Bukele's dirty secret: He made deals with the worst gangs
This has been going on in El Salvador for years — cartels agree to chill for special perks inside and outside prison
Joseph Bouchard
May 19, 2025
A cacophony of right-wing commentators now believes that El Salvador, under Nayib Bukele’s dictatorship, is the “safest” country in the Western Hemisphere. Bukele himself certainly wants us to believe it’s because he’s gone to war with the gangs.
They’re all wrong — and disastrously so.
According to El Faro, the country’s most respected investigative outlet, the relative peace in El Salvador is not the result of a decisive war on gangs, but rather, of a secret pact negotiated directly between Bukele’s own Director of Prisons Osiris Luna and his head of the Social Fabric Reconstruction Unit, Carlos Marroquín, and gang leaders, starting in late 2019. He also took on similar negotiations with gangs as a mayor of San Salvador, from 2015 to 2018.
These revelations are based on extensive access to prison intelligence, government documents, and insiders within the security apparatus and the gangs themselves.
The U.S. Treasury backed these findings in 2021, sanctioning Luna and Marroquín and other Bukele allies for offering financial incentives and prison perks to MS-13 and Barrio 18 leaders in exchange for reducing homicides and supporting Bukele’s party in elections.
Numerous Latin American leaders have gone to jail for these kinds of deals — including Salvadoran cabinet members. Politicians of all stripes, including from Bukele’s former FMLN party, have negotiated with gangs; these pacts in El Salvador go back at least two decades. Negotiated peace isn’t a new solution, Bukele’s deal just worked, for now.
More:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/bukele-trump-gangs/