El Salvador; Blame And Responsibility

EL SALVADOR

Blame and Responsibility

The new president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, took an extraordinary step recently. Upon his inauguration in late June, he immediately took the blame for the ills in his impoverished, corruption-ridden Central American country that have led so many of his fellow citizens to trek more than 2,000 miles to the American border.

“People don’t flee their homes because they want to,” Bukele said during a news conference in San Salvador, the capital, according to the New York Times. “They flee their homes because they feel they have to. They fled El Salvador, they fled our country. It is our fault.”

As the BBC explained, Bukele spoke as photos of a Salvadoran migrant and his young daughter lying dead in the Rio Grande rocked the world, documenting the humanitarian tragedy occurring on the border every day.

Óscar Martinez and his daughter Valeria, who was not yet two years old, drowned while trying to reach the United States. Their bodies were returned to El Salvador and buried in a municipal cemetery in the capital called La Bermeja. Mauricio Cabrera, a vice minister for Salvadorans abroad, gave a speech at the airport when Martinez’s wife, Tania Avalos, arrived back in the country, reported USA Today.

“Do not risk your lives or those of your children,” said Cabrera. “Don’t trust human traffickers who do not keep their promises.”

Meanwhile, Bukele received praise in Washington for his brave stance. But he isn’t soft. He also called on American officials not to block migrants at the border because, he told Sky News, that policy is not deterring anyone.

Elected in February after campaigning against corruption and pledging to boost education and create jobs, the new president is from neither of El Salvador’s two mainstream political parties, the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance and the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.

He’s got a lot of work to do. El Salvadoran prosecutors are working with American counterparts to fight gangs like MS-13, whose criminal enterprises straddle borders, wrote the Washington Post.

In his own country, gangs have infiltrated nearly every institution. Imprisoned gang members use hospitals to give their comrades orders to attack rivals, for instance, reported InSight Crime, which covers illegal activity in Latin America.

One of Bukele’s first actions in office was firing officials linked to his predecessor, President Sánchez Cerén, who installed family members and other allies in government positions. “Do not hire a replacement,” he wrote when firing Cerén’s daughter from El Salvador’s hydroelectric commission via Twitter, for example, Reuters reported.

It will take a lot of change to prevent more tragedies among migrants desperate to leave El Salvador. But it’s a start.

W