“1,000 days without homicides,” the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele wrote on his X account. With the message, the president says that El Salvador has not registered violent deaths since the beginning of his government (2019).
The Bukele government attributes the decline in the figures of violence homicidal to the territorial control plan – which consisted mainly of the deployment of police and military in the territories – and an exception regime in force since March 2022 against the gangs, which suspends constitutional guarantees.
However, homicide data began to descend in the country since 2016, according to the official figures released at that time, before the arrival of the current president.
The exception measure, which has left the arrest of about 90 thousand people accused of belonging to the gangs, completed on March 27 three years of validity, but continues to generate controversies for thousands of complaints of human rights violations.
During the administration of President Bukele, since 2019, El Salvador has registered about 5,688 homicides and 2,548 disappearances, according to data recently released by the Central American president in his social networks.
Between January and June 2025, the figures disseminated by Bukele, which for the rest of the citizens and the press are secret when requesting them, 38 homicides and 68 disappearances were counted.
In the government statistics of the homicides, deaths of alleged gang members are included in clashes with police, the discovery of bones and deaths of alleged criminals at the hands of citizens, cases that were included in the figures of the previous governments.
Nor is the figure of femicides committed in the country.