麻豆社

Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of emergency, following a weekend of extreme gang violence. More than 70,000 suspected gang members have been arrested over the past 17 months.

For some, the action by President Nayib Bukele is welcome. But opposition leader Luis Parada says the government made a "secret pact" with gangs and that voters "cannot trust what the government is doing now because we know that they lied blatantly in the past".

(Picture: Prisoners in El Salvador crouching down with their wrists hand-cuffed to their ankles. Credit: Presidential handout)