El Salvador's Mega Prisons As Campaign Promises In Colombia

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has found a landing ground in Colombia for his most controversial government policy: crime-fighting mega-prisons. Diego Molano and Jaime Arizabaleta, candidates for the mayoral offices of Bogotá and Cali, respectively, and representatives of the conservative Democratic Center Party, are advocates of authority and the iron fist approach as a solution not only to crime but also to corruption. Inspired by Bukele, they have proposed building mega prisons if they win the October 29 regional elections.

The first to unveil the idea was Arizabaleta, who announced the joint proposal on his Twitter account on Wednesday night: “There will be two Bukele-style mega-prisons in Colombia, one in Bogotá and one in Cali, that I am building for criminals become “corrupt people,” he wrote. Molano, a former defense minister in Iván Duque’s government, came up with the idea in an interview with Blu Radio on Thursday: “We need a prison in Bogotá, a mega-prison for at least 3,000 criminals.”

Neither Arizabaleta nor Molano have mentioned the potential cost of their planned mega-prisons or the time it would take to build them. However, it is a first tangible expression of the admiration that a broad section of the Colombian right has for the Salvadoran President. Bukele’s name is increasingly being heard on the streets, spoken by people who believe a crusade like the one he undertook in El Salvador should be repeated in Colombia. This bias has also crept into polls, such as a May poll by Datexco in which 55% of respondents said “yes” to whether the country needs a president like Bukele.

Fernando Tamayo, expert in criminal law and penitentiary system at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, explains that the biggest problem of this type of prisons is the difficulty of their management: to allow visits with all the related controls and to ensure security among the inmates around the Maintaining surveillance and order in such a large prison population requires a large number of wardens. And in Colombian prisons, Tamayo points out, there aren’t enough of them. “The Latin American experience with the mega-prisons in El Salvador has shown us that the rights of the deprived population have no immediate relevance,” he told EL PAÍS by phone.

The idea of importing Bukele’s model is also an obvious symptom of the lack of clear leadership on the Colombian right wing. Not even María Fernanda Cabal, who could rank as the country’s most conspicuous conservative leader, has contributed any novel ideas: she too has been inspired by Bukele and spared no complementary adjectives for the Salvadoran president.

Former Defense Secretary Diego Molano faces a no-confidence vote in the Senate. May 2021. Leonardo Vargas / HANDOUT (EFE)

The proposal had a significant impact in Colombia due to the insecurity prevailing in several parts of the country. In Buenaventura, dubbed a “laboratory” of total urban peace by President Gustavo Petro’s government after reaching a deal with the gangs operating there, terror has returned in recent weeks. In addition, skepticism about negotiations with armed groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Central General Staff (EMC), a splinter group of the FARC fueled by atrocities such as the killing of four indigenous minors in May, favors the idea of an iron fist.

However, authoritarianism has left a major mark on Colombian history: the extrajudicial executions, also known as “false positives”, carried out during the government of Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), during which the military, encouraged to do so, killed the number To increase combat casualties, civilians were killed and passed off as guerrillas. In 2021, then-Defense Secretary Molano faced a no-confidence vote in Congress after the opposition accused him of using “belligerent treatment” in suppressing popular demonstrations against the government of Iván Duque.

In El Salvador, too, government policies are under scrutiny. As part of the state of emergency Bukele declared more than a year ago, authorities have arrested more than 60,000 gang members in a country under siege by criminal organizations for decades. However, a Human Rights Watch report last January revealed that “large-scale abuses” were being committed, including violations of due process, mass arrests, deaths in custody and overcrowding.

Jaime Arizabaleta poses with a portrait of Nayib Bukele in a picture posted to his social media on May 12.

Overcrowding is another problem arising from mega prisons. Professor Tamayo recalls that in 1998, when an unconstitutional state was declared – a tool used by the Constitutional Court when certain requirements are met to deal with a serious situation – there were 33,009 prisoners in the country due to prison overcrowding and the overcrowding rate was high at 31%. Since then, other quotas have been created, but there has been no solution: today, prison overcrowding in Colombia is 24%, at times even 50%. “The idea of providing more quotas to control overcrowding has proven to be a failure as quotas are created and filled,” says Tamayo.

Tamayo concedes that it is difficult to discuss Molano and Arizabaleta’s proposal because it lacks a clear structure and the idea of social reintegration – the goal – remains elusive due to a lack of resources. However, he ventures an opinion, based on information gathered in several professional studies: “In general, the systems are based on people deprived of their liberty to have more contact with the outside world, to have more contact with their families and to have a greater chance of surviving.” have reintegration.” Society has a greater ability not to offend people again.”

Tamayo explains that the penal system arouses strong public feelings based on fears of crime, insecurity and violence. “The big problem is that these projects have not shown that they are really effective in combating insecurity,” he points out. He adds that many of these models appear efficient in the short term, as they generate positive numbers in terms of convictions, incarcerations and an increase in prison population, which creates a sense of greater security. However, he concludes: “Ultimately, they lead to more exclusion and greater social problems.”