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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're going to take a cue from one of our callers for a segment now, as we like to do. If you were listening at the end of yesterday's show, we had one of our call-ins for immigrants from anywhere to mention a news story from your country of origin that other listeners might find interesting or important. Our very last caller, right at the end of the show, was Carlos in Cortland, New York who grew up in El Salvador.

Carlos: Last year I was there, and it was the first time that I was able to walk around the streets, go for a walk without fear for my literal life. Salvadorians nowadays support this president. Now, I don't support him blindly, but Salvadorians do support him because they feel safe.

Brian Lehrer: El Salvador, one of the main countries sending migrants to this country in the surge of recent years because people felt so unsafe, is no longer at the top of the list of countries in our hemisphere from which people are arriving here. It's been in the news, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, no longer El Salvador, at least for the moment. Notice that Carlos mentioned the president of El Salvador, who has made a point of saying-- the caller made a point of saying he doesn't support blindly because Carlos also mentioned the trade off that he says dominates the coverage of El Salvador in the US press.

Carlos: A lot of what I hear from Democrats, for the most part, it's all these people that have no rights that are being incarcerated, and that you're violating human rights and whatnot.

Brian Lehrer: The crackdown has been so effective in El Salvador that they had an election in neighboring Guatemala on Sunday that included candidates who promised to emulate the Salvadoran president success. Honduras has launched a Salvador-style crackdown too, Honduras as well as Guatemala. With inspiration from Carlos on the phones, let's take a closer look. We have two guests, Ariel Ruiz Soto, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, and Jody García, New York Times correspondent in Guatemala City, covering the election. Jody and Ariel, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Jody García: Thank you for inviting me. I just want to clarify that I'm a contributor for The New York Times, and I work in Guatemala for Plaza Pública.

Brian Lehrer: Okay. You're not a New York Times correspondent per se, but I see your article there on the election. Any other listeners with connections to El Salvador, or Guatemala, or Honduras, or even other countries in the region, and again, to Carlos in Cortland, thank you for setting this off on yesterday's show. Other listeners, help us report this story. What are you hearing from back home about the crackdown, about crime and human rights, about the election in Guatemala, anything related? Your stories, your comments, your questions, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Give us a call.

Ariel, can you begin by describing the crackdown in El Salvador? What was it meant to address? How successful has it been on its own terms?

Ariel Ruiz Soto: Sure, and thank you for having me. It's great to be with you. El Salvador, indeed, has undergone over the last year-and-a-half or so a very different perspective in terms of reducing crime, at least some types of crime in the country. It's relatively a small country. One of the key things that occurred was that President Bukele, a little bit over a year ago, presented a state national declaration on security, which tried to, inside and outside of their biggest jail systems, make it more difficult for gang members to provide, and to send instructions on how to essentially communicate with each other and plan targeted attacks.

He has been controversial, as your callers mentioned, and specifically because many of that has led to arrest without warrants in some places. He has increased surveillance in other places where the public have become more militarized almost. That has brought a sense of security for many Salvadorans, but it also has, from some observers, made it increasingly difficult for migrants or for anybody there to think about who and how to essentially move and go about their life.

It's an important decrease. Your caller alluded to this. In 2015 or so, Salvador had a homicide rate over 100 per 100,000 people, and as of 2022, their homicide rate went down to 7.8 per 100,000 people. Now, there has been a lot of allegations about what the actual number of people that is being killed in El Salvador based on gang reports and everything else, but from a hundred to seven, or to even eight, even 10 would be a significant decrease.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, decrease. For the unfamiliar, who is the president of El Salvador who instituted these policies?

Ariel Ruiz Soto: Nayib Bukele is an important character here in this picture, and has essentially ran from the beginning of his campaign with that, with trying to increase security in the country.

Brian Lehrer: You know what? Carlos, the caller from yesterday, the clips of whom we played a minute ago, is calling in again, and I'm going to let him continue. For those of you who were listening at the end of yesterday's show, maybe you remember that it was really rushed with Carlos because we got to his call in the last 45 seconds of the show. What he did, he did very efficiently, but I think not as much as he wanted to say. Since he inspired this conversation, we're going to take another call from Carlos in Cortland, New York who is calling in again right now. Carlos, I'm glad you happen to be listening again this morning as we follow up on your issue. Hi, there.

Carlos: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for having me again. I'm a regular listener again. There's nothing better to do if I'm up, I guess, anyway, than listen to NPR. Your show is great anyway.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Carlos: One point that I wanted to make yesterday, and something that people don't-- when you are detached from something you don't know, you really don't understand. I grew up-- half of my family was murdered in the civil war. There's so much turmoil in me with my country, with this country, what was happening. My grandmother raised me. Half her children, four of her children were murdered in that war, and this woman raised me. It's still taking me so long to realize and make sense of what happened. As a child in the middle of war, you're not told anything. You may have questions, but you're just told to shut up because they're going to come and get you.

After growing up in the '80s, from 1982, I went into the '90s. I'm a boy. Then gang violence starts. I remember coming out of school, and I have to stick my head out one way and the other, and then I have to run home, otherwise, I'm going to get stabbed, or they're going to take my shoes, or they're going to take my shirt. Luckily, my mother had already left the country, and I came here in 1998. I lived a good part of that gang violence.

When I landed here, it just got worse. Going to that point, what I wanted to make is, last week, I was listening to the radio in El Salvador. They were remembering about two or three years ago, gangs set a bus on fire full with something like 17 to 20 people were burned alive. People talk about human rights, and say, "Oh, these men are being incarcerated, and they're not being listened to." These aren't men anymore. These aren't people anymore. Some of these individuals have no heart. They're sick. You cannot have them out on the street.

Who in the right mind for whatever amount of money would have-- this is something else too that I wish-- because this is a mental health issue. Everything gets permeated with everything else. To a degree, these people that you're incarcerating, I don't agree 100%, again, I don't believe in following any man blindly. The first thing you want to do is question. Nayib Bukele is an aristocrat. He comes from money. A lot of the things he's done is because of this position he was given from early childhood.

It's hard for me to trust somebody like that, but whatever he is doing, and part of it, I think, is because if he didn't do that, there would have been a coup at some point. The other side would have persecuted them. It's very strategic what he's done, but the truth is--

Brian Lehrer: It's been effective. Carlos, let me leave it there so I can get some other people on who are calling in, and get a response to what you've, so clearly and passionately, laid out for all our listeners. Again, we appreciate you calling in.

My tiny little connection to the story is that I was in San Salvador one time, I think it was 2007. I was visiting a cousin of mine there. I was shocked to see because I didn't know anything about what was going on in the city at that time, that there are military-looking armed guards in front of ordinary stores along the streets and in shopping centers. That was just a little indication to my outsider's eye of the level of concern about crime that there was in San Salvador, at least, in 2007.

Jody García, investigative reporter at Plaza Pública and contributor to The New York Times, can I turn to you for a reaction and just more analysis in context of what Carlos was laying out there?

Jody García: Yes, sure. Thank you for having me. Guatemala doesn't have the same situation as El Salvador but what you were saying about saying security guards in front of a library or any kind of store, that's something that you can still see in Guatemala. Some of the candidates to the President also offered to emulate what Nayib Bukele is doing in El Salvador, which was really concerning and didn't have too much audience. People don't want that exactly here because we already have a lot of problems with democracy, human rights violation.

If you hear or read the international reports, you will see that Guatemala is going backwards. This has to do with the fight against crime and corruption especially. There's a lot of resistance from the system to going that way. As you might know, on Sunday we had elections, and surprisingly, one candidate that was not appearing in the polls in the first places, he made it to a runoff. That's really surprising because this is an indicator that Guatemalan people wants to keep going in the way of fighting against corruption.

Brian Lehrer: Was that candidate who didn't appear in the polls initially, but now has made the runoff, saying explicitly that they wanted to emulate what the president of El Salvador was doing?

Jody García: No, his name is Bernardo Arévalo. The other candidate, Sandra Torres, she's saying that she wants to emulate that. She calls the plan order in transformation. There's a sector of the population that wants that but there's also a lot of news and concerns about the human rights violation that are happening in jails in Guatemala and in El Salvador. Jails in Guatemala are already very overcrowded. This candidate that made it to a runoff, Bernardo Arévalo, he is more promising a fight against corruption and the other candidate, Sandra Torres is more focused on security in the streets.

Brian Lehrer: Jody, what are the specific human rights concerns that you hear articulated in Guatemala about El Salvador? You mentioned overcrowding in the jails. Is it also torture? Is it also not even just people who are incarcerated, but extrajudicial killings of people considered to be in the gangs, police officers just executed? What are the human rights concerns that you hear about?

Jody García: Yes. Guatemala, as I was saying, has overcrowded jails. We hear a lot of stories from inside, fights against gangs, extortion. It is unbelievable, but a lot of people in jail connected to the gangs, they have internet, Wi-Fi, and a lot of excursions that people from outside [unintelligible 00:14:28] can't from the jail.

Also we hear a lot of concerns about innocent people being sent to the jail over invented cases. Right now, the biggest concern is also against a really prominent journalist that was sentenced this past month to six years in prison. He's in an area where he's only by himself. We hear that he doesn't receive security enough. He's been constantly threatened by other people in the jail. He's a person that wrote a lot about crime and corruption, and right now is in a jail in denial, but he's also in danger to be attacked.

I think in Guatemala right now we are seeing a lot of concerns about who is going to the jail. Carlos was saying in the '80s security was the same. You could be detained on the street for doing nothing, and then sent to jail or torture or something. Right now, in Guatemala the biggest concern is free speech. If you say something that the government might consider that is not right, they say that they will investigate you because you're obstructing justice.

That doesn't make any sense. I have a lot of journalist colleagues that fled the country over that because they were afraid that they will send to the jail. They think the government don't kill you right now, but they will [unintelligible 00:16:07] your freedom. That's the main concern right now here.

Brian Lehrer: A few more minutes on the crackdown on gangs and crimes in El Salvador that's been very successful, but very controversial there, and how Guatemala and Honduras are beginning to emulate what's been going on in El Salvador, and also get to the effects on migration to the United States. We are starting to hear less about a surge of migrants from those particular three countries and what is often called the migrant crisis here in New York and in other parts of the United States. There may be a relationship between this controversial crackdown on crime and the slowing of the migrant flow. Right now let's take another call. Taylor in White Plains, you're on WNYC. Hi, Taylor.

Taylor: Oh, hi. [inaudible 00:17:00] for having me. I was telling the person that answered your phone how I came to the US back in 1981. This was the Civil War, I never went back until the year 2017. I had reconnected with my high school friends over there. When I went back, they still had the gang problems. They would tell me things like, "Don't talk. hang out with us, don't get into the bus," and things like that. There were even these taxis where they would be called the safe taxi, meaning you could go in any of those and it wasn't gang-related.

Everyone would tell me the same thing. You have to somehow know where to go. Completely don't fall asleep with the two eyes, you got to have one eye open when you go to sleep. After the [unintelligible 00:17:57] experience the first time I went back, a shoot-out, one of my friends told me, "Don't worry, it's three blocks away." I kept going back once a year just to have a high school reunion with them.

I met Bukele just before he got elected when he was here in New York. He's a true salesman, he can sell and you can convince him to sell. Now I do like him because he's cleaning up the mess that all the corrupt government left behind. What I don't like about him is that he tends to be closed-minded at times.

Let me give you an idea. When he unilaterally installed Bitcoin as a legal tender, that's a big mistake. I'm an accountant, I'm not an economist, but that thing should've never happened. He just got it done because he wanted to. There's an old song from Black Sabbath called Mob Rules. It says, "When you listen to fools, the mob rules." That's the danger of the country he's in. If you're going to listen to a fool, it doesn't mean that he's, all the time, a fool, but he's not, all the time, an intellectual. When he makes a mistake like that one, it will have extreme consequences.

Now, the good thing about not having gangs is that the economy is flourishing. There's more tourism. There wasn't any tourism in the old days, meaning before Bukele time. Overall, what the country needed, it was the lesser of the evils. The election of Bukele wasn't really-- People loved him. It was just the hate towards the previous governments, the corruption that they had was so intense that the whole country, there were literally Salvadoran citizens flying from the US into El Salvador just to vote, just to get it done.

Brian Lehrer: Taylor, thank you. Thank you very much for your stories and for your call. Ariel, your main expertise, I understand, is in migration in the Americas. How has the crackdown affected migration?

Ariel G. Ruiz Soto: I think there's a few threads here that speak exactly to what your callers were talking about, and that is that there has been a perception of hope building in El Salvador, a hope toward maybe lesser violence, more stability, and better economy in the short term that has actually, in some ways, helped reduce the initial impulses of immigrating from El Salvador.

These are not affecting everybody uniformly, and I think that's one of the key components that we should acknowledge that violence has reduced across the country, but not evenly across all places. Rural areas and outside of El Salvador continue to have some long-lasting issues of violence. In total, migration from El Salvador has reduced, and whether one agrees or disagrees with the tactics of the Bukele administration, they have led to lower numbers of migrants.

Just in 2023 so far, this fiscal year, we've seen about 41,000 migrants being encountered at the US-Mexico border. That may seem like a lot, but it's actually a decrease from before when we've seen migrants from other nationalities, now take a more relevant role. For example, there have been more Colombians, more Cubans, more Ecuadorians who have shown up at the US-Mexico border than Salvadorians.

Not everything, I think, can be boiled down to the securitization and authorization that President Bukele has been spearheading in the country. I do think that your callers do reflect this perspective that, compared to the '80s when we saw a significant high wave of migration from El Salvador and Central America, generally because of civil wars, now we're seeing more stabilization over the short term.

The question is how long will it stay? If there are migrants or the economic features will improve enough, that would actually continue to lay the foundation for that. We know that El Salvador has elections coming up and that President Bukele is going to run for reelection. That is something that is also being controversial but if that does happen, that may be the time to see whether something actually changes on migration routes.

Just very quickly final point on this. I think both of your callers really show how migration from El Salvador is so importantly intertwined now in the United States. About 22% of Salvadoran people live actually in the United States, and I mean the total Salvadorian population, actually, 22% live in the United States. That's almost one out of every four Salvadoran living in the US even though they were born in El Salvador. I think that really speaks to the reasons why that's so unique.

Brian Lehrer: We thank our caller, Carlos in Cortland, one more time for inspiring this segment. Listeners, we'll continue to take your inspiration when you call in on things that we think we can dig deeper on, that a lot of our listeners might not know about. Carlos, thank you, and we thank our guests, Ariel Ruiz Soto, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, and Jody García, investigative reporter at Plaza Pública and a contributor to The New York Times. You can see her reporting on this week's Guatemala elections in The Times. Thank you both so much for joining us.

Jody García: Thank you so much for the space.

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