How God Transformed El Salvador as Murder Capital of the World into the Safest Country in the Western Hemisphere

Last week a friend send me an interview of Tucker Carlson with the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. Since he was elected in 2019 (yes, only 4 years ago!), his country has been transformed from one of the most dangerous places on earth, to the most safe country in the Western hemisphere (North and South America).

How did he do it?

What was his secret to transform his country?

In this newsletter I will unpack his story.

Watch the interview below.

In 2019, when Bukele was elected as the president he faced big problems. Among the country of 6 million people, 70,000 gang members were killing people at random, smuggling drugs and committed all kinds of crime. They were the murder capital of the world: more dangerous than Haiti or Iraq. The country was in bad shape.

“When I came to office I knew that you cannot lead your country, if there is no peace. People need to have the right to move, work, own property and basic rights need to be accepted.” Bukele says.

How did Bukele and his team work on peace?

“We have an official story, and a real story.”, he shares. “In the official one we had a plan with different steps. We doubled the police force and the army. We equipped them. We fought the gangs, they fought back, we put all of them in jail and we pacified the country in 3 weeks.

But the real story: ITS A MIRACLE!

When the gangs starting to fight us back, they killed 87 people in 3 days. The equivalent would be 5,000 murders in 3 days in the US. We were fighting against 70,000 gang members. It was an impossible task. They were intermingling with the population and were killing people randomly.

So we PRAYED. Several times. For wisdom and to win the war. We prayed for no civilian casualties. All of my security council are believers.

The biggest gang, MS-13, are a satanic group. They practice all kinds of satanic rituals. We have found several altars. There is a spiritual war. If you win the spiritual war, it will manifest in the physical. The impressive victory was because we won the spiritual war!”

Within 3 years, Bukele and his administration put 70,000 gangs members in prison without a civilian causality. Unfortunately 8 police officers died.

God truly did a miracle.

In the Bible, Paul reminds us what Bukele describes in Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV):

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual [hosts] of wickedness in the heavenly [places].

There is a spiritual war going on. The enemy is having strongholds on the minds of the people (2 Cor 10:4-6). The devil and his angels control territories and places (e.g. Daniel 10). Things happen in the spiritual first, before they will manifest in the natural.

We win the war by taking on the armor of God and pray!

“After what happened, we received a lot of condemnation. A lot of them were human rights organizations. They were worried about the human rights of the killers. Of course they have human rights, but if you need to prioritize, I prioritize the rights of the hard working man or woman. We all did this without help from the outside. Why did we get so much condemnation? I think they are afraid of the example. It’s so easy and without aid.”

This story is a great story of transformation. The battle starts on our knees. It starts with prayer. From there, we need decisive leadership, honesty, integrity and hard work. Leadership based on Gods wisdom.