Voters reward Bukele for gang crackdown that has transformed security in central American country

Voters reward Bukele for gang crackdown that has transformed security in central American country

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has won a thumping victory in elections after voters cast aside concerns about erosion of democracy to reward him for a fierce gang crackdown that transformed security in the central American country.

Thousands of Bukele’s supporters clad in cyan blue and waving flags thronged San Salvador’s central square to celebrate his re-election, which the 42-year-old leader termed a “referendum” on his government.

Bukele declared himself the winner before official results were announced, claiming to have attained more than 85% of the vote. Provisional results showed Bukele winning 83% support with 31% of the ballots counted.

His New Ideas party is expected to win almost all of the 60 seats in the legislative body, tightening its grip on the country and bestowing Bukele, the most powerful leader in El Salvador’s modern history, with even more sway.

  • deafboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    9 months ago

    It’s not looking good.

    El Salvador tears down the Reconciliation Monument, a symbol of the end of a bloody civil war that took place between 1980 and 1992, which President Nayib Bukele branded “unsightly” and an apology for pacts between the left and right. “It was a monument to corruption,” says Public Works Minister Romeo Rodriguez.

    Shit is getting dangerously close to the fan when a society starts to demolish their monuments.

    • circuscritic@lemmy.caEnglish
      43·
      9 months ago

      I agree, I’m also ashamed that my country has been tearing down our monuments. They’re real historical and shit to, going back a couple hundred years I reckon.

      Well, they were only put up in the last century, but they celebrated the lives of men from the 1800s.

      Yessir, a real impressive group of guys, a confederation of great men, if you will.

      And like you said, when countries tear down their monuments, it’s a real bad sign. I couldn’t agree more, that is a universal truth.

      • deafboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        9 months ago

        You’re right. The confederate statues did cross my mind when I was typing my post, and I do think destroying them would be a shame.

        Even watching statues of such dispecable people as Stalin or Saddam being torn down always made me feel kind of a dread.

        While trying to rationalize the feeling I came up with few ideas.

        • One does not destroy art. It’s like burning books. Unexcusable.
        • What if they forget, how even the artists has been manipulated to celebrate monsters? -If someone is willing to show such violence towards a symbol today, what stops them from mowing people left and right tomorrow?

        What’s even more fucked up in case of el salvador, is that the statue was there to commemorate the end of the war. If a person has no respect towards a symbol of peace, however ugly it might subjectively be, how much respect does he have towards the peace itself?

        • circuscritic@lemmy.caEnglish
          6·
          9 months ago

          The Confederate statues were errected during the Jim Crow era, and memorializing those men wasn’t their primary purpose. It was to remind those uppity coloreds that they were still living in the white man’s world, and they best not forget that, or their place in it.

          I can’t speak to the specifics of the monuments taken down in El Salvador, and whether their destruction more closely mirrors Nazi book burnings, or the destruction of Jim Crow Confederate statues.

          My point, sarcastic as it was, was that the tearing down of monuments should be judged on their own individual merits, because there isn’t one right answer.