El Salvador Witnesses Growth in Tourists Amid Stringent Law and Order

• The statement is part of a PR push by the Central American nation to change its image.
• The minister of tourism tweeted that 1M tourists have visited the nation so far this year.

According to El Salvador’s minister of tourism, the nation is seeing an all-time high in the number of visitors. The statement is part of a larger PR push by the Central American nation to change its image from one of a lawless backwater to that of a Bitcoin and surf paradise.

President Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s tech-savvy millennial leader, tweeted a cinematic video on Thursday to announce that the nation had gone a whole year without a murder.

EL Salvador Leading the Way

A dramatic voice says, “El Salvador today is undisputedly the safest country in Latin America.” According to AFP, the statistic is “the total number of days without murders 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, as of late, El Salvador has become a more popular destination on the “gringo trail,” formerly only visited by die-hard surfers. Because it’s ranking among the world’s most dangerous countries fluctuated.

With at least 6,640 homicides recorded in 2015, it was the most violent nation in the American region. When El Salvador declared Bitcoin legal money in 2021, it made international news. Its eccentric leader has gone on a Bitcoin purchasing binge, and the government has mandated that all companies accept Bitcoin as payment.

With a historic assault on El Salvador’s infamous criminal gangs, President Bukele has turned things around in the nation. In turn, he wants to make the nation a technological powerhouse. And the Salvadoran people seem to be happy with the change: murder rates have dropped and Bukele consistently does well in the polls.