The first Pakistani rap song

This issue takes you to El Salvador (murders fell 70%?!?!) and Cuba (It's official: Spain f*cking lied about the end of the slave trade, like everyone else). Plus, the first Pakistani rap song, Ugandan birdwatchers, lowest turnout ever in Bangladeshi elections, Stella McCartney perfume bottles and African designers, Kashmiri female rappers, and an AI-generated politician in Mexico, so much more.

El Salvador says murders fell 70% in 2023

What happened:
In El Salvador, the number of murders dropped by almost 70% in 2023. This decrease is linked to the government's strict actions against crime gangs.

Why this matters:
Now, the murder rate is just 2.4 out of every 100,000 people. That's super low, especially compared to other places in the Americas. Only Canada's doing better. Some 6 million people live in this Central American country.

Tell me more:
So, the Justice and Security Minister, Gustavo Villatoro, said there were 154 murders last year. That's way down from 495 the year before. To give you an idea, back in 2021 and 2020, they had over 1,000 murders each year, and in 2019 it was over 2,000. People seem to like President Nayib Bukele's hard-line approach to dealing with gangs. But, this approach isn't exactly gentle -- we're talking about fast arrests and locking people up without much legal help.

Is this good news?
It's great that murders are down, but it's not all good news. There are some serious worries about human rights. Reports of torture and deaths while in police custody are pretty alarming. Since they declared a state of emergency in early 2022, which was all about getting tough on gangs, the police have arrested about 75,000 suspected gang members. But here's the thing -- human rights groups the Central American University's (UCA) Observatory of Human Rights says that there's been a lot of abuses, like over 5,000 cases, and around 190 deaths linked to this crackdown. Some folks are even saying the government's not telling the whole story about how many violent deaths there really are. Plus, they want to hold mass trials for those imprisoned. However, the government says if they find people they arrested who aren't actually linked to gangs, they'll let them go. Already, about 6,000 people have been released.

Zoom out:
In response to a recent surge in violence, Ecuador's new President Daniel Noboa announced recently that his country would build two maximum-security prisons inspired by El Salvador's CECOT, the biggest jail in the Americas.

Tell me more about politics in El Salvador
It all revolves around Nayib Bukele, the country's president. He's young, a crypto fanboy, pretty charismatic, veeeery popular and "increasingly authoritarian," says Carlos Dada, editor of the news organization El Faro. And... that's poses a whole lot of problems for many, specifically journalists. "El Faro was the first Salvadoran media outlet born in democracy," Dada noted in a speech in September at Columbia University, where he accepted an award from the International Press Institute. "Now democracy is almost completely gone, and yet, thanks to an innovative, modern, and greased propaganda machine, Mr. Bukele is the Latin American president with the highest popular support, which raises a paradox: the communities we serve don't support us." Bukele isn't also particularly migration-friendly. Recently, El Salvador started charging a huge fee -- we're talking about US$1,130 -- to travellers from India or African countries, even if they're just stopping over. This move came right after Bukele had a chat with a U.S. official. Bukele is seeking a second five-year term in the Feb. 4 election.

Fun fact:
Bukele once commissioned a massive Trump painting. The artist? Francisco Antonio López Benavides.

Transatlantic slavery continued for years after 1867, historian finds

What happened:
Spain announced the end of the slave trade in 1867, but historian Hannah Durkin discovered (for the English-speaking world) that this wasn't entirely true. Slave ships continued to arrive in Cuba until at least 1872.

Why this matters:
Now we (in the English-speaking world) know that the slave trade in Spain continued for years after it was supposedly abolished.

Tell me more:
Durkin found evidence of two ships arriving in 1872. One had about 200 people, and the other, possibly an American ship, had 630 people. She also came across some reports from explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. He had visited Benin in 1873 and reported on the slave trade in Ouidah, a significant African slave port (in fact, the second-biggest on the continent). According to Durkin, about two million people, or one in six of all enslaved people sent to the Americas, came from there.

Why now?
Durkin hit the jackpot with some old newspapers that just got digitized. They further backed up similar findings by "Cuban historians", as The Guardian mysteriously writes. They, too, found out that the slave trade...