El Salvador's president Nayib Armando Bukele-Ortez (left), attended President Rodrigo Chaves-Robles (right) work session with his government team at the Jorge Arturo Montero Castro prison. Photo via Casa Presidencial.
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Published on
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
On
Tuesday, El Salvador's
re-elected president Nayib Armando
Bukele-Ortez, attended President Rodrigo Chaves-Robles'
work session with his government team at the
Jorge Arturo Montero Castro prison,
formerly known as La Reforma jail, in
Alajuela Province.
Bukele
has made international headlines for his "Territorial
Control Plan" implemented
in July 2019.
The
anti-gang effort lowered the country's
murder rate from 38/100,000 inhabitants in
2019 to 2.4/100,000 in 2023.
El
Salvador is the second safest country in
the Americas, behind Canada, Bukele said.
According
to Bukele, in his
country, "there
are totally sterile prisons so, there is
no chance for convicts (to organize a
plan) to kill anyone who leaves there."
The
Salvadoran president stressed that the
prisons in Costa Rica "are
luxury" compared
to the prisons they had before in El
Salvador.
He
advised Costa Rica to tighten its prison
system, calling it too indulgent.
"We
believe that the prison system should be
made less permissive," Bukele
noted. "We
must think more about the rights of those
who are outside (of prisons) and the right
of a country to have security."
“Costa Rica is a jewel that you must protect," Bukele advised. "You are currently seeing symptoms similar to those that El Salvador faced in the 1990s, and there’s still time to act."
Bukele
said that his
own country's
faced with rising crime before his first
government period. “We
saw how this disease evolved and grew
until it became uncontrollable, but by God’s
miracle, we managed to contain it. Believe me, you
don’t
want it to reach that point.”
Another
issue that caught Bukele's
attention is the budget that the country
spends on the maintenance of prisons,
which is equivalent to $1,200 monthly
for each prisoner.
What he
considered "excessive."
“We
built the largest prison in Latin America
for 40,000 inmates at a minimal cost
because we designed it ourselves,” he
stated.
Regarding
the rights of prisoners, Bukele stated
that controls must be increased on issues
such as visits that prisoners receive, and
access to benefits such as television. "Prisons
must prevent prisoners from using them as
their headquarters for crime," he
added.
Additionally,
Bukele announced the arrival of a flight
from El Salvador with a donation of 15
tons of food and 6 tons of emergency
equipment.
On
the same flight, a team of 100 people
arrived in the country, including
rescuers, first aid personnel and
emergency care experts.
The
Salvadoran team put themselves at the
orders of the National Emergency Committee
to collaborate with aid and rescue
operations during the flood emergencies.
That is the first of three flights with donations that will arrive in the country in the next few days, authorities said.
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