Wendover’s El Salvador Story Declares Victory on an Incomplete Murder Count
El Salvador is dramatically safer than it was. That is real, and any serious criticism must begin by acknowledging it.
But Wendover Productions' May 2023 video, How the World's Most Dangerous Country Solved Murder, turns a genuine collapse in gang violence into a story of solved murder while relying on an incomplete official homicide count and leaving out a crucial part of the government's earlier relationship with criminal gangs.
The problem is not that Bukele failed to improve security. The problem is that the video gives viewers a cleaner explanation of that improvement than the evidence permits.
The murder statistics do not count every killing
Wendover follows El Salvador's reported daily homicide average from 4.8 in March 2022 to 0.5 in May. The narrator acknowledges questions about the figures before declaring that the broad truth is undeniable.
That confidence is misplaced.
Since 2019, El Salvador has used a narrower homicide-counting methodology that excludes several categories of intentional deaths, including killings by security forces, murders in prisons, and bodies discovered in unmarked graves. This departs from the Bogotá Protocol, the regional standard, which includes intentional killings by authorities and deaths in prisons. InSight Crime's 2026 homicide review explains the exclusions.
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The timing matters. The UK Home Office's December 2025 country assessment documents that the National Police stopped including deaths from confrontations between security forces and suspected gang members, as well as bodies found in mass graves, in 2019. The official homicide rate fell from approximately 53 to 38 per 100,000 that same year.
That does not prove the entire reduction was manufactured through accounting. It does mean that comparisons across the period require qualifications the video never adequately supplies.
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Consider 2022. El Salvador officially reported 495 homicides, but the Associated Press reported that at least 120 additional killings of suspected gang members by security forces were excluded.
Those deaths were not necessarily unlawful. But they were still deaths caused by other people, and they belong in a comprehensive homicide measure.
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The problem has not disappeared. InSight Crime's March 2026 review recorded just 82 official murders in 2025, equivalent to 1.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, while explicitly warning that the figures exclude those same categories and cannot be independently verified with sufficient confidence.
A falling number can represent a genuine improvement while remaining an incomplete account of violence. Wendover acknowledges the uncertainty, then largely asks viewers to move past it.
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The government had already been bargaining with the gangs
The video briefly mentions speculation that the March 2022 massacre resulted from the collapse of a secret government-gang truce.
But this was not merely an interesting rumor.
On December 8, 2021, approximately 17 months before the video appeared, the U.S. Treasury announced sanctions against senior Salvadoran officials Osiris Luna and Carlos Marroquín over alleged covert negotiations with MS-13.
Treasury stated that Bukele's administration had provided financial incentives to MS-13 and Barrio 18 in 2020 to keep gang violence and confirmed homicides low. It also alleged that gang leaders agreed to provide political support to Bukele's Nuevas Ideas party in subsequent elections.
The negotiations reportedly included secret prison meetings and special privileges for incarcerated gang leaders, including mobile phones and prostitutes.
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This changes the political interpretation of the earlier security improvements.
Wendover presents Bukele's Territorial Control Plan as the principal explanation for the country's improving security before March 2022. Yet the Treasury allegations provide another possible explanation: at least part of the earlier reduction may have been achieved through negotiations and incentives offered to the very organizations the government subsequently declared war against.
The video mentions the possibility of a truce collapsing but does not explain the alleged political exchange behind it.
There is an important distinction here. Treasury sanctioned government officials; it did not obtain a criminal conviction against Bukele. The president denied the allegations, including when they were first reported in 2020.
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Subsequent reporting made the issue more serious.
In June 2025, ProPublica published an investigation based on internal documents, court records, and interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials. It reported that two senior Salvadoran officials involved in the negotiations told U.S. investigators that Bukele directed the talks.
The investigation also revealed that American agents suspected U.S. aid money had been diverted to gang-related arrangements and had prepared requests to examine financial accounts belonging to Salvadoran political figures. The outcome of that financial inquiry remains unknown, and U.S. prosecutors have not publicly accused Bukele of crimes related to the suspected diversion of USAID funds.
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This is not proof of the president's criminal guilt. It is evidence of a major political development that belongs in any serious explanation of how his security strategy evolved.
The distinction between negotiating with gangs and subsequently imprisoning tens of thousands of suspected gang members is central to understanding Bukele's presidency.
The crackdown worked. That does not mean the problem was solved.
I would reject an equally misleading argument that El Salvador's security improvement was simply fabricated.
There is substantial evidence that the crackdown weakened the gangs.
A peer-reviewed study by Miguel Paradela-López and José-Ignacio Antón, published in Defence and Peace Economics, used a regression-discontinuity approach to examine the effects of Bukele's security policies.
The researchers estimated that the Territorial Control Plan and state of exception together accounted for approximately three-quarters of the homicide-rate reduction between 2019 and 2024. That is meaningful evidence that the policies themselves contributed substantially to the improvement.
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The UK's December 2025 assessment reached a similar practical conclusion. Gang territorial control, extortion, and lethal violence had declined substantially. Residents of formerly gang-controlled communities reported being able to move more freely, access public spaces, and conduct ordinary activities without the previous restrictions.
The assessment also found that the number of active armed gang factions fell from 107 in 2020 to 53 in 2023.
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These findings make it difficult to argue that Bukele's security achievements were merely statistical theater.
But they do not establish that every murder is being counted, that the earlier gang negotiations played no role, or that mass incarceration was the only available way to achieve the reduction.
The defensible conclusion is that El Salvador experienced a major security transformation and that Bukele's policies contributed substantially to it.
That is impressive enough without calling murder solved.
The human cost deserves more than a passing acknowledgement
Wendover does discuss arbitrary arrests, overcrowded prisons, and the breakdown of judicial safeguards. It acknowledges that thousands may have been unjustly detained.
But the consequences have since become considerably more measurable.
In July 2026, Amnesty International published a major investigation into the state of exception. It reported:
- More than 90,000 people detained.
- At least 470 deaths in state custody.
- Approximately 8,000 people released after being found innocent, according to official sources.
Its research included six fact-finding visits, 109 interviews, and direct examination of more than 80 individual cases. It documented detention quotas, outdated police databases, profiling based on residence and socioeconomic circumstances, and institutional pressure to fabricate records supporting arrests.
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I will not pretend that all 470 deaths were proven murders or that every detained person was innocent. Those are different questions.
But deaths in state custody are the government's responsibility to explain. And releasing thousands of people after establishing their innocence is not a minor administrative inconvenience.
The October 2026 Congressional Research Service assessment puts the scale into further perspective: more than 92,000 people had been detained by June 2026, while a local human rights organization estimated at least 570 prison deaths by September. The emergency regime had received its 54th consecutive extension in August.
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The consequences extend beyond the prison system.
The institutional concerns raised by Wendover have also deepened. In July 2025, lawmakers amended the Constitution to remove presidential term limits. In July 2026, Bukele's Nuevas Ideas party nominated him to seek a third presidential term.
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The video warned that El Salvador was concentrating extraordinary authority in one elected leader. That warning has become more consequential, not less.
The verdict: A genuine security victory is not a solved murder problem
El Salvador has achieved something extraordinary in reducing gang violence. People who once feared travelling through their own neighborhoods can now enjoy freedoms that were previously denied to them.
That improvement deserves recognition.
But Wendover's central framing is too neat. It relies on a restricted homicide count, underexplains the government's earlier negotiations with criminal organizations, and gives insufficient weight to the human consequences of mass detention.
Its final argument that Salvadorans have the sovereign right to decide whether their security is worth the democratic sacrifice does not resolve these problems. Sovereignty does not make incomplete statistics complete, and popular support does not establish the innocence of everyone imprisoned.
I am not arguing that Bukele's security strategy failed. The evidence says otherwise.
I am arguing that the distinction between fewer gang killings, fewer officially recorded homicides, and fewer total intentional killings matters enormously.
El Salvador's streets became safer. Its gangs became weaker. But the government did not establish that murder had been solved, and the video did not establish that the reported numbers tell the whole story.
A genuine achievement does not need an incomplete ledger or a missing political history to look impressive.
References
1. How the World's Most Dangerous Country Solved Murder — Wendover Productions, May 16, 2023. Original video under examination; provides the security narrative, homicide figures, and the creator's stated qualifications.
2. Treasury Targets Corruption Networks Linked to Transnational Organized Crime — U.S. Department of the Treasury, December 8, 2021. Official sanctions notice detailing allegations of covert negotiations, financial incentives, and political support involving Salvadoran government officials and gangs.
3. U.S. Treasury: El Salvador government negotiated with gangs — Associated Press, December 8, 2021. Reports the sanctions announcement and Bukele's denial of the allegations.
4. Rights group: leaked El Salvador data confirm abuses — Associated Press, 2022. Documents the 495 official homicides in 2022, the excluded security-force killings, and the scale of prison overcrowding.
5. InSight Crime's 2025 Homicide Round-Up — InSight Crime, March 11, 2026. Provides the latest 2025 homicide figures and explains why El Salvador's official statistics cannot be directly compared with standardized regional homicide data.
6. Country Policy and Information Note: Fear of Gangs, El Salvador — UK Home Office, December 12, 2025. Provides evidence of genuine reductions in gang control and violence while documenting the methodological weaknesses in official homicide reporting.
7. Has the Iron Fist Against Criminal Gangs Really Worked in El Salvador? — Miguel Paradela-López and José-Ignacio Antón, Defence and Peace Economics, published online February 10, 2025; journal volume 37, issue 1, 2026. Provides a peer-reviewed quantitative assessment of the contribution of Bukele's security policies to homicide reductions.
8. Delay, Interfere, Undermine: How El Salvador's Government Impeded a U.S. Probe of MS-13 — ProPublica, June 12, 2025. Investigates the alleged gang pact using internal documents, court records, and interviews, while distinguishing unresolved financial allegations from established findings.
9. Security Without Rights: Impact of Mass Arbitrary Arrests and Denial of Due Process — Amnesty International, July 15, 2026. Provides detailed investigation of detentions, deaths in custody, alleged fabricated arrest records, and violations of due process.
10. El Salvador in Brief: Overview and U.S. Relations — Congressional Research Service, October 6, 2026. Supplies updated detention and prison-death estimates, the continuing emergency regime, and the latest constitutional and electoral developments.
11. World Report 2026: El Salvador — Human Rights Watch, January 2026. Documents the removal of presidential term limits, institutional concentration of power, continuing abuses, and restrictions on access to crime statistics.