Bullet Points:
• El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele recently launched an immense police operation to search for gang members in the satellite city of Soyapango.
• Two days prior, Rikki, author and co-host of the Bitcoin Italia and Stupefatti podcasts, visited the extremely poor Ciudad de Dios and the violent Santa Lucia in Soyapango.
• Rikki’s visit was made possible due to a government crackdown on gangs in recent months, and he was accompanied by a guide known in the neighborhood.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele recently launched an immense police operation in the satellite city of Soyapango, which is home to several slums, or “comunidades,” as they are known locally. 8,500 military and 1,500 police officers conducted searches from house to house, resulting in more than 150 arrests.
Two days prior to the police operation, Rikki, author and co-host of the Bitcoin Italia and Stupefatti podcasts, visited two of the most difficult realities for the country in Soyapango: the extremely poor Ciudad de Dios, which stands on an old garbage dump, and the violent Santa Lucia, one of the historical lairs for criminal gangs.
Rikki’s visit was carefully planned well in advance, and the only reason it was possible for him to even enter these places was that the “pandilleros,” the gangsters, had been hit hard by the government crackdown in recent months, a direct result of the upsurge in clashes between rival gangs that had bloodied the country earlier this year. As a precaution, Rikki had a local driver, and they were escorted by a person known in the neighborhood who rode ahead of them on a motorcycle. Their guide was from those streets, had lived for five years under a bridge and had a history of drug addiction, from which he recovered.
Rikki’s visit to Soyapango was a powerful reminder of the difficulty of life in El Salvador, and the immense impact that the government’s police operations can have. Through his podcasts, Rikki and his co-host Laura, who together form the Bitcoin Explorers, chronicle Bitcoin adoption around the world, one country at a time. His experience in Soyapango and El Salvador as a whole was a reminder of the importance of understanding the local realities of a country in order to understand its potential for Bitcoin adoption.