President Nayib Bukele published a detailed statement this week responding to international commentary on El Salvador’s declining homicide rate, arguing that selective use of data has led to misleading conclusions about the country’s security transformation.
Bukele said El Salvador has historically suffered extraordinarily high murder rates dating back to the civil war of the 1980s, with violence levels that remained comparable to an active war zone for decades. “It’s striking how armchair experts rush to conclusions after looking at only a tiny slice of the data,” he wrote, adding that broader historical context is essential for accurate analysis.
According to the president, the last year unaffected by his administration’s security policies was 2018. After taking office in 2019 and launching the Territorial Control Plan on June 20 of that year, a sharp and sustained decline in homicides became visible starting in July. He noted that the downward trend continued through 2020 and 2021.
Bukele emphasized that crime did not fall to levels consistent with a safe country until the full-scale offensive against gangs and the implementation of the State of Exception in 2022. He stated that by 2023 El Salvador had become safer than the United States, by 2024 safer than Canada, and that in 2025 the homicide rate dropped an additional 30 percent, placing it below that of many European countries.
He also highlighted a change in the nature of violent crime, explaining that around 90 percent of current cases are now linked to domestic violence or alcohol-related disputes. Bukele concluded that extortion, once affecting roughly 80 percent of Salvadorans, has nearly disappeared and that there are no longer unsafe areas in the country, asserting that El Salvador has moved from being the world’s murder capital to the safest country in the Western Hemisphere.