Colombian far-left President Gustavo Petro and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele clashed on Wednesday after Petro, a former member of a Marxist terror guerrilla, called Bukele’s “mega prison” for alleged gang members a “concentration camp.”
Bukele announced on Friday that the first 2,000 inmates had been transferred to the country’s new 40,000-bed Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) “mega prison” as part of El Salvador’s crackdown on the country’s rampant gang violence, one of the country’s longest standing issues that gave El Salvador the dubious distinction of being one of Latin America’s most dangerous countries.
The verbal skirmish between Nayib Bukele and Gustavo Petro began after Petro criticized the new Salvadoran prison facility in a Wednesday speech during the inauguration of a new University in Bogotá.
“The terrible photos – I can’t go into other countries – of the concentration camp in El Salvador, full of thousands and thousands of young people imprisoned, it makes one shudder,” Petro said. “I think there are people who undoubtedly like that, to see the youth in jails and believe that this is security, popularity soars. Undoubtedly, we also experienced this in Colombia.”
During his speech, the far-left president added that he achieved a reduction of crime rates in Colombia without the need to build prisons.
“The president of El Salvador feels proud because he reduced the homicide rate by subduing the gangs that today are in those, in my opinion, Dante-esque prisons,” Petro said. “Well, we achieved the same thing — of course, the press is not going to recognize it as much — we also managed to reduce that homicide rate, crime and violence, but not through prisons, but through universities, schools, spaces for dialogue, spaces for poor people to stop being poor.”
In reality, six of Colombia’s cities are featured on the list of most violent cities in the world as of February 2023. Homicide rates in the Colombian capital city of Bogotá, where Petro served as mayor, have increased by 21 percent during the first month of 2023, while the homicide rate in Cali increased by three percent by mid-February 2023 when compared to the previous year.
According to statistics presented by the civil society organization Excellence in Justice Corporation (CEJ), about 1.8 million crime reports at a rate of 3,486 criminal reports per 100,000 inhabitants were registered during 2022 — up from 1.4 million in 2021 during the presidency of Petro’s predecessor, the conservative Iván Duque.
Petro’s statements elicited a response from the Salvadoran president, who posted a video excerpt of the Colombian president’s criticisms of El Salvador’s CECOT prison on his Twitter account on Wednesday.
“Mr Gustavo Petro, results outweigh rhetoric,” Bukele responded via Twitter. “I hope that Colombia truly succeeds in lowering the homicide rates, as we Salvadorans have achieved. God bless you.”
One hour later, Petro responded to Bukele’s message, proposing an “international forum” to his Salvadoran counterpart to compare the experiences of El Salvador and Colombia with regard to the reduction of homicide rates in both countries.
“Well Nayib we went from 90 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 1993 in Bogotá to 13 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022. We did not build prisons but universities. It is good to compare experiences. I propose an international forum,” Petro wrote.
Petro obviated to mention that much of that reduction in the homicide rate occurred while Colombia was under conservative presidencies; Petro is the nation’s first-ever leftist president. Under the presidency of the conservative Álvaro Uribe Vélez, from 2002 to 2010, Colombia was able to significantly fight off the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) terrorist organization using counter-terrorism tactics America shared from its operations against al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of Uribe’s term, most of the FARC leadership had gone into hiding or exile in Cuba.
Bukele responded to Petro shortly afterward without acknowledging his request to hold an international forum on homicide rate reduction.
“From 1993? 30 years… You governed 30 years? Bogotá? Aren’t you the president of Colombia?” Bukele asked. “Our experience: From more than 100 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, we are now in single digits. And the reduction was rapid, because the dead do not recover.”
Petro ultimately responded to Bukele by presenting a chart of Bogotá’s homicide rate statistics between 1962 and 2020. Petro was mayor of Bogotá for two terms between 2012 and 2015.
“For your knowledge I send you this information. It seems to me that the Bogotá experience, which is due in the first place to Mayor [Antanas] Mockus, is well worth studying internationally Nayib Bukele,” Petro responded.
Petro’s response was then retweeted by Bukele.
Bukele has made the elimination of Salvadoran gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha-13 (MS-13) and 18th Street a crucial goal of his administration, declaring a state of emergency in March 2022 and placing the country in a de facto state of martial law since then to combat gang violence.
Although his policies have attracted criticism from organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), the dramatic reduction in gang violence and crackdown on the country’s gangs has greatly contributed to Bukele’s high approval ratings among Salvadoran citizens, which hover around 92 percent as of March 01 — eclipsing other presidents in the region by a wide margin.
In February, Salvadoran newspaper El Faro, typically highly critical of Bukele, reported that his policies have resulted in gang members largely disappeared from Salvadoran neighborhoods where they used to extort and terrorize civilians.
On Tuesday morning, Bukele announced that his government sent prison inmates to destroy tombstones that featured symbolism and imagery allusive to MS-13 and other gangs.
Bukele also announced on Thursday that there were no registered homicides during the first day of March 2023, as per his government’s tracking data.
In contrast to Bukele, Gustavo Petro, a former member of the Marxist M19 guerilla, has launched a “total peace” plan focused largely on negotiating with criminal organizations, education, and social rehabilitation.
One such example is Petro’s “Youth in Peace” program, which aims to take impoverished young Colombians and provide them with money stipends and education to turn them into “peace managers” to act as mediators in conflicts in their respective regions.
Petro’s government gave similar benefits to criminals arrested in the violent leftist riots that took place in Colombia during 2021, releasing them from prison and granting them a monthly stipend of 1 million Colombian pesos (roughly $206) if they agree to become a “spokesperson for peace.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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