#essaying

El Salvador used to have an overall homicide rate of about 60 per 100K people per year. (2000-2010 average, the individual years are spiky.) Another way of framing this stat is that with 6 million people, the small country saw about 10 homicides per day. It was a stock example of a dangerous Central American country plagued by drugs, gangs, and drug gangs, with a long history of coups to boot.

Nayib Bukele's administration has brought the homicides per capita rate down over several years, falling to about 2 per 100K per year in 2023 and 2024. This puts it on par with nice quiet European countries like Estonia. The average homicides per day in El Salvador is now less than one, and the country can now count days since last homicide instead. In 2024 they got to 14 days as their best streak, according to Google. Bukele's administration has saved thousands of lives, in large part by throwing criminals in prison, and the Salvadorans love it.

There is an obvious success here. It made things much better. It should be learned from and copied and iterated on. Even if the 30x improvement doesn't fully generalize, 5x would still be great, or bringing down to 2 per 100K would improve a lot of places.

This applies to violent crime more generally. Homicide stats are used partly because homicide is a good index crime. The stats on homicide are less fudged than other crime stats, because a homicide is harder to obfuscate than a robbery or rape, but many of these are committed by the same sort of people and will decrease together.

There are concerns about Bukele's approach having significant downsides: torturous conditions in prisons, collateral damage to innocents, reduced due process, militarization of the state, et cetera.

I contend that these concerns are non-central. The torturous conditions reflect Bukele's lack of care for prisoners perceived as hardened criminals, and play little or no causal role in the crime reduction. The absence of these factors would not significantly attenuate the overall effectiveness of a similar approach. To put that in less technical language: If a genie granted a wish for every Salvadoran prisoner to have a roomy cell and good food, this would not send the homicide rate back up to 60, nor even to 10.

Reasonable people wishing to learn from Bukele's reduction of the homicide rate from 60 to 2 while also considering these concerns might make a "good parts" plan along the lines of: hire more police to find and arrest criminals more often, put bodycams on the police for transparency, hire more judges to sentence criminals faster while preserving due process, build more prisons to hold these criminals, reduce the thresholds for sentencing repeat offenders to prison, et cetera. Reducing America's homicide rate to 2 per 100K per year would save thousands of lives a year, and looks achievable given El Salvador's example.

Prestigious people are frequently not reasonable about it. They respond like for example Carlos Dada of the Harvard Review, in his piece "Lessons from El Salvador":

Gang members were treated as bloodthirsty monsters as if they had landed from outer space, and not as what they were: the most violent and cruel expression of our society, a consequence, rather than a cause, of our dysfunctional social and economic structures.

Carlos Dada repeatedly goes on about social and economic structures, political and economic problems, the inequality gap, the minimum wage, privatization, neoliberalism, and so on. He is passionate about denying the agency and responsibility of violent criminals, because the economy made them do it. He offers no such excuse to Bukele, of course.

But the accord had a couple of mayor [sic] flaws—easy to say now that we know the consequences. One was the lack of socio-economic measures to reduce the scandalous inequality gap and commit to a much wider distribution of national wealth. 

The accord in question being the 1992 peace treaty which ended the twelve-year Salvadoran Civil War. The man looks at a peace treaty and complains it wasn't doing wealth redistribution.

History has shown us one and again that repression by itself can never bring peace anywhere. Bukele’s repression and massive incarcerations strategy has been tried before, although arguably never with such results. But where there is no independent judicial system, where security forces act with impunity and where the poor and marginalized have no agency, peacebuilding is an impossible task.

Dada titles his piece "Lessons from El Salvador", but he has learned nothing. He is, in a word, prejudiced. Dada is ideologically committed to believing that Bukele's very old-fashioned strategy of imprisoning violent criminals can't succeed, so he puts a lot of fine words into redefining success and peace, selectively assigning agency, and playing word games. It's a well-written polemic against Bukele, and a very bad response to improvements in El Salvador.

Perhaps you object that Carlos Dada is not representative of proper expertise, he's merely a VIP backed by Harvard, international press awards, and other high-status pageantry that tells people he should be listened to. Well; consider the Annual Review of Criminology for more formal expertise, which "provides comprehensive reviews of significant developments in the multidisciplinary field of criminology".

The 2024 and 2025 issues of the A.R.C. have no mention of El Salvador nor Bukele in their article titles, nor summaries. (I have not read every word to check for a passing mention buried somewhere on page 43.) I don't see any optimistic title like "A Tenfold Reduction In Homicide Is Possible" which might be trying to get the good parts.

What I do find that might vaguely be near the topic is "Crime and Governance in the Global South", which opens like this:

This article considers the relationship between crime and governance on the peripheries of the Global North. It draws on examples from across the Global South to show how conceptualizations of crimes are impacted by history, politics, and socio-economic contexts and how crime is influenced by, and in turn influences, governance practices. The review centers on four arguments: Western ideologies and epistemologies are inadequate for conceptualizing the nexus between crime and governance in the Global South; understandings of crime must be informed by knowledge of contextual harmscapes; models of crime control and policing do not always capture the hybridity and plurality of everyday governing practices in the Global South; and crime dynamics intersect with governance structures to create complex challenges for state control.

Then they start reflecting on their own unpacking of the concept of the "Global South", with stuff like:

a knowledge reclamation movement (Carrington et al. 2018) that recognizes diverse political, social, and economic realities that differ from the metropoles of Western Europe and North America while also rectifying knowledge omissions borne of colonialism, neo-imperialism, and Western capitalists’ false universal knowledge claims (Connell 2007).

These are unserious people. A year of Bukele and friends describing how they carried out their crackdown and suggestions for replicating it elsewhere would be a better use of the A.R.C. than this.

Yubel and Amon

This is the most obvious one, because Yubel spends two whole episodes and honestly some of their most iconic monologues trying to tear Amon down after building him up the whole season.

They're both antagonists willing to cause harm to the one they love for their goals. For Amon, that goal is the power to build a utopia. For Yubel, the harm is the goal - or at least, the metric by which they will have achieved their goal (showing their love for Judai).

Yubel, of course, claims that Amon is more selfish in his use of harm. Pain is love in their philosophy, but it's mutual pain - dishing out the pain without taking any back would only be mere cruelty. This of course misses the nuance that Echo wanted Amon to use her as a sacrifice, while Judai didn't welcome any of Yubel's twisted affections.

Still, from what I've seen most people agree that Yubel comes across as more "honest" one way or another. And to understand why things feel that way, it's important to look at their backstory and motivations, as well as how their motivations change.

Yubel dedicated themself to Judai's past life, tying themself to him through lifetimes, and in the present remained true to that devotion in unwanted ways. When Judai sent them to space and it ended up being Oops! All Torture, Yubel developed their sadomasochistic philosophy as a coping mechanism and an attempt to reconcile Judai's past promises and present actions.

Upon their return to Earth, they planned to return the "favor": by sending Yubel to the pain and isolation of outer space Judai made them stronger (i.e., infected by the Light of Destruction, with all that entails), so they'll give him his own painful experience (all of season 3) to make him stronger (awaken his power as Supreme King). Then they'll reunite, having both demonstrated their love for each other, and [this part is where the Light of Destruction really twists up their thinking]. Everything they do is in the name of this motive*, whether Judai really likes it or not.

Amon dedicated himself to the Garam conglomerate with Echo by his side before being replaced by his younger brother Sid, the sole blood Garam sibling. He nearly murdered Sid before changing his mind and dedicating himself wholly to his brother instead, a decision Echo and Yubel both describe as willingly chaining himself to their service. Even when given an opportunity to become the heir (all it'd take is watching his brother die to illness, not even murder) he rejects it, and begs for a way to save him.

And yet, when when given the opportunity he made a deal with the devil to break the chains he put on himself and abandon that same family. Then when he gets the chance to obtain power by sacrificing someone he loves, he does exactly that. Then he plans to become king of a utopia free of suffering, and always remember Echo.

So then, what are Amon's motives? Is he somebody who got tired of being abandoned or unappreciated? An ends-justify-the-means idealist? Just a power-hungry hypocrite? It's hard to tease out a consistent character and ideology from him. And in a show where people wear their hearts in their decks, I think this part of why people hate him - and so does Yubel.

Yubel hates Johan because he's terrifyingly like Yubel in some ways, focused and protective and dear to Judai.** Yubel hates Amon because he can't be like Yubel at all, resenting the brother he dedicated himself to and sacrificing the person he loved for power in an empty world forever devoid of that same person.

No way Yubel can be that kind of person, right? Otherwise, what was it all for?

* To be fair, you don't know all of Yubel's backstory by the time of their final duel with Amon. However, even removing the context of their past life that duel together with Yubel!Johan vs. Hell Kaiser establishes Yubel's central motivations more coherently than they do Amon's.

** Help, I know there's been other essay segments on this topic, text and video alike. But I saw a lot of them back in early 2023 when I was mindlessly going through GX material in a haze of hyperfixation and now I've forgotten all the other good sources.

Yubel and Echo

If Yubel's parallels with Amon are about their dedication, Yubel's parallels with Echo are about who they're dedicated to. Both believe in their loved one's destiny to become a king, and take actions to make them that king.

Yubel has historical basis in that Judai is quite literally the Supreme King, bearer of the gentle darkness. To help him achieve that role, Yubel enacts a plot to break Judai until he awakens his Supreme King side. It fits neatly into their schema of things: this is how they make the person they love stronger, so that they will thrive and survive. Make Judai stronger and awaken his old power, and all will be as it was meant to be.

Echo just believes that Amon is amazing enough that he would make a better king than anyone. When the chances arises to help break his chains and give him a world to rule, Echo takes it.

...And boy does she.

Both Yubel and Echo believe their loved ones are meant to be a king. Both give their lives in support of their loved one, and become weapons wielded in their service.

No wonder Yubel was shaken by Echo's devotion remaining within Exodia for just a moment - it's not all that far from their own.

Unfortunately Yubel's only direct interaction with Echo is goading her attack on field-Yubel during the final Amon duel. Otherwise they only speak of Echo as someone used and abandoned by Amon - which in itself has potential, given Yubel's own feelings about Judai sending them away.

I think GX could definitely have explored this connection a bit more. There's space to fill here.

Judai and Amon

As noted above, Judai and Amon both have roles as kings - at least, in the eyes of their single most loyal people. Judai holds the title of Supreme King as the wielder of gentle darkness, and while not confirmed his past life sure looked like a prince. Amon simply has ambition, talent, and an ideal world in his mind.

And in operating with the ambition of kings, they both do terrible things to achieve power. Judai lays this out explicitly in the Edo vs. Amon duel:

Amon lets his need for power get in the way of his other relationships and priorities, and sacrifices the ones he loves to obtain Exodia similarly to how Judai sacrificed his friends and eventually uncountable innocents for his own goals - finding Johan, and then ruling as Supreme King. Straightforward, right?

But I think there's another parallel between the two that's a lot more interesting. Or...most of a parallel. Namely, their relationship with their other halves and the responsibility of a loyal follower who would give up anything for you, be it their life or their humanity.

What do you do when the person you love most dedicates their existence to you - to the point of throwing everything else away, even their very life?

Of course, the Judai-Yubel and Amon-Echo situations aren't exactly the same even putting aside the issue of reincarnation. (For the purposes of this essay I'm not making huge distinctions between Judai and his past life, but if you want to get into the details I've written about that previously.)

Yubel went ahead and made their sacrifice without Judai's input, and all he could do was decide how to respond. He chose to dedicate himself back to them so hard it crossed lifetimes, so hard he chose to risk his own existence for them as well in his next life.

Amon, on the other hand, is the one who proposed Echo sacrifice herself for him. Echo agreed to it, and even by the end she stood by her decision. But Amon loaded the gun and pulled the trigger.

He tries to honor her sacrifice, of course. He's always mindful of Echo's sacrifice and what it means. But in the end, he did choose to sacrifice her, ultimately using her as a pawn. Their love never trumped his own objectives.

And I think the example of Amon and Echo leads to the question: if Judai had the choice of letting Yubel become a dragon or stopping them, what would he do? When it was explicitly their will?

This is another missed opportunity, one that could have solidified the parallels neatly. But GX never asks that question, so the answer is unclear. What could have been a parallel is just kind of...askew.

Judai and Echo

Okay, I admit there isn't a lot here off the top of my head. Probably the best parallels between them are in relation to their other halves, as the people "harmed" by their villainous partners, and how they respond to that harm.

Judai rejects Yubel's torments as unwanted attention, until he remembers the past and flips to understanding why Yubel did they did and makes moves to unite the two of them forever. Echo, meanwhile, understands Amon's motives from start to end and...lets herself be sacrificed, the end.

I don't know about this one. Really, ultimately Echo is supposed to be a willing participant in her own sacrifice but in the end I still don't feel like the narrative gave her a strong sense of agency in the matter and it really weakens my attempt to write this section.

In Conclusion

Some of these connections are stronger than others for sure, but I argue that they're all there in some way or another. They're very uneven and overall I'm not entirely sure what you're meant to take from the parallels, and I wish I could give something neat and concise for this section. Instead, it's a bit messy and misshapen - hence, the trapezoid metaphor.