SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — After Eliminate gangs in El Salvador After more than three years of state of emergency, President Nayib Bukele this month turned his attention to another persistent but softer problem: the country’s large number of stray cats and dogs.
“Thousands of dogs and cats live on our streets. We want to change this, but not with cruelty. We have the financial resources, but we are looking for expert partners to set an example for Latin America,” Bukele wrote in X on October 8. “Who wants to come help?”
San Salvador suffers from a common problem in Latin American cities: free-roaming cats and dogs sleeping on the streets without anyone to look after them. Dogs can be seen lying on the warm asphalt on the side of the road, deftly crossing six lanes of traffic as if taking a walk in the park, or scavenging in the trash at the edge of the market. However, they are often undernourished, sick or injured and searching for food and water.
It’s unclear what solution Bukele will take. controversial leader I like and strive for the well-oiled glasses of government communications, but I like problems that lead to grand solutions.
What’s more, this millennial leader seems to have a strong interest in rescue. He owned a dog, Cian, when he was mayor of San Salvador, the capital.
At the Good Fortune Rescue shelter in Zacamil, just north of the capital, Rafaela Perez said something needed to be done urgently because “the number of abandoned animals that we see every day and are reported on social networks is very small compared to the animals that actually exist.”
“We need to change this bad culture of throwing away and disposing of animals because they are living things,” she says.
Bukele and his allies have already taken steps to address the lack of public institutions to care for the animals, which are often filled by cash-strapped non-governmental organizations.
In 2021, the government controlled by his New Ideas party imposed prison terms of two to four years and fines for animal abuse in El Salvador.
In 2022, his administration opened the region’s first public veterinary hospital, Tibopets Hospital. We offer our services at a symbolic cost of 25 cents, or equivalent cost in Bitcoin.
Patricia Madrid, president of the Foundation Grant, an organization specializing in the spaying, neutering and care of stray dogs, has been working with six other volunteers on the streets of Sarcoatitán, about 80 miles from El Salvador’s capital, for years. But they struggle to stay afloat because their funding comes from just one Salvadoran woman living in the United States.
Madrid said she hopes her organization can work with the government to change the situation.
It was not immediately clear where the money for Bukele’s latest project would come from. He has touted the gains from buying the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, but the Central American country faces mounting debt and received a $1.4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund earlier this year.
Bukele has previously received cooperation from China. modern public library In the main square of San Salvador.
The animal rights idea has also received praise from people like Niall Harbison, a Thailand-based social media influencer who said he was “on a mission to save stray dogs around the world” by raising money to pay for their sterilizations.
“I would love to talk about how we can help,” Harbison said in response to Bukele’s public call for social media posts about X. He added that he plans to fly out and meet people to see what he can do.
“I have always been looking for partner countries to demonstrate how cooperation between the private and public sectors works, and to make it so effective that other countries can emulate and implement it,” Harbison wrote.
The social media-savvy president responded, “Let’s give it a try.”
