Bukele, el emperador de El Salvador - Lo Que Importa E21T2

Daniel Matamala presents What Matters in today's episode, Bukele, the Emperor of El Salvador. We speak with Óscar Martínez, editor-in-chief of El Faro of El Salvador. Additionally, Claudio González, director of the Center for Citizen Security Studies at the University of Chile and president of the Chilean Society of Criminology. What Matters is presented by Grupo Planeta and by Arauco, renewables for a better life. Last Thursday, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador received a bill that profoundly reforms the Constitution of that country. Among other points, it extends the presidential term to 6 years, eliminates the second round of voting, and also allows indefinite re-election as many times as the President of the Republic wishes. Without debate, without discussion, the congressmen immediately stamped their approval on the Reform. The last shovelful of earth on any semblance of democracy that still remained in a country controlled by a single fist was approved in one day. Nayib Bukele already had the power to imprison, without the right to defense, to know the charges, or to have a fair trial, any Salvadoran. He had already used that power to begin the persecution against critics, corruption investigators, human rights defenders, journalists, or anyone who did not bow before him. He had already purged the judiciary by appointing subservient judges to the Supreme Court, and the prosecutor's office, by persecuting prosecutors who dared to investigate him, his family, or his close associates for corruption. He had already flagrantly violated the Constitution by infringing the explicit prohibition of re-election. Now, Bukele completes the establishment of a dictatorship by ending the only limit to his power, time. Now, with the three branches of government under his control, with a docile army and any critical voice silenced, exiled, or imprisoned, he can bring to reality the title he himself once put in his Twitter biography, Emperor of El Salvador, along with an image of himself as a Roman emperor. It is the same script as Venezuela and Nicaragua. Democratically elected leaders who use their popularity to foster a discourse of friends versus enemies and accumulate power that becomes uncontrollable until it destroys any checks and balances and moves towards the tyranny of a single man. El Salvador's slide into dictatorship matters greatly because it serves as an example and inspiration for autocrats and populist leaders throughout America, starting with the United States, where Trump celebrates the one he hired as his jailer, sending immigrants to his prisons, thus denying them their right to defense in court. From Washington, these days, Donald Trump is giving instructions to his backyard, Latin America. He orders the justice system of Brazil to annul the trial against former president Jair Bolsonaro for having attempted a coup d'état to prevent the transfer of power after losing the elections against Lula da Silva. And since the Supreme Court of Brazil does not bow to Trump, he punishes the insurgents with a 50% tariff on all Brazilian exports to the United States. He says that Brazil violates Bolsonaro's human rights by putting him on trial for his attempt to destroy democracy in his country. Washington also speaks of El Salvador. The White House gave its firm backing to the decision of the Assembly controlled by Bukele to authorize indefinite re-election and emphasized that that country must decide how to govern itself, something that, incidentally, does not apply to Brazil. Bolsonaro did the same as Trump. He tried to steal an election and perpetuate himself as a dictator in power. And Bukele is doing the same as Trump intends to do, ending the limits on re-elections to perpetuate himself as a dictator in power? These are the examples he admires, what he follows, and what he defends. Thus, just as it did in the 1970s, the United States is once again intervening in its backyard by supporting dictators or aspiring dictators. They are no longer generals with dark glasses bombing government palaces. Now they are popular politicians who use democracy itself to erode its foundations and thus amass total power. Today, in What Matters, we will talk about the keys to what is happening in El Salvador, Bukele's popularity in his own country and abroad, his recipe for gaining total power. And what does that tell the rest of America, where numerous leaders, including those in Chile, see this Emperor of El Salvador as an example to follow and a leader to imitate? [Music] This is already episode 52 of What Matters. We have had more than 110 interviewees during this year and a half. We have always had a rule that we are going to break today. All our interviewees have always been in person in the studio, and today we are going to break it for a very good reason, because the topic warrants it and because our next guest is also the most suitable person to talk about it. Óscar Martínez is a Salvadoran journalist and writer, editor-in-chief of El Faro, author of several books, including El niño de Hollywood, for example, great books about the reality of migration, violence, and the reality of Central America. Óscar Martínez joins us from Mexico City. How are you, Óscar? Welcome to What Matters. How are you, colleague? It's a great pleasure to join you. Uh, I would have loved to be there in person, but well, through this medium it's also a great pleasure to join you. Yes, Óscar, you are now in Mexico City. Uh, it's very difficult at this moment for most journalists and for most of those who have been investigating what is happening to remain in El Salvador, isn't it? Look, I've been here since the days before May 1st, when we published some interviews in El Faro with gang leaders who were political partners of Nayib Bukele for 8 years, since he was a candidate for mayor of the capital. Since that day, I haven't been able to return to the country. We know that we have arrest warrants. The regime wants to accuse us of being partners of the gang members, which is precisely what we revealed about Bukele in those interviews. We haven't been able to enter, we even discovered and made public from El Faro's social media in a live broadcast the intentions they had. We learned about it thanks to a diplomat who warned us when we were in Costa Rica about to take a flight to El Salvador. The regime's intentions to plant drugs on us when entering Monseñor Romero airport. So we are in an incipient exile, not only people from El Faro, but according to the Salvadoran Association of Journalists, there are 40 colleagues who are already outside the country. And this year, Óscar, what seemed obvious was going to happen at some point, right? That the repression would also begin to focus on critical voices, on people who have investigated the corruption of the Bukele regime. There is a case, for example, that of Rut López, whom I met reporting in El Salvador and who today, unfortunately, is in prison. Look, it was a very authoritarian May. Uh, I'm not establishing a direct relationship with this because it's perhaps assuming that one has, I don't know, or generates consequences that one cannot determine, but in May we published one of those interviews with Charlie, a very well-known gang member in El Salvador because he appeared when he was 16 years old and was already a leader of a clique of Barrio 18 Revolucionarios, a gang enemy of Mara Salvatrucha. He appeared in a BBC documentary that became very famous because it is of very good quality, and at 16 years old Charlie was already the boss, the one who controlled a whole sector. When Bukele lost the narrative, lost control of what was happening on social media, if that video reached nearly 2 million views in a country as small as El Salvador in at least a few weeks, Bukele began to react in a very exotic, very severe way. First, trying to divert attention, he announced free transportation for 6 days. I've always said it, as a writer said, Bukele is a man who is more of occurrences than of ideas. He said free transportation for 6 days. After that, since the businessmen, some of them, did not react because there had been no decree, it was chaos. And Bukele arrested six public transport businessmen. One of them died in state custody before 6 days, and we thought that that madness of reaction had ended, but at that moment, after that, there was a protest outside the residence where Bukele lives, which is called Los Sueños, an affluent residential area. Outside the perimeter of his residence, environmentalists and a poor community that was going to be evicted protested. Bukele sent the military police, whose acronym we had not seen since the civil war, and arrested the environmentalist and peasant leaders who had led a peaceful protest. We thought that May had ended then, but no. Then at night, they arrested Rut López, they didn't even let her change. She had to change in the street in front of the police, and they took her out of her house with lies, and we thought that May had ended then, and it didn't happen. Then, Bukele decreed the foreign agents law, which is basically a law that allows him to decide who is a foreign agent, copied from the law of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and to impose on us, beyond the taxes we already pay, a 30% tax on all your income, which is basically a law to make the existence of civil society organizations and media outlets unviable. So it was a May where Bukele reacted in a very aggressive way, as we had not seen before. Uh, Óscar, and then what happened last week occurs when the Assembly, which is dominated by Bukele, as he dominates all branches of government, decides, without debate, without much discussion really, to approve indefinite re-election. It strikes me as very odd because there is a history regarding re-elections in El Salvador. I once read the Constitution of El Salvador, and I believe there is no constitution in the world that has been more explicit in prohibiting in every imaginable way that a president could be re-elected. In fact, it said things like, for example, that any attempt to change that clause was unconstitutional, that the mere act of proposing re-election meant that a person immediately lost their position, if they did so from a public office. So it had all possible safeguards, one would say, to prevent a president from perpetuating himself in power. And yet, Bukele manages first to have a re-election and now, somehow, the masks fall off and he approves perpetual, indefinite re-election, as many times as he wants to run. Why do you think this happens? And why does Bukele himself, who had once spoken very clearly that re-election was prohibited in El Salvador and that it was a good measure, change so radically, so drastically, and decide that, well, there will be no more limits to his power. Look, I don't say this with any joy or any satisfaction for feeling like someone who predicted it. Many people in the country did. Who wouldn't want to see that Bukele is what he is, an authoritarian man who intended to become what he has long become, a dictator. Whoever didn't want to see it before is simply because they were closed to the evidence that was on the table. One of the things is what you have said. The four articles of the Constitution that prohibit re-election are eloquent, they are direct, they are explicit. That is, there is an article that says that the people have the obligation, almost of rebellion, if someone even makes a proclamation for re-election. There is another article that says that no one can be president for even one day more after 5 years. Bukele in February 2024 already re-elected himself, violating those four articles of the Constitution that he promised to defend. And the vice president, someone who had a democratic past, a past in which he defended the principles of democracy in very difficult times, when they gave him a little power, that seduced him so much that he surrendered. Vice President Félix Ulloa even said that there was rather a hidden article in the Constitution that we hadn't seen. We still haven't seen it. The reinterpretation of the Constitution made by the Supreme Court of Justice, imposed by Bukele in May 2021, is there is a beautiful verb in Spanish approved by the RAE, it is "cantinflear" (to talk nonsense), and that allowed Bukele to return to power, already violating the Constitution, thereby consolidating himself as a dictator in February 2024. Now, what Bukele has done now was predictable. His assembly had already reformed the way the Constitution was reformed, and then came the second step, reforming the Constitution so that Bukele can compete in 2027. What they have done is very curious because they have said Bukele's term is until 2029, but they have said that for once, perhaps it is better to combine elections and that Bukele rather competes in 2027. What happens in 2027? In 2027, there are the legislative elections. Bukele's deputies, whom some people in El Salvador colloquially call "button pushers" because that's what they do, they press remote control buttons from the presidency. They are not even close to being as popular as Bukele. Combining the elections allows Bukele to cover them with his mantle of popularity. It prevents any attempt for him to run for longer so that an opposition can regroup, and above all, and very importantly, it allows that in 2027, Papa Trump has not left power. Trump is in power until 2028. I assume that due process in the United States will prevent him from staying longer. And Bukele's elections were in 2029. Bukele has made a good timing calculation. He wants to be re-elected indefinitely for a third consecutive term, knowing that the United States will not impose any sanctions on him as it has already done with some of his officials. This is where Bukele, who boasted of making master moves as he defined them. In this case, everything is very predictable and very evident. Óscar, let's go back to the beginning because I think there is also a very important lesson here about how these phenomena occur and how they unfold from a situation where people, for very legitimate reasons, have great dissatisfaction with democracy. And there is a leader who manages to take that, channel that anger against democracy, and ends up in what we are seeing today in El Salvador, in the total takeover of power. What is the context that allows Nayib Bukele to appear with such a level of popularity? What had happened in the preceding years in terms of corruption and in terms of violence with the Salvadoran governments? Look, I, as we have lived it live and have seen so many examples, now we find ourselves in history. Dictators, authoritarian men who promise to solve everything under one condition: give me all the power, are always men who know how to measure the moments of desperation of a population very well. That is, dictators flourish in desperate societies. If you go now, say, to a country like Ecuador to propose a dictatorship, like Ecuador, no, rather like Uruguay, people won't elect you. In El Salvador, the post-war cycle had been completed, that is, since 1992 we signed the peace accords, which were imperfect accords but had enormous merits, they ended the war, the civil war. After that, from 1994 onwards, the system prepared for democratic elections, the right wing won, and the right wing governed until 2009. After that, it left us as the most homicidal country on planet Earth with 71 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants and two former presidents, Francisco Flores and Antonio Saca, who stole everything they could. Francisco Flores died during a trial for having stolen or diverted millions of dollars that Taiwan donated for earthquake victims, something that is very cynical. And Antonio Saca is in prison because he admitted to having diverted more than 300 million from the public treasury to his personal accounts. So the post-war cycle began to complete, and the left came, but it came with an outsider, with a former journalist, Mauricio Funes. Mauricio Funes came to power in 2009 and left in 2014 and took refuge in Daniel Ortega's dictatorship because he stole, as we published in El Faro, with original proof of his secret departure, millions of dollars, in a very childish way, on clothes for his lover, on luxuries for his partner, on birthday parties for his son that involved renting a helicopter. He spent it on such luxuries, and thus the post-war cycle was completed. The FMLN, the former guerrilla, said, "No longer an outsider, we are going to appoint a former guerrilla commander." And Salvador Sánchez Cerén won the presidency. And Salvador Sánchez Cerén began by breaking the truce with the gangs that his party had made, giving us the most homicidal year in the history of El Salvador. 2015, 106 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. People were desperate, and Bukele, who came from that left-wing party, who dressed in red and congratulated Che Guevara on his anniversary of death, decided then, or understood that people were absolutely desperate at that moment, and chose to sell himself as an outsider, which he is not. So, Bukele, who comes from advertising, whose family handled the campaigns of the left in El Salvador, is someone very skilled at one thing, at raising a hand and having everyone see the hand he is moving while he is doing something else. On the other hand, Bukele was elected largely because people were absolutely desperate, and it is also that desperation that allows him to amass power because Bukele assumes, you have done many investigations in this regard, and by the way, you have been investigating, as you say, the issue of corruption, the issue of pacts with gangs since long before Bukele, since previous governments. But Bukele also, at first, made pacts with the gangs. What have you discovered about that part, which is perhaps what hurts Bukele the most to be remembered or what he tries to persecute the most when the issue of pacts with gang members is revealed? Look, I'll start from the end and then I'll tell you. That is, we ourselves at El Faro were the ones who published for the first time in El Salvador the article "Bukele, Bukele's regime dismantles gangs." So I'll start by eliminating a doubt. Did Bukele end the gangs in El Salvador? Yes, that is a fact. People are enormously grateful for that. It is the achievement that Bukele is most recognized for. That is a huge achievement. Yes. We covered gangs for more than 10 years. We know what they did to people. We know how they dismembered, dismembered, raped, murdered, extorted. Now, Nayib Bukele arrived at that through very particular circumstances. He was a partner of the gang members for more than 8 years. Bukele achieved his first important elected office at the national level in 2015 as mayor of the capital because the FMLN, the former left, paid a quarter of a million to the gangs to condition their vote in favor of their presidential candidate, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, and Nayib Bukele. Bukele won by just over 6,000 votes in that election, he was not the stellar politician he is now. And I believe that those 6,000 votes were given to him by the gangs. The gangs had 75,000 members in the country and controlled a lot of territory and could intimidate people to the extent that they described to us in the video that has us outside the country. Charlie, the former gang member, who was Bukele's partner, told us, "Well, we even used to withdraw identity documents from those we knew belonged to the bases of other political parties." That is, from then on, Bukele consolidated that and then used the presidency to ask the gang members to help him keep homicides low. And after that, after three massacres, which was how gang members reacted when they felt something was not being fulfilled for them, there were three massacres, one in 2020 of more than 40 Salvadorans, another in 2021 of more than 70 in just 4 days. And finally, in March 2022, 86 Salvadorans were murdered in a weekend, including Saturday, March 26, when 62 Salvadorans who did not belong to gangs were murdered by Mara Salvatrucha on the bloodiest day of the entire post-war period. And then Nayib Bukele decided to break the pact that allowed him to keep El Salvador with low homicides for three years of his presidency and decree the state of exception under which people continue to live in the country. That evidence of those pacts, Óscar, there is journalistic evidence, but there are also gang members, there are gang leaders who have been extradited to the United States, and who eventually have information about it. What has happened with those cases? Look, whoever, as I say, Bukele ended the gangs, whoever denies that would be denying it ideologically. The question is, how? Whoever denies that Bukele made pacts with the gangs also denies something that is a fact. The evidence that Nayib Bukele made pacts with the gangs, in the first publication, we did it with official documents from Nayib Bukele's own government, prison documents, signed and sealed by his penitentiary intelligence, informing the director of prisons that a pact was being made in maximum security prisons. Gang members were entering hooded, hand in hand with Bukele's officials, to consolidate a pact. I suppose they wrote it down as a way to cover themselves. After that, we even published photographs of those hooded individuals entering the maximum security prison. And after that, we even published audios where Bukele's officials who directed the pact acknowledged the pact. But in the trial that is taking place in New York against 27 leaders of Mara Salvatrucha, the US Prosecutor's Office guaranteed to put in writing that those leaders had made pacts with the Bukele government. And not only that, but also the US Department of the Treasury and some sanctions like the Engel List included two of Bukele's officials, Osiris Luna, his head of prisons, and Carlos Marroquín, who is the official who directed the pacts, included them in the list of corrupt agents according to the United States, where they still remain for having directed the pacts with the gangs. That is, the evidence is overwhelming, and Bukele, now that the United States has eight of those 27 leaders, had eight because he already returned one to Bukele along with the Venezuelans, he sent one of those leaders. Bukele is trying to recover them all to prevent that in the future, someday, if the Democrats return to power and have the courage to fulfill the threats they have made to Bukele with the real law, they get to judge him, then there will be no possibility of using these witnesses to do so. Bukele is on a campaign to dismantle, under the Trump administration, the trial or all mentions of his pact with gangs that are occurring in the New York trial. And that witness who was returned, what happened to him? Look, Greñas, who was a historical leader of MS13, Greñas was returned with the Venezuelans when they sent the two flights full of more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador, to Bukele's prisons. Greñas is imprisoned in El Salvador, and I believe that the message that Greñas sent to the rest of the gang leaders in the United States was very eloquent, and the message was, if you testify against Bukele, remember that you can end up in a Bukele prison. Who would want to testify in a trial against Bukele if they know that their fate could be a Nayib Bukele prison? And right now, the process is underway to return another of those leaders, Vampiro. The process has been frozen in legal technicalities in a US court, but we all believe that it will happen sooner or later. Now, the moment the United States returns one of those leaders to Bukele, Cruc, Elmer Canales Rivera, everything is over. Crook is living proof that Nayib Bukele made pacts with the gangs. He is an MS13 leader who was imprisoned in El Salvador, who still had 40 years of prison time, when Bukele, before his pact was broken in March 2022, released him in November 2021, illegally took him out of prison. Truck, after the months that the pact was destroyed, decided to flee and hide. The United States, the FBI, managed to capture him in southern Mexico, when he was working for a Mexican cartel, and took him to the United States. The moment the United States returns Elmer Canales Rivera, one of those eight, to Bukele, Bukele achieves his objective and everything is dismantled. Hm. Óscar, we are talking about what happened in the first stage of Bukele's government when these pacts with the gangs occurred. Then, as you have described, he changed his strategy, decided on a frontal attack that was successful in dismantling the territorial power that these gangs had, which in practice were the state, they replaced the state in a large part of the neighborhoods of El Salvador, of the districts, of the places where they exercised violence, extortion, etc. That makes Bukele very popular, because indeed, for many Salvadorans who lived under gang violence, their quality of life improved, they can live again with more security. Does Bukele's popularity still hold? Is he still a person that the majority of Salvadorans continue to support? Yes, Nayib Bukele's popularity is above 80%, and those are real data. That is, the other is to sugarcoat the figure, that continues to give people what Bukele did with the gangs continues to make people have almost religious faith in Bukele. Now, what is the problem? Nayib Bukele ended the gangs. Yes. Now I ask, I will give you some data. He ended the gangs and imprisoned one out of every 57 Salvadorans. The vast majority of them were not gang members nor did they have tattoos like the ones you see in the only prison of the 22 in El Salvador that Bukele wants the world to see that he controls. Two. He eliminated due process. All trials are secret. All arrest warrants are secret. But since we at El Faro don't care about that, we obtained 600 of those warrants. 690 690 warrants in which 690 people's lives were at stake, and we managed to read them. We obtained those secret documents and published them. In many of those warrants, it only said that someone showed nervousness. There are people rotting in Bukele's prisons because they showed nervousness when a soldier approached them or because it seemed to the soldier that they showed nervousness. There were people for whom only the single identity document was provided, not even the effort to articulate an accusation. There were people like the people from the island of Espíritu Santo, where there were never any gangs, because the people organized themselves to prevent them from entering, and they had the advantage that it was an island where they arrested 22 young men because the police thought they had to fill the quota for Bukele to be satisfied. Torture is systematic and approved in prisons. There are facts that are not grandiloquent, that is a fact, we have published it. The babies who have had to enter the women's prisons with their captured mothers, they have to bathe them with lye so they don't get prison scabies. What I'm telling you is, Bukele ended the gangs and ended due process, presumption of innocence, balance of powers. My question is, is the only way to end a criminal group as violent and sadistic as the gangs is for the entire population to lose all its rights and concentrate on one man? I don't think so. Hm. Óscar, there is an initial moment, of course, of this frontal attack against the gangs where it was relatively easy to attack them due to the very characteristics of these gangs, which are not large transnational organizations of luxurious drug traffickers. There is no Pablo Escobar here, there is no El Chapo, they are much more precarious organizations in economic terms, also with this thing of tattooing themselves completely as a sign of perpetual belonging to the gangs, which also made them very easy to identify, and that is why many arrests of gang members occurred in the first days. But then people continue to be arrested, and that's what you were saying, people continue to be arrested because they are nervous, because they are pointed out, right? The pointing out, which is a kind of civil denunciation where one can report a neighbor and eventually they can go and arrest them. Why do you think Bukele's regime continued and has continued to arrest and keep thousands of people in prison, when many of them are not gang members? What is the logic behind doing that? Look, firstly, Bukele, I repeat, is a publicist and apparently he is good at it, because he has managed to make his publicity resonate with the Salvadoran population and many falsehoods of what the government presents, the regime. Almost all the gang members who had their faces tattooed were already in prison. Gang members, by direct order, stopped tattooing their faces around 2005. What they see in the CECOT, in the prison that Bukele wants the world to see, in the prison where he puts American YouTubers and politicians and this Mexican young man named Luisito Comunica, who understands absolutely nothing about El Salvador. That CECOT prison is full of gang members who were already in prison, and it is a selection of gang members with face tattoos so that the world sees the very bad guys. In the other 21 prisons, which Bukele does not allow anyone to enter, they are full of people like Don Paco, a milkman from La Reina who came out dead after two months in prison and had no tattoos on his body and had no criminal record, not even a police record. The other prisons are full of that. Why did they arrest? Well, Bukele, who understands that the most important thing is to deliver results quickly, regardless of the type of results, believed that they would finish with the gangs and their social base, their families, their collaborators quickly. And for that, they had to show massive arrests and sow a reign of terror in El Salvador for that to be effective and for him not to appear weak. And for that, the political discourse was direct. They have to arrest, and we will fill the prisons in months. Bukele almost said it literally. And the police chiefs, who understood that they were now facing an authoritarian leader with all the power since May 2021, more than a year before he decreed the state of exception, understood that they had to fill that political request with human bodies and began to arrest everyone. Over time, as you have said, over time the regime has been used for everything. The regime was used to evict informal vendors from the historic center for the benefit of Bukele's brothers to have a place to invest and buy buildings or build a luxury hotel. It was used to evict vendors who sold coconuts on the streets, who were heading to the beaches where Bukele wanted to sell his Surf City project. It was used to evict families from the beaches of the Costa del Sol to begin building the Pacific Airport, which I don't know why we need it, it's a tiny country, an airport that will be 3 hours by car from the other. It was used for everything, even for Rut López, for this human rights defender and director of the Anti-Corruption Unit of the Cristosal Organization, who remains imprisoned. The regime rule was applied to Rut López, they did not present her for days, they arrested her with lies and without a judicial order. Her trial is secret, even though she is not accused of being a gang member. The regime is applied to everything. Anyone who believes that the regime is applied to gang members in El Salvador has not understood the political use that the regime has been having for several years now. And in the case of Rut López, she was especially dangerous because she investigated Bukele's corruption. Rut López is a woman who had, not only was she a very notable woman, she had even been named among the 100 most influential women by BBC World, but Rut López, someone who had presented dozens of corruption cases to the prosecutor's office, the prosecutor's office controlled by Bukele, with findings or questions that pointed to the more than 3 billion dollars, about which there are reservations since Bukele came to power and about which Bukele has imposed total secrecy. Let me give you an example so you can realize the level of concealment in El Salvador. The president suddenly decided to become a coffee farmer and created a coffee bean brand called Bean of Fire, which he markets in a store at the Óscar Arnulfo Romero airport in El Salvador. The contract for that presidential coffee shop is secret. It is not possible to know what type of contract it is. During the time when Bitcoin still existed, Bukele built, I don't know why he gave it an English name, something called Chivo Pets, which is a pet hospital. And Bukele said he had built it with the profits from Bitcoin, which they have never shown us. Knowing how that animal hospital, for pets, was built is a state secret. El Salvador is a country where there is an absolute and completely dark veil over public spending. Bukele's government is one of the most corrupt governments the country has had, which is saying a lot, considering the history you were telling us about corrupt presidents in El Salvador, which is a very difficult competition. Yes. And the Bukele family and Bukele personally have become rich. Well, there is a revelation made by the media outlet Redacción Regional, signed by colleague journalist Jaime Quintanía, which with official documents demonstrates how more than 70% of the properties owned by the presidential family were acquired during Nayib Bukele's government and shows how some family businesses of which Bukele is still the owner went from having a few thousand dollars to having millions of dollars. That is, Nayib Bukele's family, his mother, his brothers, Nayib Bukele himself, his wife, have become astronomically rich since they came to power. And this is not something we believe, it is something that has been demonstrated, published with documents. Of course, they have become rich. Not only he, but also his officials have become rich. The State Bank granted loans to more than 47 officials and relatives of Bukele, violating credit granting regulations, so that they could buy, for example, beach ranches or some of his officials could buy houses in golf clubs. And believe me, in El Salvador, if you have a house in a golf club, you are very wealthy. Golf is not something we play, nor do we have enough water to irrigate those fields. Hm. Óscar, what would you say to someone who said, "Well, but Nayib Bukele was elected by the people, he is there because he has a majority of the votes? We ourselves have said, he is still a very popular president. Why then label him a dictator if he is someone that the people have put in that place?" Look, I would tell that person that they have a very precarious idea of democracy. If that person believes that democracy consists of putting a piece of paper in a box every 5 years, then they are very mistaken. Democracy consists above all in the division of powers, that no one has all the power. Democracy consists of due process. Democracy consists of respect for the Constitution, not just putting pieces of paper in a ballot box every 5 years. Democracy is a system that above all prevents someone from having all the power. Why? So that someone cannot order the Attorney General of the Republic, out of revenge, to arrest you. So that someone cannot order a prosecutor to issue or construct arrest warrants against journalists because they revealed something that bothered you. So that a police officer does not have the power, if he likes your daughter, to threaten you with a state of exception to take her or go out with your daughter without you interfering. For what? How has it happened? So that a soldier cannot threaten you with a state of exception to imprison you through due process if he wants to steal your land where you used to graze your cows? Democracy is a system of checks and balances, not putting little papers in a box every 5 years. That is the beginning of a democracy. People are elected who must comply with rules, people are elected who must comply with a division of powers. People are elected who have a framework within which to operate. Naib Bukele broke that long ago, he imposed the magistrates, he imposed the prosecutor, he imposed everyone, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. I'll say two quick things. When people started to applaud the regime, as they continue to applaud it, but when suddenly they started taking away their innocent children, people started going to something called the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, to file a habeas corpus so that they would be told where their son was, who had been kidnapped without being a gang member. There were never as many habeas corpus as in the first two months of the regime, even more than the average during months of the war. So, families, unfortunately, learned what democracy was for. So that a magistrate could order the other branch to tell you where your arrested son was. Following an order. But it was already too late because Bukele had already taken over the Supreme Court of Justice. Democracy is a division of powers, isn't it? Power can be granted to someone, but power with limits. Bukele no longer has any limits. El Salvador is not governed by a system or a government, it is governed by a man. Óscar, and reaching this point, do you think that the fact that, in a way, the masks are falling off, no? Beyond how skilled a publicist Bukele is, the fact that indefinite re-election is being presented makes many people start to say, "Well, this is the same path as Venezuela, this is the same path as Nicaragua." Do you think this can change the perception of international public opinion about what is happening in El Salvador in any way? You know, I think that the opinion of, well, international opinion already has to be very eloquent. That is, Bukele, at least, more and more people dare to call him a dictator. We told him so since June 2024 when he took office, violating the Constitution. If a president no longer cares about violating the Constitution, then he has no more limits or boundaries, and it already seemed to us that that was consolidating.

his dictatorial acts. But I wouldn't say it to Bukele if Bukele doesn't care a fig about what the international community says. He already demonstrated it. He mocked the European Union, he insulted Kamala Harris, he insulted Boric, he insulted Petro, he insulted half the world, Human Rights Watch. He called them Homeboys, Human Rights Watch, referring to them as gang members according to a tweet, because yes. Uh, and he mocked the US judge who prohibited Donald Trump from sending flights of Venezuelans. Bukele just posted a tweet that said, "Upsi, too late." As if saying, "Sorry judge, they're already flying," mocking. The only thing Bukele cares about now, and what that man has his gaze fixed on, is that Donald Trump won't do that. So much so that the United States government has already greeted and recognized the re-election of Nayib Bukele and said, "We are, uh, fully democratic." As long as Donald Trump's government continues to support Nayib Bukele, what the European Union says, what the countries of the south of the continent say, what the Central American countries say, he doesn't care a fig, as he has already demonstrated, and now he is very comfortable that Donald Trump will do none of that. Now, I believe that sooner or later this will generate consequences for Bukele. That is to say, I don't recall until now, uh, well, yes, I recall some, but dictators who haven't died or haven't finished their term due to old age or left power without turbulence, even in times when it was much more difficult. In Central America, uh, the Guatemalan dictator, uh, who wasn't Guatemalan, ended up facing an imperfect trial, but well, but a trial occurred, uh, and I don't believe that, keeping distances and forms and times in mind, Bukele will manage to free himself from so many things. In my opinion, as some jurists have already said, for example, what is happening in Nayib Bukele's prisons could constitute or would be grounds to file a lawsuit for crimes against humanity. In Bukele's prisons, there is systematic torture. There are more than 430 inmates dead, more than 430 inmates murdered under Bukele's regime. Uh, thanks, and we know this thanks to an organization, Cristo, that has counted it, but that is the state of affairs currently. That is what is happening in El Salvador, about which little is spoken because everyone insists on seeing where Bukele tells El Secot, that prison, and that one prison which is one of the 22 prisons that exist in El Salvador and where there are many innocent civilians who are there for who knows how long, who knows if they will ever be able to leave alive. Óscar Martínez, I want to thank you very much for this eloquent conversation we've had. Uh, you from exile, unfortunately, unable to be in your homeland at this moment, but always with very attentive eyes to tell the truth about what is happening in El Salvador. I thank you very much. With pleasure, and I tell you one thing, I will return to my country, and the dictator will leave one day, I guarantee it. Thank you for the space. Thank you very much, Óscar. A hug. For Arauco, transforming wood is a job, but transforming the world is what matters. The good thing about being renewable is preserving the present to build the future. Arauco, renewable for a better life. We are now going to talk with Claudio González. Claudio is director of the Center for Citizen Security Studies at the Faculty of Government of the University of Chile and also president of the Chilean Society of Criminology. Claudio, thank you for joining us. No, thank you very much, you yourself. Besides, you've just arrived from El Salvador, where you were precisely observing the reality of what happens here, invited by one of the few relatively independent entities that still remain in that country's civil society, right? The Central American University, which is a university linked to the Jesuits with a long history in that country. What impression did you get from what you saw in El Salvador? Yes, well, uh, yes, I was indeed in El Salvador for almost 20 days. The idea was to observe a bit of what was happening, but also initially I was invited to give a series of courses in a master's program in criminology at this university. In fact, practicing or teaching criminology in a context like El Salvador is already a scientific fact in itself. Uh, my general impression, obviously, well, I'm still even processing the information I've gathered and what I've been able to capture. Uh, obviously, we are in a drift towards an authoritarian penal model, but perhaps initially an authoritarian political model. Uh, it's difficult to judge a society that isn't your own, especially since I don't consider myself an expert in El Salvador's history. Uh, obviously, uh, there was a palpable security problem. There were 70,000 to 80,000 gang members not long ago in El Salvador, uh, and decisions of a deeply penal and punitive nature were made. Uh, today, the enormous amount of violations of the rule of law is evident, it is evident, and you've seen it in many international reports as well. Uh, so, of course, it's a model that must be observed, especially since it's becoming a kind of benchmark for many places in Latin America. And do you think it's an exportable or imitable model beyond value judgments, beyond, let's say, whether we like it or not? Uh, the model with which Bukele attacked gangs, with all the consequences we've already discussed, is something that could be replicated in other countries to combat crime. I think it's a model that could only have worked there. It's under a state of exception. That shouldn't be forgotten. Uh, what was done 2 and a half years ago, almost 3 years ago, right? Is a state of exception, in which the rule of law is completely suspended, frozen, and carte blanche is given, right? In all these cases. Now, there are many ways to carry out a state of exception, obviously. In the case of El Salvador, it was clearly an extreme case where there was a kind of dragnet or mass capture, right, of significant portions of the population, and who today, right, are in preventive detention, without time limits, without contact with family, without the right to defense, that is to say, the entire catalog of what we can imagine that could govern a state of law, obviously is not met. Claudio, dragnet is a very good definition, isn't it? The dragnet, the net is thrown, and everything comes out, let's say. Sharks come out, anchovies come out, sardines come out, everything comes out. Here, the net is thrown, and gang members fall in, people who are indeed criminals fall in, and civilians who had nothing to do with it also fall in. Yes, what happens is that today, uh, what happens in terms of, of course, that dragnet they call the captures, is very interesting. Basically, they have, well, other names that have also been imposed from the English perspective, but this capture was done by the police and supported by the army on a massive scale, that is, there was no specific distinction. That is, I think in the best, that is, in reality, in the worst-case scenario regarding what could be thought of as in the book of procedure, it happened here, detentions without charges, without direct links, etc. In fact, there's a problem they have today, which is that once the captures are made by the police, the prosecution, so to speak, has to give a certain degree of rationality to these things, and that's what they're practically doing. That is, they've had to build a whole new bureaucratic system, and they are supposedly doing it to give some meaning and link the subjects to certain episodes. The truth is that everything we can imagine regarding the violation of a state of law has evidently occurred. That's not, that doesn't have another, a different tint. As you say, it's the valuation that you say, well, how was the violence situation before this scenario or not? And why is Claudio so effective in one part, Bukele, so effective in destroying the maras or ensuring that gang members lose that territorial control, because, well, I was also in El Salvador, I've been in the neighborhoods that were dominated by the maras, and the accounts that the neighbors give you are chilling. They tell you, here this mara, this neighborhood, this population, right, of Mara Salvatrucha, from this street onwards, and from this street backwards, it was Barrio 18, and therefore, as a civilian, you couldn't cross because you were entering the territory of the other mara, and that could be death. If you wanted to have a taxi, you had to pay parking fees, right? Extortion to the maras. If you had a business, well, you also had to pay the maras. So, there was a very suffocating system of territorial control over large masses of the population in El Salvador, because it seems that this was dismantled quite quickly and quite effectively. Yes, it's a question one asks because, in reality, you're not talking about 2,000, 5,000 people, you're talking about 70,000 people practically. When one reviews some rulings, for example, where the organization is diagrammed or drawn, the truth is that there was a very powerful organization behind this. Uh, one shouldn't think, and I've discussed this with colleagues too, one shouldn't think that we're talking about juvenile, marginal violence, a dismantled gang; there was a very strong capacity and territorial control and corruption too, and of collaborators too, in the system. Now, uh, what happens? I think it's very complex to explain. One has to think that, for example, the drop in the homicide rate in El Salvador occurred before Bukele. That is, what happened with Bukele is a continuation of a tough stance that was already in place before, but at its peak around 2015, and then it was falling. 2015 it starts to go down, it starts to go down with Bukele, supposedly that continues. With all the information available today, with the doubts about homicide registration. Ah, I think that's important because there are things that seem not to be counted as homicides, but well, without prejudice to that, but that point is important because it's something that Bukele and the regime's propaganda often repeat, that El Salvador has become one of the countries with the fewest homicides in the world. What happens is that there is statistical opacity, that is, we have to rely precisely on information that we don't have, that we cannot cross-reference. One has to think that what INE means for us, about 2 years ago or something, right? We practically have no information, not only in the criminal field but in many other public policies. So, it's completely blind information, it's impossible, right? To cross-reference that information. The homicide data today are not reliable data. Evidently, they are not, they are not reliable data, uh, but clearly, there is a drop in homicides, but also when homicides fall, other phenomena appear, such as extortion, which has indeed become a widespread crime, and sexual violence, uh, evidently a huge number of varieties of types of violence, of coercion too, that are happening, money laundering, etc. So, the pre-Bukele situation was evidently a complex situation in terms of public security control, and a state without security is evidently not a calificable state. Now, what is particular about this happening? I think there's a window of opportunity that opens up, that before the penal power is applied in this way, there is a concentration of political power, that is, the pieces on the board begin to be placed, right? In this sense of control of institutions, of the justice system, which allows, evidently, to override guarantees. I think that window of opportunity, yes, that must be recognized, was read very well at the time, and it was possible, right, this dragnet that was carried out. Now, evidently, we are thinking about the effectiveness of 2 or 3 years ago, but this is a task, this is a long story, this will be very long. One has to think that if there are 70,000 families, there is also de-structuring. Every time the State intervenes in a place, a lot of social and institutional breakdowns occur. Ah, what will happen with those processes? Most of those cases are in preventive detention without a time limit. Yes, of course. Uh, this model, Claudio, in a way, this dragnet in which a large number of people are arrested and imprisoned without evidence, without trial, thinking that, well, the criminals will fall in there, other people will fall in too, but well, it's a kind of collateral damage, right? To call it something. Is it a model that could be effective in other countries, with the phenomenon of crime that we have in countries like Chile, for example, a very different reality from El Salvador, but where crime is a problem and it's an important citizen concern. A model like that, I insist, beyond our opinion on whether it's good or bad, on whether the violation of human rights it entails, could a dragnet model be effective in other countries with a different reality? I cannot speak for all realities, but in the Chilean case, evidently, this makes no sense. That is, first, because the criminological phenomenon is not even close to what was happening in El Salvador. That's the first thing. First and foremost, second, our organized crime is a basically post-pandemic phenomenon, where there isn't even a consensus at the statistical level about what we're facing. That is, we currently have a phenomenology, right, but we don't have certainty regarding the statistical data. Uh, every time some kind of report appears, the truth is that the statistics tremble because often they are not accurate in that regard. Uh, so from no point of view, and I would dismiss it from the outset, in fact, if there's any merit in observing this, it's precisely that Chile can become a benchmark for managing the crime problem within the context of the rule of law. That is, exactly the opposite of what we are talking about. And, Claudio, the phenomenon of organized crime in Chile, because when we talk about the maras, many times one tends to have the fantasy when talking about these violent groups to think that they are like large international drug trafficking groups. One links it perhaps mentally with Pablo Escobar and his zoo, let's say, with El Chapo and his eccentricities, but the maras didn't have that possibility of being a large transnational economic empire. It was a much more precarious phenomenon from that point of view, right? Which also makes their economic networks easier to dismantle or break up than when one talks about large organized crime organizations. Yes, in fact, the, of course, here a discussion has entered about what we understand by organized crime, that is, because we could perfectly well think that today organized crime has moved from the neighborhoods to organized crime of the state through corruption, which is also organized crime. Uh, evidently, the criminality that existed there is a criminality, yes, of marginality, with a certain level of structure, a certain level of much violence, much, and with the possibility of doing a lot of damage. But the question that immediately arises is, why didn't these people take power, for example? Ah, that is, or they were, and many answers that many researchers there who have been working on these issues for longer tell you is that they say, "Well, it's because in reality the business was so good that territorial control was enough, with the exploitation of certain illegal markets, even low or medium scale, but they were not capable, right, of having an agenda to take power in such a way, because even they were parasitic, and it's the parasitic stage, and evidently, of the link with the state. So, in fact, that issue is very interesting because let's think that El Secot, which is confinement, evidently, but it also speaks of terrorism. Of course, the T in Secot is terrorism. It's terrorism. In fact, and there was a debate when the legislation was modified there regarding whether terrorism is or is not organized crime. In the, and this is a debate that we've even had in Chile, that is, whether it's organized crime, whether it's not, it's a debate that doesn't really make much sense. In principle, the dividing line would be that a terrorist organization does have a political program, that is, you want to overthrow that state, you want to conquer that state, and you can provide yourself, right, with tools that organized crime gives you, which basically organized crime, the heart of organized crime is the capacity to generate economic profit. That is, it's difficult to think of organized crime, right, not altruistically, etc., but basically. But, however, for example, in international classifications of organized crime measurement in many places in the world, terrorism, without any doubt, is part of criminal organizations. Of course, but there are different goals. That's why the use of the word terrorism, which Bukele also uses a lot to talk about gangs, is it merely a propaganda instrument or does it have some substance? No, I, look, I've been qualifying my opinion because, evidently, in a first approach, one would tend to reject it, okay? But there are professors from there who have indicated to me that, in fact, for example, a very serious attack by gang members when they burned a bus with civilians, ah, clearly there was a power struggle with the state regarding, without having such an explicit agenda in terms of governance, right, they were there in a tension with the state, or for example, the fact of increasing homicide rates during certain periods, and that has to do with a previous stage, which is negotiation. One must remember that they, the state, negotiated with criminal organizations. Of course. In essence, the negotiation was: we give them certain advantages, we give them prison benefits, or we release certain people in exchange for them lowering violence. Of course. So, when you enter into negotiation, you are recognizing that non-state subject, you are giving them some kind of attribution, right? And that could eventually be a basis for the terrorism issue, okay? Uh, and one must think that what happens with Bukele is that he breaks, right, in that line, and says, "No, we don't negotiate, and we produce, right, this issue of capture and the dragnet, and the dragnet," but in reality, there was a long history of negotiations. Ah, so Bukele himself had also been part of that negotiation, and Bukele himself had been part of those negotiations. Of course. Uh, Claudio, when it reaches the level it is today in El Salvador, as you said, where in practice the rule of law does not apply, where citizens cannot appeal, they can appeal, but they won't achieve anything, let's say, appealing to justice, with habeas corpus, with knowing, well, what's happening? Why was this person detained? What are they accused of? Those guarantees in practice do not exist, right? What effect does that have on society? I'm thinking not only about crime, but about society as a whole, about universities, about academia, about the media, about civil society organizations. What effect does a situation like that cause? Look, I'm going to say this as still in the process of this information. What I told you, I arrived very recently, I have many notes and accumulated material. I think it's not. What's happening is interesting because it's penal authoritarianism, but based on political authoritarianism. That is, it's difficult to think, even considering the possible Chilean experience, if one wants to tighten the system much more, one will necessarily have to make certain gains in the political sphere. So, there's the political, and there's the penal, and in between there's society. Uh, the support that these measures have had is indisputable. In fact, there are some calculations from there that when the transfer of prisoners from Tren de Aragua to El Salvador was made, that would have affected Bukele's image in El Salvador. Today it doesn't, because he got rid of them, right? And he already transferred them. Uh, so there's a part that is a rather curious situation where, of course, a part of the population doesn't want to return to the past, and I think no political body wants to return to the situation of the gang era, but at the same time, right, they've had to accept and resign themselves to certain freedoms. Now, what one observes, for example, there's also an aesthetic aspect. There's a power aspect, power is also, evidently, expressed aesthetically, from the moment you enter the airport, from all the amount of mugs, pins, etc., in case of exalting Bukele's figure, his interventions which are of a media nature, his performance also in communication terms. Uh, that has also penetrated, right, into a different form of penal dictatorship, and I think that academics also haven't managed to understand it yet, because we've always thought of a very rigid, very heavy system, right? But this even has a different dynamic. Now, of course, what happened before in El Salvador was terrible. One has to think that, for example, there are victims' associations of gang members, which I, at least, was very surprised by. All those people evidently don't want to return to a previous situation. Of course. Claudio, how does the system work today? For whom are, for example, judges? For whom are prosecutors? For whom, one understands, have the ethical, professional duty, the vocation to do justice, to if a person is detained, well, see if there is indeed evidence to convict them or not, if due process has been followed, if you are a prosecutor to pursue people who are indeed criminals and not simply anyone who is detained for any reason. How, what did you see of how the system works with those, with all those judges, with all those prosecutors today in El Salvador? Yes, look, uh, well, from the information I was able to gather, obviously I cannot provide much more detail, evidently. I think they largely live in a somewhat schizophrenic scenario. In fact, in terms of language, for example, when many of these people refer to the regime, I initially thought it was Bukele's regime, but in reality, they refer to the regime, the state of exception regime. But it's a kind of language game. So they are moving in two, in two. Excuse me, Claudio, something that is very ingrained in the population in El Salvador. El Salvador, I asked many people, and they told me, "No, my brother or my son was taken away because of the regime." Of course, that's what they say, right? Because there's no specific evidence, it's not that they took you because you're accused of such and such. Nobody says, nobody says dictatorship, for example. Of course. But they are taken away because of the regime, which is this kind of big umbrella that covers what happens, which in essence means they can detain you for anything, and it's because of the regime. The regime, of course, which in essence is decree 333 that gives rise to the state of exception and the complementary legislation, right? But, of course, so in it's a case study, evidently, how you are a justice official in a model of this type. Ah. Because at least in a rule of law model, you can criticize, there's even a concept called the neutralization of the norm, where you could eventually, justice system operators, when there's a very unjust norm, you could neutralize it, okay? Uh, so, of course, in this case, for example, there are cases that are under the common regime, common crime, uh, and there are others, and the cases, right, that have to do with the world of gangs, which is the state of exception. In fact, I those days, well, I collected many newspapers, especially the newspapers that were financed by the government, and these days there was a detention, for example, a drug trafficking case of a boat, a boat that was coming from Colombia with drugs, and they detained it on the coast, and of course, I asked if that fell under the regime, under which regime, uh, and it's very curious because, of course, they told me, well, it will depend on the police, the police could perfectly well introduce that case into the state of exception regime with all the harshness that implies. So, the officials, there is evidently brutal self-censorship in the system, there is no possibility of criticism. Uh, there are judges who are outside El Salvador, and there are not, and I think the most tense situation is being experienced precisely by the justice system officials, many of them trained, evidently, under the theoretical frameworks of a state of law, of Western models, etc., because, of course, because the state of exception has been extended, that is, exception is becoming the rule. So, that's the problem. Claudio, do you think there's anything Bukele has done in El Salvador that one could salvage for a country like Chile, or that one could say, "That could be imitated or brought here"? Thinking about what many politicians say, right, that they have even gone to El Salvador to bring it as an example and to say that there is a model that we can implement. Do you think there's anything salvageable? No, from my point of view, nothing. Nothing. That is, besides, uh, the problems we have in Chile, which are not few, I think the biggest problem we have today is a brutal, brutal incarceration rate. We currently have the highest incarceration rate in Chile's history. So, before looking at what's happening in other exceptional places, we should obviously call on the political body to say, "Well, what are your solutions to tackle the incarceration rate we have in Chile?" But, excuse me, Claudio, here the discussion is the opposite, meaning the public opinion demand and what politicians say is the opposite. We need to imprison more people. The system is too lenient and lets too many people go free. Of course, because the political world is in a drift where they discovered that the issue of crime also generates electoral profitability. So we have a social democracy, an absolutely disoriented left in the field of criminal policy, right, that has no agenda of its own, and we have a right, evidently, that is incorporating more elements for this. That is, what will be the objective? That we reach 80,000, 100,000? That is, as we like to compare ourselves with developed countries, right, and we are part of the OECD. Our figures today are brutal in terms of incarceration. Claudio. And but that means people who are currently imprisoned should not be, evidently. That is, one has to think that the burden of the system, unfortunately, is in drug policy and property crime, and much of that property crime is less violent. Uh, the system in Chile, evidently, is a system that is on the verge of bursting. Ah, in fact, today at a seminar we were discussing, what are we waiting for? Another, another case like San Miguel, that is, what are we waiting for to make us take action? Of course, but the response from the political power of all sectors in Chile at this moment is, well, we need to build more prisons, we need to build a lot of prisons. I hope, I don't expect rational answers from the political power today. That is, in the field of criminal policy, most of the answers from political power are directly irrational. I cannot, I cannot attribute rationality to what they are proposing. Why is it irrational to say that more prisons need to be built? That is, the increase is irrational. That is, there are a huge number of negative effects in social terms, in personal terms, in budgetary terms, and even, and this is a boomerang for crime control, in the mass incarceration of a society. That is, there are no positive effects, evidently, in a higher incarceration rate, especially if we want to boast as a vanguard society, a state of law, etc. But, of course, when you said, for example, uh, uh, uh, to imagine well, and I think it's a very interesting topic, we're not a bit like El Salvador, but I think it's interesting, it's very interesting to talk about this because it goes very much against the grain of what one hears every day in political discussions. There is, you said, property crime that is not violent and issues more related to drugs where there are too many people imprisoned in those cases, meaning that's almost 60%. Look, what do you mean? For example, a person who is pickpocketing on the street, should they not go to jail? Or a person who, in what type of drug-related offenses should they not go to jail? What happens is that jail cannot be the only, that is, to regulate a person, to deprive them of liberty cannot be the only solution to a social conflict, in this case, a criminal conflict, right? We must have the capacity as a society, right, to build a whole system of alternative penalties or other types of alternative compliance. One has to think that jail should be the last resort that society has to punish, okay? So, when it becomes the first resort, evidently something is not working. I know that the punitive mood and what I'm saying, evidently, is not the most, not the most popular, not popular, but but evidently, but the evidence indicates it. Ah, the countries with the best social models, with more integration, with better per capita income, with less exclusion are curiously the countries that have lower incarceration rates. Okay? Now, not because it's the opposite, precisely because they are countries that have all these elements, crime is lower, and therefore they don't need to incarcerate so many people. I can say it as you want, but evidently, right, for example, today we were analyzing, these days we have been analyzing the female incarceration rate in Chile. Many of these, the brutal increase in the incarceration rate in Chile, female in Chile, moreover, linked, right, to many drug cases, street-level drug dealing, minor offense cases, what sense does it make for the state to spend so much on these people? Ah, so I know there is a huge public voice for more punishment, but, of course, a more punitive society doesn't mean it's a healthier society, and it doesn't mean it's safer. In essence, if we put more people who are eventually committing crimes in jail for long periods, doesn't that make society safer? Yes, but people, but those defendants, those convicted will have to leave, those will have families, you will break the social fabric, etc. Unfortunately, there is no path, there is a path that requires more than penalty, because we already have a lot of penalty. Evidently, we need better organization, we need better public policies, we need a more committed academia to these public policies. This is a long road, this is a long-term road. These are long-term public policies because the other path, right, leads us to absolutely nothing. Claudio González, thank you very much for having joined us today talking about a topic that matters. Done, thank you very much. [Music] Thank you very much for having joined us today in this episode of Lo que importa. Remember to always stay tuned for all our updates. Monday, new episodes of Animales Políticos with Cristóbal Velolio. Tuesday, the opinion column, and every Wednesday, a new topic to delve into in Lo que importa. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow us on Spotify, and stay very attentive to our updates. We'll meet during the week. Bye. Lo que importa was presented by Grupo Planeta and by Arauco. Renewables for a better life.