El Salvador VP acknowledges mistakes in war on gangs but says country is ‘not a police state’

SAN SALVADOR (AP) — El Salvador's government “made mistakes” in its war against the country's gangs, but has never undermined the country's democracy to consolidate power, according to the man likely to be reelected vice president.

Félix Ulloa, temporarily on leave as El Salvador's vice president while he runs for reelection alongside Nayib Bukele, defended his government's controversial crackdown in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, days before a presidential election they are expected to win easily.

Such policies, he said, will continue until El Salvador's gangs are defeated.

Ulloa acknowledged that in their administration's mass detention of citizens, the government imprisoned thousands of people who had not committed any crime, something he said they are correcting, but justified the harsh actions as being widely popular and completely “legal.”

Since declaring a state of emergency in March 2022 following a surge in gang violence, the government has detained 76,000 people — more than 1% of the population in the small Central American nation.

The declaration, which suspended some fundamental rights like access to a lawyer and being told why you're being arrested, has been renewed by congress every month since.

“There is no perfect work by humans ... Look at the big picture,” Ulloa said.

“Understand what this country is doing when we have defended people and the human rights of millions of Salvadorans whose rights were being violated by criminal structures.”

Around 7,000 people arrested under the state of emergency have since been released from prisons where authorities have been accused of torture, as well committing systematic and mass human rights abuses.

Ulloa said that in some cases officials may have asked security forces to meet quotas of detentions — arresting a predetermined number of people — but that it was “not an order from executives, nor a government policy.”

Human rights groups say more than 150 people have died in custody since the beginning of the crackdown.

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