uh if you walk down the streets of the historical center, right, if you see those big buildings and you see the sort of massive restaurants and so on, if you just take a pause and think about this is hollow ground. In the sense that when you're walking down there, you don't really think about how many people were displaced for it, right? How many people lost their particular little ventures and people who were selling there. If you go to the sea, if you go to this big touristic complex, the hotels and so on, you don't think about the people who used to live there in a more traditional fishing lifestyle. Uh that's why I'm saying this hollow ground. There's been people who have been basically sacrificed for progress. And I really wondered how long can we keep doing this? Because this is not the first time in Salvadoran history that something has happened in the same sort of complexity, right? So we keep putting people and resources to the altar of progress, and the question is, how long can we actually keep this going? What happens if there is a contraction of aggregate demand that that puts a break to this whole speculation in the real estate sector, that puts a break into the digital asset speculation frenzy that's also going on in the country? We didn't have enough time to talk about that. But so what happens when we reach a point of not enough funds to sustain this these levels of consumption? If the remittance, and I know people have been saying this about remittances for decades now. What happens if they ran out? And I don't think that they're ever gonna run out. It's just that what happens if there's a minimal contraction, so we cannot make do on the payments of the national debt? What happens if credit guns out, this liquidity that has been a favor uh been that has been quite advantageous in the last couple of decades? What happens if it's not there anymore? Then those food security concerns, those environmental risks, those lack of a lack of habitational uh adequacy for everyone, though all of those issues that now they're put to the background because there is enough uh resources in the system. So what happens when they're when they're when they are not longer there or just not as much as there have been so far? Uh yeah, that is actually a question that I have. What happens then, right? And what did it was it all worth it? Was it all worth it? And even if from the 91,000 that I think they have been arrested just in during the state of exception, right? Only those 91,000, they're saying that at least 10% were false negatives, right? So they were, I don't know if that's a specific term that I should be using, but they were innocent people, right? Let's say 10%. What happens to that those 9,000 people? Are they gonna be able to find employment later on? Are they gonna have any type of compensation for what they went through? And I don't think as a society, El Salvador is actually thinking about this. I know that it was reported a couple of weeks ago how one of one of the president's brothers together, one of the president's brothers claimed that it was the office of the first lady, together with other instances that were actually taking a look at the people who have been wrongly arrested. And I said, why? Why is that particular instance of I don't know if I should say government, but particular, why is the first lady what does she have to do with anything, right? What where is the the legal or constitutional framework that allows her to be doing things that it that is the judicial system that they should be taking care of this, right? And again, maybe I should go back to this whole metaphor of Bakella being a king, and then she is the queen. So the people who are addressing them directly for their pleaing for their particular cases. And so I think I'm getting off topic here, but the point the main point here is that what happens to this 9,000? What happens to the people who defend rights were arrested for doing so? For the people who have been exiled, right? So all of them have been sacrificed, in a way, for progress. And again, we keep doing this. Sabah again is not the first country to do this thing, but it is a very moral question that we should be having. Is this the best way that we co-op we should go about things? Do we achieve development, material development, and improvement in our society just by making sure that there's people who are considered waste that could be discarded, they can be yeah, discarded. So is this the best way? Is this the best moral way that we could go about it? Yeah. Sorry. Oh, I think it's perfect. I don't think you're off topic at all. I think all of this is incredibly pertinent to the conversation and surrounding El Salvador that El Salvadorians have to have and have to have with the, let's say, the ruling class as well. So we watch and we wait and we'll see what happens in El Salvador in in coming months and years. And let me take this moment to say, José Salguero, thank you so much for your time and your expertise and your personal reflections, as well as academic reflections, on what is going on in El Salvador and of course, fears for the future. It has been a fascinating conversation to discuss this. And you are far from home at the moment, but maybe this gives you the opportunity to stand on a balcony and look down on all different moving parts of what's going on in El Salvador. So let me say thank you, Jose Salguero, who is a PhD candidate at the University of Marburg in Germany. He's a specialist in development, economics, security, and conflict, member of the Red Ica in Centro America, has written on gangs and myths of security policy in Latin America. It has been a great conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. So I've been Richard. I've been Richard McCall here in Bogota, Colombia, your host for the Latin News Podcast. Please remember that you can always subscribe to the Latin News Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, and beyond. We'll be back in a fortnight's time discussing further issues and items of importance from the region. Thank you again, and goodbye.