From Millais to Simara Castro, Everyone Wants to Copy Bukele’s Model

Tegucigalpa – From liberal Argentine President Javier Milley to socialist Honduran President Xiomara Castro, the vast majority have tried to emulate the security model of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

– Since coming to power in 2019, Bukele is waging a “war” against gangs under the emergency system in force since 2022, which allows arrests without a court order.

According to the 2023 Latin American Barometer, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has a 90% approval rating, making him the highest-rated of all Latin American presidents, in part because he has tackled gangs and mafia head-on, an action that other countries have tried to emulate, such as building a giant prison.

Following the order, Argentine Security Minister Patricia Burrich began a four-day visit to El Salvador on Sunday to learn about the “methods” used by the Salvadoran president to fight criminal gangs.

Bullrich, together with El Salvador’s Minister of Justice and Public Security, Gustavo Villatoro, toured the giant prison, which will be inaugurated in 2022 and will be able to accommodate 40,000 inmates.

In response, the Argentine government said in a statement about the tour that Burrich was “interested in the entire structure of a significant reduction in crime in El Salvador.”

Honduras follows its neighbors

General Roosevelt Hernández, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Honduran Armed Forces, New plan accepted on Monday The defense and security plan announced this weekend by President Xiomara Castro is inspired by the policy implemented by President Bukele in El Salvador.

“If boiling water has been invented, why not follow suit?” said Honduras’ military chief of staff, acknowledging that the Castro government will emulate the actions of Bukele’s government in its new security plan.

General Hernandez argued that human rights are respected in El Salvador, whose government has been criticized around the world in the region despite the positive results of Bukele’s security plan.

He added that in the new Honduras plan, human rights issues of people deprived of their liberty will be addressed through training of national security forces.

Super Prison

National Defense and Security Council (CNDS) Friday’s proposal The national broadcaster reported a series of actions, most notably the “immediate” construction of an emergency detention center between Olancho and Gracias de Dios to transfer 20,000 highly dangerous prisoners, and the launch of a tender to build a maximum security prison on Isla Cisne as part of an anti-crime solution.

The El Salvador Prison is 74 kilometers from San Salvador and is surrounded by an 11-meter-high, 2.1-kilometer-long concrete wall. It has no telephone signal and only one entrance road.

The Honduran government plans to build a prison on national territory to achieve the same characteristics.

However, it will still be a smaller replica, as the El Salvador prison can hold 40,000 inmates; Honduras hopes to build a facility that can accommodate half the population.

Ecuador joins

The so-called Bukele model has not only been copied by Argentina and Honduras, but the Ecuadorian government has also joined the trend in Latin America.

Against this backdrop, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa announced last January that two maximum-security prisons would be built in the Amazon and on the Pacific coast.

Ecuador’s president warned that his plan is to isolate the most dangerous prisoners and thus stop the prison massacre that has killed 460 prisoners since February 2021.

According to the 2022 prison census, there are 31,321 inmates in Ecuador’s prison centers.