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El Salvador’s Vice-President Félix Ulloa fiercely defended his country’s crackdown on criminal gangs in what he described as “the miracle of Bukele” in an interview with Euronews, saying only the woke and left-wing European media disagree.
Ulloa, a lawyer by training, is one of the key engineers of an unprecedented state-led operation to eliminate gang violence under Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has been in power since 2019. The criminality rate in what used to be one of the most dangerous countries in Latin America has collapsed, but critics point to an increasingly authoritarian turn.
“El Salvador is not militarised, and it’s not a police state. You are wrong,” he said on Euronews’ interview programme 12 Minutes With in Brussels, as he prepared to address a conference organised by the European Reformists and Conservatives (ECR) group at the European Parliament. This political family also includes MEPs of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.
“Show me one European leader who has Bukele’s popularity. They wish they could get his numbers,” he said while pointing to a newspaper clipping. “None of them, certainly not the ones that have criticised us, can do this. In El Salvador, we are 100% safe.”
El Salvador ended 2024 with a record low 114 homicides compared to 6,656 killings in 2015 in violent shootings among gangs or clashes with security forces. In 2022, a wave of violence saw 62 people killed in a single day by gangs. As a result, Bukele was granted emergency powers and the “state of exception” has remained in place since.
So far, there is little indication that Bukele will lift it even as crime declines and human rights activists warn of an erosion of the constitution and abuse of power. Ulloa pushed back, saying, “democracy is about the people, and the people feel safe.”
But this approach is not without flaws.
Since 2022, as Bukele cracked down on gangs, more than 83,000 people have been arrested in El Salvador. A mega prison known as CECOT, or Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo in Spanish, was inaugurated in 2023 and has become the symbol of the country’s transformation. Pictures have emerged of packed cells and inmates piling on to each other in small confinement areas serving as “warning”, according to Ulloa.
“I understand that it can shock (Europeans), but there is a subliminal message. Before, these guys would pose and make gestures, like celebrating. Now, when you see those pictures, it’s clear you don’t want to end up there,” he told Euronews.
Yet, some of the people held in prison should not even be there, according to human rights groups, who point to arbitrary arrests, detentions without due process and sentences handed without evidence of wrongdoing.
“There can be some mistakes that are made. You don’t make mistakes here? They don’t make mistakes in France. In Spain?” he said. “And we have liberated some 8,000.”
Bukele was re-elected president of El Salvador in 2024 with a landslide majority close to 85% of the vote and has floated an unlimited term after the constitution was amended last year. Asked if that represented an erosion of democratic standards, Ulloa told Euronews, “absolutely not…. demos means the people. And if they want him…”