Colombian pop-reggaeton artist Maluma congratulated the people of El Salvador during a performance in the nation’s capital this weekend that has since gone viral in Spanish social media, noting the peace and stability of the country under President Nayib Bukele.
Without naming Bukele, Maluma told the audience that “the situation in the country” made him “very happy” and noted that, “as a Colombian,” he felt that his country could learn from the recent experience of El Salvador – loaded words politically given that Colombia is slated to hold a presidential election in 2026 and the frontrunner in that election, conservative Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, was shot dead in June. Colombia is currently led by the first socialist president in its history, Gustavo Petro, who has taken a soft approach to addressing crime and organized Marxist terrorism in the country.
In contrast, Bukele has garnered international attention for imposing a “state of exception” that suspends some constitutional rights to allow for the elimination of the nation’s most dangerous gangs. Prior to Bukele, who became president in 2019, El Salvador regularly topped lists of the world’s most dangerous cities, tallying the highest homicide rates on the planet.
In five years, through intense law enforcement efforts in which tens of thousands have been jailed in newly built “mega-prisons,” Bukele has largely eliminated the nation’s most powerful gangs, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the 18th Street gang. He regularly boasts one of the highest approval rates in the world and was overwhelmingly re-elected in February 2024 with 85 percent of the vote; international observers affirmed the election as free and fair.
“The situation the country, El Salvador, is going through makes me very happy. Congratulations!” Maluma can be heard telling his San Salvador audience in the video from his concert this week. “Since I arrived, the energy of the place feels nice, it feels incredible, the streets are clean, the people are loving and affectionate.”
“As a Colombian, I have to tell you, we have a lot to learn from our brotherly nation, El Salvador,” he concluded.
Maluma is one of Latin America’s most popular artists at the moment, rising to popularity in the late 2010s and selling 18 million records globally. Most of his music falls under the category of reggaeton, though he has also rapped on some trap records and sung on salsa variations of his song. He does not have a reputation for political activism or a history of supporting conservative or right-of-center and many of his songs are famous for sexually suggestive and often explicit lyrics. Maluma has commented in the past on helping eliminate gang and drug-related violence in his native Medellín, a city made notorious by the cartel of Pablo Escobar.
Maluma is currently on a world tour following the release of an EP, 1 on 1, in late 2024. The tour made headlines two weeks ago in Mexico City, when the artist stopped her performance in shock when he realized an audience member was holding an infant.
“With all due respect … do you think it’s a good idea to bring a one-year-old baby to a concert where the decibels are high as shit and the sound is super hard?” he asked the woman carrying the baby. “Do you know what you’re doing here? Next time protect the ears … its an act of irresponsibility and you’re wiggling him like he’s a toy. That child doesn’t want to be there, really.”
The situation Maluma addressed in El Salvador began in March 2022, when Bukele imposed a state of emergency to grant police and the military full power to eradicate the gangs. Bukele supplemented the work of the police by building a new prison known as the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT), a 40,000-bed “mega prison,” and rapidly filling it. The prison became operational in 2023
“El Salvador seems to have destroyed the territorial reach and centralized leadership of the notorious MS-13 and 18th Street gangs,” El Faro, a Salvadoran newspaper highly critical of Bukele, reported in February 2023. The newspaper observed that, while the state of emergency technically limited some rights of association for citizens, in practice Salvadoran citizens exercised their freedom of assembly at a much greater rate now that sites such as public parks and public schools were safe for families to use, rather than serving as deadly recruiting, drug dealing, and dispute resolution territory for the gangs.
In April, the American State Department raised El Salvador’s travel rating to Level One, the safest rating possible, recommending American travelers only exercise normal precautions while present in the country without fear of extraordinary circumstances.
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