El Salvador Before Bukele, how gang rule, fear, and failed policies left citizens willing to trade rights for safety
In the years before Nayib Bukele rose to power, El Salvador lived under a bleak, persistent reality, where formal institutions existed on paper, but much of daily life was governed by fear and the day-to-day rules of criminal groups. The country’s security breakdown was not sudden, it was accumulated over decades of weak institutions, failed strategies, and the expansion of two dominant gangs, MS-13 and Barrio 18.
A nation defined by violence
Violence touched nearly every corner of Salvadoran life. As documented by international analysts, including the International Crisis Group, Insight Crime, and the UNODC, homicide rates reached catastrophic levels. In particular, In 2015, the murder rate peaked at 103 killings per 100,000 inhabitants, a figure that placed the country at the epicenter of global insecurity. For many Salvadorans, these were not abstract numbers, they were the sound of news accounts describing bodies in rivers, buses, and by roadsides, often bearing signs of torture or gang executions.
The human toll translated into psychological routines. People avoided colors and streets tied to rival factions, parents rerouted children’s journeys to school, and nighttime movement shrank. Women faced distinct and acute risks, with reports from Human Rights Watch describing widespread sexual violence, coerced relationships with gang members, and conditions that made reporting almost impossible.
Gangs operating as parallel states
By the late 2010s, in dozens of municipalities, gangs had evolved beyond loose criminal groups into organized, territorially based authorities. Media outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC and analysts at the Council on Foreign Relations described how gangs collected taxes, imposed curfews, decided who could work or live in neighborhoods, and settled disputes. Extortion became the economic backbone of their control, affecting everyone from street vendors to large transport firms, and forcing local economies into survival mode.
Prisons played a central role in this dynamic. As a series of reports explained, prisons were epicenters of the chaos, with Insight Crime and The Economist, among others, describing facilities where gang leaders held meetings, ran extortion networks via cellphones, and issued orders to subordinates on the streets. Rather than isolating criminal leadership, mass incarceration often consolidated it, turning jails into operational hubs for wider criminal networks.
Failed state responses and political fragility
Successive Salvadoran governments tried different strategies, none of which delivered a durable fix. The early 2000s brought heavy-handed approaches known as mano dura, marked by mass arrests and militarized policing, but prisons became overcrowded and strengthened gang command structures. Later, a 2012 truce organized with the tacit involvement of religious mediators temporarily lowered homicide rates, but extortion and territorial control persisted, and when the truce collapsed, violence surged again.
More broadly, the political class lacked both the institutional capacity and the coherent strategy necessary to confront criminal governance. Police forces were under-resourced, the judiciary overwhelmed, and corruption eroded public trust. The result was reactive governance, incapable of mounting a sustained, integrated campaign that combined public security with judicial reform and social investment.
The social and economic costs that birthed a mandate for order
The damage went beyond lives lost. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, gang-related insecurity cost El Salvador an estimated 16% of its GDP annually. That economic hemorrhage slowed investment, shuttered businesses, and accelerated migration, as families traded homes and possessions for the dangerous journey north to escape extortion and threats. For thousands interviewed at the U.S. border, the primary reason cited was fear of gangs.
Public opinion reflected exhaustion. Polls and studies from UNDP and Latinobarómetro repeatedly placed insecurity at the top of citizens’ concerns, and trust in traditional parties fell. The public’s tolerance for extraordinary measures grew, as many Salvadorans signaled a willingness to accept trade-offs on civil liberties if it meant reclaiming streets that had been ceded to gang rule.
Why Bukele’s security project found such fertile ground
When Nayib Bukele campaigned in 2018, he arrived as an outsider promising swift, tangible results. His message—immediate security and a break from the entrenched political class—resonated because it addressed the lived reality of millions. The context that preceded his ascent helps explain both the breadth of public support for hard-line measures and why alternative approaches had failed.
El Salvador before Bukele can best be described by scholars as a case of criminal governance, where armed organizations exercised state-like authority in the vacuum left by weak institutions. The accumulation of violence, economic damage, and institutional collapse created a social contract in which many citizens were prepared to accept exceptional measures. As one sober assessment from the period concluded, The Salvadoran public didn’t wake up one day willing to accept a state of exception, their willingness was forged over decades of violence, corruption, and state failure.
Understanding that shadowed landscape is essential to assessing the present. The policies and political shifts that followed were not conjured from nothing, they were responses to a society that had been living under emergency conditions without an official name. Whatever one’s view of the trade-offs involved, the roots of today’s debate lie in the fear, institutional weakness, and economic strain that defined El Salvador before Bukele.
Alexandre Andrade – FalloutObserver
