El Salvador and Costa Rica agree on a “historic alliance” to combat organized crime

San Salvador.- The presidents of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, agreed this Thursday on a “historic alliance” to jointly combat organized crime, while inviting other governments in the region to join the initiative called ‘Shield of the Americas’.

The agreement was signed between the leaders after a private meeting in a residence located on the touristy Lake Coatepeque, in the town of El Congo, 60 kilometers from the Salvadoran capital, in which they discussed different topics, including security. According to the Presidential House, the agreement contemplates sharing “key” information, coordinating joint security operations, dismantling criminal networks operating in both countries, and opening spaces for “more countries to join this vision.” “What we want is to launch the ‘Shield of the Americas,’ an initiative between El Salvador and Costa Rica so that, initially, two countries help each other to combat crime,” Bukele declared in a press conference before the government press and broadcast by the state channel. According to Bukele, “crime has no borders, it doesn’t stop because there is a border, crime acts transnationally, it is financed transnationally, it is coordinated transnationally (…) crime works as a single, coordinated network.” He pointed out that the support of El Salvador, a country that has been under a controversial state of exception since March 2022 to combat gangs, “is valid not only from the point of experience, but from the point of coordination and from that coordination to invite, over time, other countries to join this strategy that starts with two, but is open to governments that think the same.”

«El Salvador is the world security benchmark»

For his part, the Costa Rican president assured that, “as of today”, El Salvador “has become and is the world’s security benchmark”. “There was a war between gangs, among the citizenry. The fighting people were victims of the predators. You, Mr. President, understood, and set an example, that governing is deciding and acting,” said Chaves. He pointed out that the Bukele government “was criticized everywhere, including the current government of Costa Rica, by NGOs, by international organizations, but its actions have made El Salvador the world benchmark for security.” “El Salvador’s lessons on the fundamental role of the State, which is to protect the lives of its citizens, are truly instructive,” added Chaves. As part of his visit to El Salvador, President Chaves will tour the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) on Friday, a mega-prison that is a symbol of the so-called war against gangs that the Bukele government is promoting under an exception regime. Chaves would be the first president to tour the Cecot, a prison that has also been visited by the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, and by the former Argentine Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich. Drug trafficking is the main security problem in Costa Rica, a country that has recorded in the last three years the highest homicide figures in history, which authorities attribute in more than 60% to score-settling between gangs.