El Salvador’s “Strongman”

In 2019, the electoral victory of Nayib Bukele, a man in his thirties, as president of El Salvador was a surprise. His re-election in February 2024 with over 80% of the vote should have come as an even bigger surprise. This was not the case. Not only was this triumphant victory predicted by opinion polls, but it also earned Nayib Bukele a place on the cover of Time Magazine in September 2024.

A total victory for this man who dreams of giving El Salvador international visibility, and who is now establishing himself as the most talked-about leader in South America, in competition with Javier Milei in Argentina. Both leaders indeed have very similar dispositions: both are radicals, political newcomers, intensive users of digital media, etc. If there is no surprise at Bukele’s latest victory, it is because in the space of five years, he has taken the country from being the most dangerous country in the world (103 homicides per 100,000 people in 2015) to being as safe as Canada. This undeniable success has earned him the recognition of a population traumatised by endemic social violence and an endless settling of scores – and the population has thanked him for it at the ballot box.

A Meticulously Constructed Trajectory

In 2022, Bukele decreed an exceptional regime authorising arbitrary arrests of gang members and initiating a brutal crackdown on the gangs. Nayib Bukele is a mixed-race 42-year-old, son of a Salvadoran businessman and religious leader of Palestinian origin. He began his political career as mayor, standing for the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front or FMLN (until 2019, one of the country’s two mainstream parties, together with the right-wing ARENA), first in the small municipality of Nuevo Cuscatlán, then in the country’s capital, San Salvador. In 2018, he threw himself into the race for the presidency of the republic and chose as his campaign focus the fight against violence in society, particularly that of gangs in working-class neighbourhoods (which was resulting in 10,000 deaths a year). A former advertising executive, he is betting on the young electorate and is staging his own life as a success story on social networks. His anti-system and anti-party rhetoric became more radical after he was ousted by the FMLN in 2017 – after he threw an apple in the face of a councillor when he was mayor of San Salvador. Undeterred, he built his own party, Nuevas Ideas, described as an ideologically “empty shell ”, which he organised as his own personal electoral machine, promoting his own glory. The civil war from 1979 to 1992, according to Bukele, was the result of a simple ideological clash between East and West, not at all a problem of social inequality. He further argued that the social and economic stagnation since the signing of the peace agreement in 1992 – with 30% of the population living below the poverty line – was the fault of incapable leaders. The loss of credibility of the political elites, the declining voter turnout and the search for alternatives by disillusioned voters offered Bukele “The Communicator” a path to success.

What is Bukele’s Recipe for Success?

Nayib Bukele’s reputation was built on a two-pronged strategy aimed at curbing El Salvador’s endemic violence. Initially, negotiations with gang leaders he had secretly bought off provided him first successes. Then, in 2022, Bukele decreed an exceptional regime authorising arbitrary arrests of gang members and initiating a brutal crackdown on the gangs. These anti-gang initiatives, known as mano dura, or iron fist, were based on extrajudicial executions, torture of suspected gang members, mass incarceration and the militarisation of El Salvador’s internal security policy. Well-equipped soldiers and police systematically raid and arrest suspects without warrants, starting with anyone with a tattoo. New penitentiaries were built – including in 2023 the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, the largest prison in America with a capacity of 40,000 prisoners – and spectacular images of men being crammed together in their cells began to circulate. (PUT PHOTO) At the same time, calls for denunciation were rewarded and human rights systematically violated. Today, 10% of the country’s 100,000 prisoners are said to be locked up for no reason.

But while this war on crime is receiving a great deal of media coverage, human rights NGOs are worried about another development: Bukele’s takeover of the Supreme Court of Justice, whose judges he has replaced with people close to him. He has shown the same lack of respect for parliament, that he had the army invest in 2021 in order to impose a vote linked to a request for a USD 109 million military loan. All these measures compose the panoply of the perfect dictator, or rather the “coolest dictator in the world”, as Bukele calls himself. Cool, like the modern image of El Salvador that he is working on, with publicity stunts like the introduction of bitcoin as the official currency.

Two Major Risks

What is there to fear from this presidential adventure, which is widely supported by the electorate (see graph)? One major threat consists in this authoritarian drift becoming entrenched over the long term.

a

Three months after his re-election, his party’s deputies (54 out of the 60 in Congress) approved an express political constitutional reform that opens the door to the indefinite re-election of the president. A classic autocratic move. Moreover, it is likely that taking full control of the judiciary and constitutional powers will not be conducive to stemming the looming economic crisis (low growth and a large deficit), after a period of growth between 2020 to 2022, particularly with the return of tourists (10% of GDP by 2022). The country is also facing a major demographic crisis (due to a sharp rise in the number of unemployed young people), not to mention the revelations of new abuses in the press, such as embezzlement and money laundering. What will happen if Bukele’s hold on the throne wavers? Will the authoritarian turn be followed by a repressive one?

In just a few years, Bukele has become the new star of South American governments. The other risk is contagion. In just a few years, Bukele has become the new star of South American governments. The political parties of Honduras, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and Argentina have included in their programmes crime-fighting objectives largely inspired by the Salvadoran model. El Salvador proudly asserts itself as a showcase for the success of populist authoritarianism. However, while this model meets a real demand from a large part of the population, it will do nothing to change the highly unequal structures of Salvadoran society.

The honeymoon that the Salvadoran people are enjoying with their president is a further case for closely monitoring the role that elections will play in the country in the decades to come. Could it be, indeed, that South America’s smallest state will constitute the perfect populist laboratory for the first half of the 21st century?