After years as the worst-ranked region, the public perception of security in Latin America and the Caribbean has improved, according to an annual global survey.
Since the Gallup Global Law & Order Report began polling in 2015, Latin America and the Caribbean consistently ranked as the worst region in the world for perceptions of crime, until 2020, when sub-Saharan Africa replaced it.
While most countries in Latin America figure in the index, the report is not comprehensive. For example, Haiti does not appear in the Gallup index at all. The country has been suffering an extreme security crisis since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, and, since 2019, homicides have nearly doubled, while kidnappings have increased nearly 17-fold.
The index is based on a four-question poll asking about people’s experiences with violent crime (robberies, assaults, muggings) and security forces during the last year, as well as their perception of safety in their country. About 1,000 people in each of 141 countries were interviewed in 2022 and their responses analyzed for this year’s report. The respondents are selected “based on nationally representative, probability-based samples,” though Gallup does not specify its selection criteria.
In examining the results of the index, it is important to put them in context: the Gallup index is based on public perception, providing insight into how safe residents feel in their country. Thus, it tends to reflect how security in the country has changed, rather than an objective look at how levels of violence compare throughout the region.
Below, InSight Crime analyzes three main takeaways from the 2023 report.
Ecuador
Ecuador ranked as the least safe country in Latin America in 2022. Five years ago, it ranked as one of the safest countries in the region, but now 64% of respondents say they do not feel safe walking alone at night.
According to the report, security concerns are even greater on the country’s west coast, where ports like Guayaquil are strategic dispatch points for cocaine headed for the United States and Europe.
In the last two years, cocaine production in Peru and Colombia has hit an all-time high. In Ecuador, which borders both countries, cocaine seizures reached a record 210 tons in 2021.
SEE ALSO: From Rhetoric to Reality on Ecuador’s Security Challenge
As the quantity of drugs passing through Ecuador has risen, so has competition among criminal groups, leading to an unprecedented wave of violence. Homicide rates more than tripled between 2020 and 2022, while criminal groups carried out regular mass killings and gruesome public displays of bodies.
The government’s inability to stem the violence has further aggravated the situation. According to the 2022 index, residents’ confidence in the police dropped from a steady 60% in past years to about 40%. In 2022, prosecutors, politicians, and police were frequently threatened, attacked, and killed. The government has responded by implementing several states of emergency and expanding the country’s prison capacity. But imprisoning more people is an ineffective method when the country’s strongest gangs, the Choneros and the Lobos, control many prisons, running their criminal networks and waging war on each other from behind bars.
El Salvador
On the other end of the scale is El Salvador, which was perceived as the safest country in Latin America by Gallup respondents. Whereas in 2017, 54% of Salvadorans reported gang presence in their neighborhood and one in 10 people said they knew someone who had been murdered, the majority of respondents now feel safe in their country.
El Salvador’s ranking in the Gallup index began to rise in 2019, the year that Nayib Bukele was elected president. Building on past governments’ mano dura (iron fist) approach, he has taken an extreme hard line against gangs like the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) and the 18th Street Gang (Barrio 18) that once terrorized the country.
In March 2022, Bukele implemented a state of emergency following a wave of killings carried out by gangs. The state of emergency expanded police powers and suspended basic rights. Under the state of emergency, which has since been extended for 20 consecutive months, the government has imprisoned more than 72,000 people, with reports of human rights abuses including arbitrary arrest, disappearances, and torture.
SEE ALSO: El Salvador Police Reports Contradict Bukele’s Triumphalism
But Bukele’s policies have been effective in dismantling the gangs and increasing citizen security. Between 2021 and 2022, homicides decreased 57%, and gang presence in the country has all but disappeared, though they remain a subtle threat. The Gallup index reflects what many media outlets have reported: residents say that they can now move freely in areas formerly controlled by gangs.
Bukele’s apparent success at disabling the gangs in El Salvador has made him immensely popular. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal ruled that Bukele can run again in 2024, in defiance of El Salvador’s constitutional one-term limit, and polls have shown approval ratings as high as 90% for the president.
In neighboring Honduras, huge crowds cheered Bukele’s visit when President Xiomara Castro took office. Castro has since followed Bukele’s lead and implemented a state of emergency lasting several months to fight the country’s gangs, though with less success. Politicians around the region have praised Bukele’s approach, including Costa Rica’s Security Minister Jorge Torres and the mayor of Lima, Peru, Rafael López Aliaga.
Venezuela
For years, Venezuela was the worst-ranked country in Latin America and the Caribbean in the Gallup index. But in 2022, the country’s standing improved, with four countries — Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and the Dominican Republic — scoring lower, even though Venezuela had one of the highest homicide rates in the region that year.
While Venezuela has consistently been ranked one of the most violent countries in the region, violence has been steadily decreasing for several years. Yet until 2022, there was no corresponding improvement in citizen perception of security, according to Gallup respondents.
So what changed?
Starting in mid-2021, President Nicolás Maduro’s government began a series of mega-operations targeting gangs, as well as military campaigns against informal mining and criminal groups’ control of the country’s prisons. More recently, Venezuela took over Tocorón prison, the home of Venezuela’s infamous mega-gang, the Tren de Aragua.
While several notorious gang leaders have been killed or ousted, the effectiveness of these operations — which have also seen human rights violations and indiscriminate violence by state forces against civilians — remains uncertain. The Tren del Llano gang, the target of several mega-operations, has not disappeared but split into new cells, and many of the pranes, or criminal leaders who controlled prisons, appeared to have advanced notice of the invasions.
This crackdown represents a significant shift in strategy by the Venezuelan government, which has long tolerated, and even colluded with, these criminal groups. With presidential elections scheduled for 2024, Maduro is looking to increase support both at home and abroad, and has been massively promoting the alleged success of these security efforts.
His administration has even created a phantom enemy, the Tancol, an alleged drug trafficking terrorist group from Colombia. There have been over 100 operations against the group, which, according to the Venezuelan government, is attempting to destabilize the country from the inside. But InSight Crime investigations found no evidence for the group’s existence, suggesting it is merely a political invention to boost the state in the eyes of the public.
Based on the Gallup index, that strategy appears to be working.