Several Latin American leaders are looking to the Bukele model to fight crime. This country has another idea

By Darío Klein, CNN

(CNN) — Uruguay is ranked as one of the safest countries in Latin America but rising public concern about crime have forced its policymakers to develop a new “democratic” strategy for the problem.

Their aim is to bring down homicide rates while deliberately deviating from the draconian security measures popularized by El Salvador’s strongman President Nayib Bukele.

While the iron-fisted crackdown on crime by the self-declared “world’s coolest dictator” has significantly reduced homicides in El Salvador, critics say it has come at the cost of mass incarceration and the erosion of democratic rights.

Uruguay – a country that restored democracy in 1985 after more than a decade under a military dictatorship – has rejected such an approach, despite many of its neighbors adopting it.

“More police, more prisons and harsher sentences. Historically, that was the formula for failure. And it only made the problems worse,” says criminologist Emiliano Rojido, a public security policy adviser to Uruguay’s Ministry of the Interior.

Instead, Uruguay has designed a 10-year-long project called the National Security Plan, which aims to tackle the issue with a whole-of-government approach instead of viewing it as solely a policing matter. The project was proposed by the left-wing administration of President Yamandú Orsi and developed with support from multiple parties.

Uruguay’s Interior Minister Carlos Negro, who led the plan’s implementation, said his country wants it to be “democratic, republican and participatory.” He insists that it won’t rely on “authoritarian formulas or measures” like the Bukele model, which he said cannot be implemented in a democratic nation.

The Bukele model in Latin America

Crime-related insecurity is a looming specter over much of Latin America. A 2023 study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that the Americas have the highest regional homicide rate in the world as well as high rates of homicidal violence related to organized crime.

This has led to public anxiety and demands for drastic solutions. “The entire region has been undergoing a decades-long deterioration in public security indicators,” explains Diego Sanjurjo, a leading member of the Latin American and Caribbean Group for Security and Democracy (Glacsed) and former coordinator of Comprehensive and Preventive Security Strategies under the previous Uruguayan government of center-right leader Luis Lacalle Pou.

“Illegal markets and criminal groups have been growing for decades, and the very few countries that were considered safe have also begun to experience serious problems, such as Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica and Ecuador,” Sanjurjo adds.

The United States has partnered with several Latin American countries to fight organized crime and has carried out dozens of military strikes on alleged drug traffickers. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Colombia, Ecuador and Peru this week to discuss security efforts.

Faced with the rise in crime, some countries in the region – including Colombia, Ecuador and Argentina – are attempting to replicate parts of the Bukele model with plans to build large prisons and increase policing.

The hardline model is credited for transforming El Salvador from one of the most violent countries in the world to one of the safest, with just 1.3 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, according to its government.

But the country’s considerable drop in violence has come at a high cost to human rights, say critics. El Salvador’s democracy has waned amid a years-long state of emergency, mass arrests without due process, allegations of torture (which the government denies), control of the Supreme Court and a constitutional reform allowing indefinite presidential reelection, according to Varieties of Democracy.

Moreover, experts and officials say the Bukele model is not easily applicable in other countries – due to fundamental differences in size, geography, criminal activity, institutional structure and other factors – nor does it guarantee success. Uruguay is roughly eight times bigger than El Salvador, its economy is stronger and its danger index is lower, according to conflict monitor ACLED.

Uruguay’s alternative strategy

Rojido rejected the strategy of providing security by sacrificing rights. “We understand public security as the exercise of rights: the right to life, the right to property, the right to freedom. If we have to restrict rights to achieve security, something is wrong,” he said.

Diego Sanjurjo, a member of Uruguay’s Colorado Party, warned that repressive security policies tend to be addictive.

“You put 1,000 more police officers on the streets, but crime does not go down. Yet no one thinks of reversing the measure. On the contrary, citizens want more police officers … No one ever says: If this didn’t work, I’ll reverse it,” he said. “Almost every country in Latin America is on that train: an increasingly expensive security system that does not produce results.”

Uruguay’s plan seeks to address the problem through multiple approaches. First, it treats public security as a long-term state policy, which will last a decade and “transcend terms of office,” Rojido said.

Second, it stops viewing the issue as merely a policing matter and starts involving more government agencies along with civil society and the private sector, including security firms and tech companies.

And third, it aims to base public policy on facts and evidence instead of rhetoric and demagoguery, according to Rojido.

Uruguay is also receiving support from various organizations. It has created a group of international institutions to provide technical assistance and financial support and document the plan’s implementation “in the hope that Uruguay’s experience could also be useful to other countries in the region,” Rojido explains.

Uruguay is also a member of Glacsed, led by former Costa Rican and Peruvian presidents Carlos Alvarado and Francisco Sagasti, which specifically seeks to “broaden and strengthen the conversation about how to confront organized crime with firm responses that remain within the rule of law and do not entail a return to authoritarian regimes,” says Sanjurjo, one of its leading figures.

When are results expected?

So far, Uruguayan authorities have been unable to reduce homicides, the vast majority of which are linked to organized crime.

In the Uruguayan capital and its surrounding areas, the homicide rate over the past five years has ranged between 16 and 18 per 100,000 inhabitants, while nationwide it stands at around 10 per 100,000. It is a crime that has statistically increased over the past half-century and is Uruguayans’ chief concern, according to polls.

However, other crimes have been steadily declining, including theft, robbery, gender-based violence and crimes in prisons, among others.

“Of course, we are well aware of the scale of the challenge we are dealing with,” says Rojido.

Experts warn that results will not come quickly.

That is why policymakers say they designed the Uruguay plan as a 10-year strategy that spans at least two government terms.

To that end, Uruguay has favorable conditions for establishing security as a matter of state policy, “such as permanent dialogue among the different political forces and a robust civil society,” says Rojido. “Because, ultimately, the parties have alternated in government, and none has been able to find solutions on its own,” he adds. They already know the alternative: people losing faith in democracy, and “magical solutions, shortcuts, and demagogic, populist, authoritarian proposals emerging,” he said.

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Michael Rios contributed to this report.