(Bloomberg) -- El Salvador's tough measures against coronavirus, Latin America's first and among its strictest, have helped produce an unintended but welcome consequence: the lowest number of murders last month in the nation's history.
Security and Justice Minister Rogelio Rivas said 65 people were killed in March, the smallest monthly total ever. There were four days last month without a single homicide, also a record. Most of the murders come from warfare among gangs who control swaths of territory and extort many businesses.
“The restrictions put in place for the emergency have contributed” to the drop, said Jeannette Aguilar, a Salvadoran security specialist, referring to requirements that people largely stay home. She added that gangs have also begun to enforce quarantine orders in neighborhoods they control, threatening residents to stay indoors or face public beatings.
President Nayib Bukele was the first leader in the Western Hemisphere to ban all foreign travelers on March 11, even before any cases of Covid-19 had been confirmed, and he declared a 30-day lockdown on March 22. Police have arrested 712 people for violating restrictions. El Salvador has 46 confirmed cases of the virus with two dead.
Murders in El Salvador, one of the world's deadliest nations, have been declining since reaching a record of over 6,600 in 2015. The decline seems to be a combination of heightened police work and growing sophistication by gangs who've reduced killings while holding onto extortion schemes.
Bukele, 38, took office last June promising to foster conditions for increased foreign investment and decreased emigration, starting with a sharp cut in violence. In February he caused alarm when he brought security troops into the national legislature to pressure lawmakers to pass a supplementary budget request.
“There's still a lot left to do and we are in the middle of a pandemic, but we saved a lot of Salvadorans this month,” Bukele said on Twitter.
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