Notes on El Salvador

Published on by Matt Lakeman64 Comments

In 1995, El Salvador had an intentional homicide rate of 139 per 100,000, the highest in the world and one of the highest rates recorded in modern history.

Like all educated middle-class Americans, my core understanding of urban crime comes from The Wire, so for comparison, when the show took place, the homicide rate in Baltimore was in the high 30s and low 40s. The national US homicide rate peaked in 1980 at 10.2. The 2023 rate was about 5.5, which is very high for a wealthy Western country. Using data from the last few years, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain are all between 0.5-1.1. Japan and Singapore are at about 0.1-0.2.

While the murder rate in El Salvador fell quickly after 1995, it remained the highest on average in the world across much of the following years, ranging between 40 and 107 from 2002 to 2018, typically beating out other highly murderous countries like Jamaica, Honduras, Belize, South Africa, the Bahamas, Brazil, Saint Lucia, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. As far as I can tell, the only country to match El Salvador’s murder rate in modern times was Colombia in the late 1980s and early 1990s during the height of the drug war against Pablo Escobar.

But in 2023, El Salvador’s official murder rate dropped to 2.4 per 100,000, putting it in the league of Lithuania, Montenegro, and Canada. The rates of El Salvador’s neighbors, Guatemala and Honduras, remain 5-10X higher. Not far away, Jamaica holds the top spot in the world at about 50.

El Salvador’s seemingly miraculous turnaround has been largely attributed to the efforts of President Nayib Bukele, who first took office in 2019 and launched possibly the most successful anti-crime crackdown in modern history. The country has been under quasi-martial law since 2022 and about 1.7% of the population is in prison.

I traveled through El Salvador for nine days, stopping in San Salvador (the capital), Santa Ana, La Palma, and along the Ruta de Flores. I wanted to see for myself how much the country had changed, whether it really was safer, and to hear what Salvadorans thought of Bukele. Like Notes on the Ivory Coast, most of this essay is devoted to my research based on readings and talking to locals, but I’ll also write a bit about my travel experiences at the end.

Continue reading “Notes on El Salvador” →

Other Notes on West Africa

Published on by Matt Lakeman28 Comments

I’ve written about Nigeria, Benin, The Gambia, Mauritania, Ghana, Guinea, and the Ivory Coast in West Africa. I also traveled to Togo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Mali, but I don’t think I have enough interesting things to say about each one to justify a full post. So I’m going to do a quick, bullet-point summary of notes on all these leftover countries in one essay. But first, I’ll go over some bigger West African trends that I couldn’t figure out how to fit into individual country entries.

Continue reading “Other Notes on West Africa” →

Notes on the Ivory Coast

Published on by Matt Lakeman45 Comments

I spent about ten days in the Ivory Coast, mostly in Abidjan, but also Yamoussoukro, Man, and Grand Bassam.

(Note – The Ivory Coast is so French in culture and temperament that it insists on officially being called “Côte d’Ivoire.” But I don’t know how to make that accent on my keyboard and I don’t feel like copy-and-pasting the name over-and-over, so I’m just going to call it the “Ivory Coast.”)

The Ivory Coast was the last stop on my West African trip, but it was also one of my most anticipated. I keep writing about being fascinated by particular countries or leaders, but I think the Ivory Coast tops my fascination ranking for West Africa. That’s why this post is over 30,000 words long. If you’re not interested in the economics and history of the Ivory Coast, skip to the end for a bit of travel writing.

If you’ve spent a lot of time reading about Africa, a thought may have occurred to you as it did to me: how are there no successful post-colonial African countries? By “successful,” I mean consistent strong economic growth, political stability, and a reasonable income distribution so the new oil/gold/mineral wealth isn’t all held by the dictator and his friends. For awhile, you could say South Africa or Rhodesia, but only if you ignored the apartheid. It feels like one of the other 50+ African countries should have achieved success, even if just by chance.

About 40 years ago, there actually was a clear example of a successful African country. Here is GDP per capita in constant 2015 USD from 1960-1978:

Continue reading “Notes on the Ivory Coast” →

Notes on Guinea

Published on by Matt Lakeman32 Comments

I spent about nine days in Guinea, mostly in Conakry and being driven around the countryside. My notes here have a heavier bend toward personal experiences than usual, though I do go into the basics of Guinean history.

As always, Martin Meredith’s Fate of Africa is a major source for me, but I also got a lot out of Tom Burgis’s The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa’s Wealth. Other assorted sources are linked within.

Continue reading “Notes on Guinea” →

Notes on Ghana

Published on by Matt Lakeman32 Comments

I spent 12 days in Ghana, specifically in Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast, and Mole National Park. These are my notes, though this essay is more like Notes on Saudi Arabia with a bigger emphasis on the history of Ghana than my travel experiences.

Ghana has a reputation for being the “easy mode” of West African travel, in contrast to Nigeria being “hard mode.” Ghana speaks English, is a democracy, has been politically stable for 30+ years, has little ethnic tension, low crime, and is one of wealthiest per capita West African states. Altogether, this makes Ghana the (relative) success story of West Africa and I wanted to find out how that happened. A quick rundown of sources:

First, as mentioned in previous essays, Martin Meredith’s Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence is an amazing overview, and particularly useful for understanding Ghana’s first prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah.

Second, Jeffrey Herbst’s The Politics of Reform in Ghana, 1982-1991 is a lot less dry than it sounds, and is my main source for Ghana’s second key leader, Jerry Rawlings.

Third, I used a pair of interviews: Jerry Rawlings in 2015 and Corporal Matthew Adabuga in 2018, a former Rawlings bodyguard who wrote a tell-all memoir about Rawlings. Both interviews are fascinating and I highly recommend listening to them if you find the history here interesting, especially since Rawlings’s interview is obviously self-serving, and Adabuga’s claims are suspect, to say the least. Highlights include the (excellent) interviewer asking Adabuga, “do you take delight in killing?” and “why did you kill so many people?,” to which Adabuga responds at one point, “I have never killed anybody physically like that without any cause.”

Other smaller sources: The Legacy of J.J. Rawlings in Ghanaian Politics, 1979-2000, The Rawlings’ Factor in Ghana’s Politics: An Appraisal of Some Secondary and Primary Data, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There Is A Better Way for Africa, a 1985 letter from the Ghana Congress of USA and Canada to the CIA, Ghana’s Foreign Policy Under Jerry Rawlings by Lucy Ansah, Kovsie Journals’s “a comment on frank gerits’ incorrect,” along with various Wikipedia entries and random articles I’ll link directly in the essay when relevant. Continue reading “Notes on Ghana” →

Notes on Mauritania

Published on by Matt Lakeman10 Comments

I spent about a week in Mauritania, visiting the cities of Nouakchott, Nouadhibou, Zouerate, and a bunch of small towns over the course of multiple 10+ hour car rides and a train ride. As usual, these are my notes on my experiences and various rabbit holes.

Continue reading “Notes on Mauritania” →

Notes on The Gambia

Published on by Matt Lakeman28 Comments

I spent eight days in The Gambia, visiting Banjul, Serrekunda, Georgetown, and driving most of the length of this small country.

Continue reading “Notes on The Gambia” →

Notes on Benin

Published on by Matt Lakeman18 Comments

I travelled through Benin for about 12 days, visiting Cotonou, Porto Novo, Abomey, Ouidah, and Grand Popo. I spent a decent chunk of my time there writing about Nigeria, so I didn’t dig into Benin quite as much and this piece will be shorter than others.

Continue reading “Notes on Benin” →

Notes on Nigeria

Published on by Matt Lakeman79 Comments

I have made various edits based on feedback – fact checking, typos (which I’ll never entirely be without), and I added  few minor lines.

I spent 12 days in Nigeria, and saw the cities of Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, and Abeokuta. Even compared to my other travel writing, I have barely scratched the surface of Nigeria, but these are my notes on what I saw and various historical rabbit holes I went down.

My first big secondary source is Martin Meredith’s The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence, which gives a phenomenal overview of a huge topic with exactly the right amount of summary and detail.

My other big secondary source is Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa by Paul Kenyon which is narrower in scope, but somehow even better at storytelling history.

I also want to give a special thanks to the people who hosted me in Lagos and the person who connected me to them. The trip wouldn’t have been possible without them.

Continue reading “Notes on Nigeria” →

Notes on Saudi Arabia

Published on by Matt Lakeman41 Comments

File:Saudi Arabia map.png - Wikimedia Commons

Edits – Various comments based on feedback.

In August, I spent a week in Saudi Arabia. I started in Jeddah, drove to Taif, drove to Abha, and then drove 600 miles to Riyadh. I wanted to go to Mecca and Medina, but as a non-Muslim, it’s haram (at least for part of Medina).

Compared to my other travel writings, this one has a lot more on the history, politics, and economics of its subject. Saudi Arabia has been one of my top travel destinations for years because it’s one of the most unusual countries in the world and it’s currently undergoing a massive transformation. Four years ago, despite possessing a per capita wealth level comparable to Western Europe, Saudi Arabia had:

  • Complete gender segregation, including forced gender separation in restaurants, mandatory dress codes for women, and a ban on women driving
  • Prohibitions on degenerate Western practices, including music concerts, movie theaters, and most advertisements
  • Enforcement of Sharia law by paramilitary religious police who could freely beat people with sticks

Today, all of this stuff is gone. Most Westerners could witness the change with their own eyes in 2019 when Saudi Arabia began issuing tourist visas for the first time. Other restrictions, including complete alcohol prohibition and a ban on any religious buildings besides Sunni mosques (there are a few Shia mosques), remain.

Continue reading “Notes on Saudi Arabia” →