According to El Salvador’s tourism minister, the nation is experiencing an all-time high in visitor numbers. The statement is part of a larger public relations push by the Central American nation to change its image from a lawless backwater to that of a bitcoin and surfing paradise.
President Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s leading tech-savvy millennial, tweeted a cinematic video on Thursday to announce that the nation had gone an entire year without a murder.
El Salvador leading the way
A dramatic voice says: “El Salvador today is unquestionably the safest country in Latin America.” According to AFP, the statistic is “the total number of days without a murder since 2019” rather than a count of how many days have passed without a murder occurring.
Morena Valdez, the Minister of Tourism, tweeted that one million tourists have visited the nation so far this year. However, in recent times, El Salvador has become a more popular destination on the “gringo trail”, previously only visited by inveterate surfers. Because it’s ranking among the world’s most dangerous countries fluctuated.
With at least 6,640 homicides registered in 2015, it was the most violent nation in the American region. When El Salvador accepted Bitcoin as a legal tender in 2021, it made international headlines. Its eccentric leader decided to adopt and buy Bitcoin, and the government has ordered all businesses to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment.
With a historic assault on El Salvador’s infamous criminal gangs, President Bukele has turned things around in the nation. He, in turn, wants to make the nation a technological powerhouse. And the Salvadoran people seem to be happy with the change: homicide rates are down and Bukele always does well in the polls.
