The Great Vibe Shift of 2025 is reverberating through the Americas. While the socialists hang on by whatever means they can concoct in Brazil and Venezuela, elsewhere a distinct shift is obvious. From Milei’s economic revolution in Argentina, to El Salvador’s crackdown on violent criminal gangs. To the latter, we can now add Guatemala.
Guatemala has redrawn the rules of its long fight with gangs. Congress approved Decree 11-2025, labeling Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 18th Street (Barrio 18) as terrorist organizations and stiffening sentences for extortion and recruitment.
The law is also attempting to circumvent gangs intimidating witnesses and jurors.
The decree also routes major cases to high-impact courts, allows judges to freeze assets, and orders a new maximum-security prison to isolate gang leadership.
The immediate spur for the new law was the recent mass breakout of 20 gang members from a maximum-security prison. The legislation allows for stricter penalties and mandates a new prison specifically for gang offenders.
President Bernardo Arévalo accepted the resignations of his interior minister and two deputies and promised a prison census and tighter controls. Several fugitives have since been recaptured, but the episode turned stalled bills into urgent legislation.
Guatemala has also been inspired by neighbouring El Salvador’s similar crackdown on gangs.
The backdrop is a rising security bill paid by ordinary Guatemalans. The interannual homicide rate climbed to roughly 17.6 per 100,000 this year, while the rate of extortion complaints hovered around 150 per 100,000 – figures that capture the daily squeeze on shopkeepers, bus drivers, and families […]
Regionally, El Salvador’s years-long state of emergency – credited by its government with driving down murders after tens of thousands of arrests – has raised public pressure for tougher measures across Central America, even as rights groups warn of due-process risks.
Because, of course they do. Ordinary citizens are just relieved the terrorist gangs are gone.
The United States designated MS-13 as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in February and added Barrio 18 in September, moves that align with Guatemala’s new framework and make cross-border investigations and financial freezes easier […]
Why this matters to readers outside Guatemala is simple. This is a live test of whether “terror” designations and asset-driven prosecutions can cut extortion and violence without breaking the justice system.
Well, it’s working in El Salvador, where the murder rate has plummeted. It’s now the safest country in Central America.
Today, El Salvador is a different country. With the coming into power of the current president Nayib Bukele and his hard-right government, El Salvador is the safest country in Central America. Over the past year and a half, the Bukele government has launched a merciless offensive against the various Maras criminal gangs which were in control of a large swath of the country. Indeed, the 75,000-strong criminal gangs which had been paralyzing El Salvador via their criminal activities were devastated by the use of military operations designed to surprise in both their efficiencies and brutal tactics. No one truly knows how many gang members were killed during these clean-up operations; however, it is safe to say that the number lies in the thousands. The rest, the ones who survived and surrendered to the authorities, were promptly sent to the new supermax prison built by the government specifically designed to house tens of thousands of these hardened criminals. The prison, better known officially as “the terrorism confinement center,” holds today around 60,000 inmates. All will receive at some point a lifelong sentence, meant to permanently get rid of all gang members within El Salvador. In fact, the Bukele government has just passed a law which allows the judicial system to convict 900 criminals at once, hence facilitating the process to keep these inmates behind bars until their natural death.
Naturally, the UN is whining like a little bitch. But then, we’ve seen what the UN has done to Gaza. The UN is long past its use-by date.
