“They were delicious,” one woman said of the pupusas she received after casting her vote in El Salvador’s recent presidential election. Stuffed corn tortillas, the country’s best-known dish, were distributed courtesy of the federal government and its incumbent President Nayib Bukele, who was running for re-election despite a constitutional ban on serving consecutive terms. Handing out food at polling stations could be considered illegal interference with voters. Bukele was undeterred.
Bukele is finished winning 85% of the popular vote and his New Ideas party maintained control of the majority in Congress. The 42-year-old president called the landslide victory “a record in the entire democratic history of the world”.
“It will be the first time that one party governs a country in a fully democratic system,” he said said a crowd of thousands of people who had gathered in the central square of San Salvador on election day. “The entire opposition has been pulverized.”
El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America with a population of about 6.3 million, but Bukele has become one of the best-known political leaders in the world. His enormous public profile stems from his public embrace of bitcoin and the staggering decline in crime and violence in El Salvador since he took office.
But Bukele also took control of the federal judiciary and cracked down on press freedom. He overturned a constitutional rule that prohibited him from running for a second term so he could remain in office. His defenders point to his broad popular support as evidence that he has a mandate to do what is necessary to heal the impoverished, crime-ridden country he presides over. But this view is shortsighted: Latin America’s slide toward authoritarianism highlights the long-term cost of allowing political majorities to undermine the rule of law.
The former mayor of the capital of San Salvador, Bukele was elected president in 2019, becoming Latin America’s youngest leader at 37. The self-described “coolest dictator in the world” (he trolls his critics by appropriating their epithets) has entered the political arena amid widespread disillusionment with traditional parties and rampant corruption. His anti-corruption commitments and unconventional policies have made him immensely popular. The same goes for his social media prowess: he speaks fluent English and often criticizes his critics on X, formerly Twitter, where he has collected 5.9 million followers.
The backward president first caught the world’s attention in September 2021, when he announced to an adoring crowd of bitcoin devotees at a conference in Miami that El Salvador would become the first country in the world to to adopt cryptocurrency as legal tender. The motion alarmed international financial institutions such as Moody’s and the International Monetary Fund, but this turned him into a celebrated figure who sought to end the global dominance of the US dollar. He installed bitcoin ATMs across the country and launched a government-sponsored crypto wallet, where citizens could access the $30 in bitcoin that El Salvador gave to all its citizens.
His reputation as a visionary leader was further cemented when he announced Bitcoin City, a new urban center that he says was inspired by Alexander the Great, where the government will use geothermal energy from nearby volcanoes to mine cryptocurrency.
But the use of bitcoin has not taken off in El Salvador, which has adopted the dollar standard since 2001. What has won voter support is Bukele’s broad attack on the country’s violent criminal gangs, which has transformed the capital of homicides in a country with the lowest homicide rate in the region. And it happened over the course of just two years.
By imposing a state of emergency in the spring of 2022, Bukele managed to detain approximately 75,000 alleged gang members, or approximately 1.7%. of the population. He has built a “mega-prison” with a capacity of 40,000 prisoners, nicknamed the “Terrorism Confinement Centre”.
No longer the murder capital, El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Bukele’s gang crackdown suspended constitutional protections and drew accusations of human rights violations. People were arrested without a judicial order or access to a lawyer. Arrest quotas were distributed and thousands were unjustly detained. Mass hearings are held for around 300 defendants at a time. There are reports of more than 250 people locked in a single prison cell, and inmates are often denied food for prolonged periods. There are accusations of torture. And Bukele’s government is accused of this negotiating secretly a truce with the gang leaders, buying their support with financial benefits and special privileges.
But Bukele remains incredibly popular thanks to dramatic improvements in public safety. According to a recent surveyhas the support 70% to 90% of the country.
He launched his re-election countryside with the promise of continuing the repression and the state of emergency. If his party, New Ideas, had not won the election, he said he would have annulled its results.
In the short term, Bukele has significantly improved daily life in El Salvador. But when popular leaders subvert constitutional constraints to achieve even worthy goals, the effects can be catastrophic in the long term.
In 2020, Bukele taken by assault the Legislative Assembly with heavily armed troops after lawmakers failed to approve his security loan proposal. A year later, he replaced The Supreme Court justices joined the loyalists, who then paved the way for his re-election. He did electoral reforms, reducing the number of deputies in the Legislative Assembly. Bukele and his party control every branch of power.
Bukele did it too targeted critics and journalists with techniques of harassment and intimidation, facilitated by a government-run propaganda apparatus that disseminates official narratives. Activists, trade union leaders and opposition politicians who speak out against his regime did so faced retaliation and censorship. For example, the editors of The lighthousea major critical media outlet, were forced to do so run away the country after enduring state-sponsored harassment and surveillance of their journalists.
One of Bukele’s boldest legislative maneuvers led to his re-election. In El Salvador, at least six articles of the Constitution to forbid presidential re-election, clearly establishing that candidates can only serve a five-year term. Then Bukele changed the composition of the court, which then reinterpreted the Constitution allow his re-election by a vote of 4-0 (with one judge abstaining).
Bukele has indicated he will not serve a third term and has done so She said that “the current rules do not allow” re-election for an indefinite period. But he has a record of violating regulations.
Bukele’s vice president, Felix Ulloa, said The New York Times, “To these people who say democracy is being dismantled, my answer is yes: we are not dismantling it, we are eliminating it, we are replacing it with something new.” Asked about Ulloa’s comment by the Spanish newspaper VillageBuekele She said“I don’t trust anything New York Times he says….El Salvador has never had democracy…We are bringing democracy to this country.”
Latin America’s recent history is full of cautionary tales of imperial presidencies. Hugo Chávez took direct control over every component of Venezuela’s state apparatus after being elected president in 1998, including the judicial and military systems. He too enjoyed widespread popular support. In 2009, he modified the Constitution, which allows him to remain in office indefinitely.
Chávez died in 2013, but his decision to end term limits was a major factor in the return of authoritarian rule. There is little hope of removing Chávez’s successor, Nicólas Maduro, as he currently is under investigation by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Maduro recently crossed out Opposition member María Corina Machado will not participate in the next elections. In a free election, she would probably defeat him.
In 2014, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega promoted a constitutional reform that would allow this re-election for an indefinite period. Like Chávez, Ortega enjoyed widespread popular support at the time of the change. Today, both Venezuela and Nicaragua are effectively dictatorships.
Bukele rejects claims that he is forming a one-party state, pointing to his landslide victory and broad support. There is an understandable tendency to overlook rule-bending for reasons of convenience in deeply troubled nations, but if robust institutions do not constrain El Salvador’s political majority, it could become yet another Latin American dictatorship.
Beware the short-term allure of pupusas at the polling station.
Music credits: “Eyes on the Ball” by Sémø via Artlist; “Yelema” by Captain Joz via Artlist; “Piki Piki” by Captain Joz via Artlist; “CloudCity” by Out of Flux via Artlist.
Photo credit: Valter Bell/ABr, CC BY 3.0 BR, via Wikimedia Commons; Nicolas Genin from Paris, France, via Wikimedia Commons; Dilma Rousseff, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Alexander Pe?a / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; The Graphic Print, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Salvador alc, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; MPphoto71/Newscom; Camilo Freedman/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; Video, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Franklin Reyes from Havana, Cuba, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; The photographer is Carlos Granier-Phelps. Alexander Pe?a / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Camilo Freedman/zumapress/Newscom; DPST/NewsCom; Album / Oronoz/Newscom; Claudia Guadarrama/Polaris/Newscom; The Graphic Print, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Joke Morning, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Fernanda LeMarie—Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Camilo Freedman/zumapress/Newscom; Camilo Freedman/zumapress/Newscom; Jonathan Alpeyrie/GIRL/Newscom; Joel Alvarez (Joels86), CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Russian Foreign Ministry/zumapress/Newscom; RICARDO BARBATO / Photo BlackStar/Newscom; Aeneas of Troy, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; LEONARDO GUZMAN / GDA/Newscom photo shoot; Miraflores Press; Darafsh, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; El Salvador Press Secretariat; Campi Javier/zumapress/Newscom; Francisco Arias/Zuma Press/Newscom; Notimex/Newscom; Cena Allison/Zuma Press/Newscom; Jimmy Villalta/zumapress/Newscom; Cindy Miller Hopkins / DanitaDelimont.com / “Danita Delimont Photography”/Newscom.
- Video editor: Regina Taylor
- Graphics: Adani Samet
- Audio Production: Ian Keyser