On Friday, August 1, El Salvador's parliament reformed the Constitution by 57 votes to 3, removing the limit of the presidential term. The changes were introduced with 1 man in mind: the ruling state since 2019 president Nayibie Bukele, who in six years completely dominated the country's political system, focusing in his hand all power and removing most of its constitutional restrictions.
Unfortunately, presidents reaching for dictatorial power are nothing fresh in Latin American history. Bukele – due to its close alliance with Trump, post-modern right-wing populism, biography and the ability to usage social media to build support for authoritarian politics – is simply a case worth looking at.
Bukele, president of Prisons
The planet drew attention to Bukele at the beginning of the year, by means of an agreement made by the Secretary of State Marco Rubio with the president of El Salvador on his journey to Central America on behalf of the Trump administration. As part of this, El Salvador has undertaken to accept deportees of illegal migrants active in crime, not only citizens of El Salvador, but besides countries specified as Venezuela, which raises legal doubts. Deportees from the United States for a tiny fee were to go to Salvadoran prisons, including the celebrated for peculiarly drastic conditions, built during the time of the Bukele Center for the Isolation of Terrorism (CECOT), capable of holding as many as 40,000 prisoners.
Under Bukele El Salvador became the state with the largest incarceration rate in the world. In a country with a population of 6,02 million in prisons 110 000 people are presentOf which 80,000 have been arrested in the last 5 years. How calculated Time magazine, 1 in 57 citizens went to prison. Since 2022, the country has been in a inactive extended state of emergency, which allows for the arrest of suspected gang members without court approval, including minors from 12 years of age.
The government admits that there are mistakes and innocent people go to prison. However, he argues that it is simply a tiny price for security. Because, in fact, under the regulation of Bukele, the number of killings that had been drastically reduced before 2019, mainly due to the war of 2 dominant in Gang country, MS-13 and Barrio 18, were a plague. Bugele tried to limit their number from the beginning. According to authoritative government statistics In 2018, the number of murders per 100,000 inhabitants was 53.1—which made El Salvador a evidence holder in the western hemisphere—in 2024 erstwhile Bukele finished his first term—1.9.
In 2021, Biden's administration accused Bukele of negotiating with gang leaders to limit home violence. Incarcerated gang leaders were to be bribed by the president with money and various peculiar privileges, specified as prostitute visits for purposes. However, negotiations seemed to have fallen a year later erstwhile 87 people were murdered in March over 1 weekend, which was a evidence even for El Salvador. Bugele responded by introducing a state of emergency.
A society tired of gang force welcomed him with relief. The more violent he was with the Bukele gangs, the more popular he grew. The government itself published on social media films showing inhumane conditions in prisons, knowing that this is what the public expects.
All power in the hands of the President
In 2024, Bukele obtained re-election, scoring as much as 84.7 percent of the vote. The Constitution of El Salvador does not let the re-election of the incumbent president. However, erstwhile in 2021 the president's fresh Ideas party, led by his cousin head of state, Xavier Bukele, gained an absolute majority in the El Salvador parliament, utilized it to choice fresh constitutional court judges who felt that existing government did not limit the Bukile's re-election possibilities. The fresh parliament besides cancelled the lawyer General, investigating the president's contacts with gang leadership.
In the subsequent parliamentary elections, in 2024, fresh Ideas won 54 out of 60 seats in the single-camera parliament. El Salvador has fundamentally become a one-party state without effective opposition. Bukele is besides clearly trying to limit the control function of NGOs and the media. The late adopted law makes it hard for the second to act, including a 30% taxation on donations from abroad. From the beginning, Bukele marginalized the media, journalists writing critically about his actions were bombarded with hatred by the president's supporters. 1 of the most respected news portals in the country, El Faro, publishing many critical material on the president, in 2023 moved the editorial office to close Costa Rica, fearing for the safety of journalists.
“King the philosopher” makes selfie
Instead of journalists, Bukele preferred to talk to infuencers or to communicate straight with his supporters through social media. And you gotta admit, she's doing great. Which should possibly not be surprising, given that before becoming a politician himself, the president of El Salvador was professionally active in political marketing. The Bugele profile on the X portal watches 7.6 million people – more than El Salvador has residents. People working with Bugele talking to abroad media compare his way of acting in politics to a movie director, individual who is very consciously directing all action and his image.
From its very beginning in politics – erstwhile he ran for mayor of Nuevo Culscatlán in the beginning of the erstwhile decade, a satellite town of the capital of the country – Bukele builds the image of individual outside mainstream politics who behaves and looks alternatively like the head of a fashionable, innovative start-up than like a politician. alternatively of wearing a suit, he performed in a mounted baseball cap, in sports shoes, sunglasses and in a leather jacket. When, as president of El Salvador, Bukele spoke for the first time before the United Nations General Assembly in fresh York City, he pulled his smartphone to make himself a selfie. As he said, more people will remember the image of him taking a image than the content of his speech.
Bukele profile On X is signed the “king philosopher”. Bukele likes to declare that as a politician he is the creator of new, innovative ideas. However, it is not ideas or ideology that are strong for the leader of El Salvador, but self-promotion, political marketing and the ability to read social sentiments. Like El Faro talking. said Bukele’s advisor from the period erstwhile he was mayor of the country’s capital (2015)-18: “Nayib has no ideology. It's run by the public. He invests a lot in her research." The president built a staff of people on a regular basis analyzing metadata from social media, investigating what the president's message "eats" and what not very much, what are the social trends that the president can attach to.
Bukele can besides usage trolling to attract public attention. erstwhile opponents start throwing dictatorial urges at him, he starts calling himself “the coolest dictator in the world”. The associated accounts on the X portal began the run under the hashtag "But a beautiful dictatorship", posting posts depicting e.g. photographs of troops helping average people.
El Salvador: Beyond 20th Century Politics
The president of El Salvador began his career in politics in the ranks of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front organization (FMLN), native to the left-wing partisan, fighting against the governments supported by Reagan president Duarte. In a 2012 interview, the future president said: "I am a typical of the extremist left due to the fact that I want extremist changes in Salwdor". Bukele becomes mayor of Nuevo Culscatlán and San Salvador with FMLN support. From the beginning, however, it distances itself from traditionally left-wing symbolism and organization language.
It besides has a alternatively different origin for the policy of the left - although not entirely suited to the populist right with which it is associated today. Bukele originates from a very wealthy Palestinian family. His father was a successful entrepreneur and imam who founded 4 mosques in El Salvador. As the imam Bukele elder preached the advantages of polygamy and had a full of 10 children with respective partners. Many Bukele brothers and cousins now populate the presidential administration, forming the closest ellipse of his associates. He is besides represented by colleagues of the president from advanced school – an exclusive private institution, conducting teaching in English and Spanish simultaneously.
Bugele breaks up with FMLN in 2017. As El Faro writes, this happens after a survey comes to his desk that shows that most citizens do not identify with either the right or the left and that political divisions of the 20th century do not have much political importance for them. The fresh Bukele organization is looking for ideas that are able to fit into social expectations, while generating the best marketing effects for the president.
Such an thought is e.g. making Bitcoin an authoritative means of payment in 2021. El Salvador was the first country to decide on a akin move. It has been negatively assessed by global financial institutions. As Time wrote in 2024, cryptocurrency transactions were made by little than 12% of the citizens of the country – many of them do not even have a bank account and a payment card, let alone an electronic wallet. However, the decision gave Bukele free advertising all over the planet and allowed him to buy in with the techlibertarian right hand, making it easier for him to get to Trump.
This is the future?
Today, thanks to his alliance with Trump, Bukele's governments enjoy global protection. His success in the fight against crime begins to be invoked by another politicians from the region, ready to imitate the brutal methods of the leader of El Salvador. Experts point out that Bukele, building a penal-military-penal apparatus, has massively indebted the country, and that in the long run the state may not be able to afford specified an expansive safety policy. Others feel that 40 000 children are raised without at least 1 parent as a consequence of a state of emergency policy – which can make another broken generation that will turn to gangs and violence.
So far, Bukele remains very popular. The question is, if the people of El Salvador always want to thank him for his services, can they do so without a bloody coup?
At the same time, it is hard to defy the uncomfortable impression that postideological, built with the aid of the analysis of metadata from social media "cool dictatorship", combining wiral marketing with a continuous state of emergency, mass incarceration and cryptocurrency can be the future not only in Mesoamerica.
