The Government of Costa Rica seeks to know the good practices of the Salvadoran people in order to combat crime and establish strategic alliances against organized crime, the Ministers of Justice of both nations in a press conference reported this Friday, April 4.
The head of the Ministry of Justice and Peace of Costa Rica, Gerald Campos Valverde, together with a delegation, is in El Salvador to know the penitentiary policies and security measures implemented in this country against crime and gangs.
The Minister of Justice of El Salvador, Gustavo Villatoro, said in the press conference that, during the visit, his counterpart will know the experience of what President Nayib Bukele has commanded since 2019, “transitioning from the territorial control plan to the exception regime.”
“They are here to know the impact of what the policies and measures that we have taken in security matter have been, and what the said can be able to share it with a brother, with a country that until a few years ago, even for us as Salvadorans, was a reference of peace,” he said.
For his part, Minister Campos Valverde said that, on the orders of President Rodrigo Chaves, they are in El Salvador “to observe the good practices of the Salvadoran people in order to combat crime and return their rights and their guarantees to all citizens.”
“The slogan is to establish strategic alliances to eradicate crime, that there is true justice and fulfilled, but also that there is real accountability,” he said. He added that “today, El Salvador is one of the safest countries in the world, and Costa Rica wants to recover what characterized him forever: being a country of peace and safe.”
After the press conference, both ministers and their teams moved to the facilities of the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), the maximum security prison symbol of the war against the gangs of the government of President Bukele, where they made a tour.
In this megaprision gang leaders are held and, for a few weeks, migrants – mostly Venezuelans – accused of belonging to the criminal organization of Aragua and who were expelled from the United States.
Salvadoran authorities attribute the decrease in homicides during Bukele’s government to their territorial control plan and the suspension of constitutional guarantees through the exception regime, in force since March 2022.
However, the amount of violent deaths in the Central American country began to descend after 2015, a year considered the most violent in recent Salvadoran history, with 103 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The fall was accentuated in 2019, when the Bukele administration began.
The measure of the exception regime, however, is controversial. It has become the main and unique government of the Government against gangs, and has been pointed out to violate rights.