While national and international organizations continue to condemn the Argentine government for the arbitrary arrests during the popular mobilization in front of Congress, Patricia Bullrich traveled to El Salvador to visit one of the prisons where the confinement system was long questioned for violating human rights.
The trip of the Minister of Security to the lands of Nayib Bukele aims to replicate in Argentina the confinement regimes whose test trial in Rosario resulted in more chain attacks ordered by drug trafficking.
Bullrich visited on Sunday the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot)as a prelude to what will be a new meeting with Bukele. The meeting between the two is “the result of the bilateral meeting” between the Salvadoran president and Javier Milei, a few months ago.
“We welcome Minister Patricia Bullrich, to the safest country in Latin America”, where “you and your team will be able to see first-hand the ‘Bukele Model’”, the Salvadoran Minister of Security, Gustavo Villatoro, published in X.
The Argentine minister’s response was in the same tone: “El Salvador was the most violent country and became a country where families can walk, live in peace and tranquility”.
“All thanks to a program to destroy the murderous gangs that are locked up here today”praised in a filmed video in front of one of the massive cells and together with the director of the National Academy of Public Security, César Flores Murillo.
The Cecot that Bullrich toured was built in a remote area of the Tecoluca district, about 75 kilometers southeast of San Salvador. It has capacity for 40 thousand prisoners and currently houses about 14 thousand, according to official data.
The minister said that Flores Murillo “shared with her a very complete and detailed explanation about the administration of the Police and its important results”.
“I was also with Selvin Misael Perdomo González and Josselin Esmeralda Leonardo García, graduates of the Argentine National Gendarmerie, who share and apply their knowledge in the Police here. We are proud to export the energy, discipline and loyalty of our force!“he added.
After that tour, the official plans to meet with Bukele with a view to replicate security measures similar to those adopted in El Salvador, but against Argentine drug trafficking.
El Salvador has been under an emergency regime since March 2022expanded 26 times in the pro-government majority Congress, after an escalation of homicides attributed to gangs.
Humanitarian organizations received more than 6 thousand complaints of human rights violations in this context, mainly due to arbitrary arrests, torture and short-term disappearances, in addition to denouncing the death of more than 300 detainees, most with signs of violence.
According to official data, in this context arrests total more than 80 thousandof which more than 7 thousand people were released on parole.
The government attributes much of the decrease in violence to this regime, which had been occurring since 2016 after registering, in 2015, a rate of 103 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
