El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has vehemently denied swapping favors with gangs, but a slew of government officials and a person working directly with the government say there is an informal pact between parts of the government and the gangs.
Bukele’s public insistence that his government is not working with gangs followed a report in El Faro published on September 3. The report drew from government documents and interviews to show government representatives had met with gang members inside and outside of the prison system to foment greater trust and trade favors, among them political access for Bukele’s political party, Nuevas Ideas, in gang-dominated areas to campaign for legislative and municipal elections set for February 2021. El Faro called the talks “negotiations.”
The El Faro story came just months after a July report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), which said a substantial drop in homicides in El Salvador could be due to what it called a “fragile informal understanding,” which could include a “non-aggression deal” between parts of the government and the gangs. Since Bukele became president in June 2019, the ICG noted in a deep analysis of the homicide rates, murder in El Salvador had dropped by as much as 60 percent.
