Two new perspectives on Bukele’s populist authoritarianism in El Salvador

Two lengthy articles about Nayib Bukele’s rule in El Salvador appeared in the American press today. Bukele is on the current cover of TIME magazine, with the caption “The Strongman — How El Salvador President Nayib Bukele became the world’s most popular authoritarian.” Bukele enjoys this kind of spotlight (it currently dominates his Twitter feed), but he didn’t mention the New York Times op-ed titled The High Cost of Safety in El Salvador , perhaps because it doesn’t contain a single picture of the “coolest dictator/philosopher king”

The TIME interview is Bukele’s first with an international media journalist in three years. Lately, he has often given interviews to a YouTube influencer or Tucker Carlson.

The TIME article, written by Vera Bergengruen, is titled How Nayib Bukele’s ‘Iron Fist’ Has Transformed El Salvador and takes an in-depth look at the remarkable changes, for better and for worse, in El Salvador. She notes:

For Bukele’s admirers, El Salvador has become a showcase for how populist authoritarianism can succeed. His second term will be a test of what happens to a state when its charismatic young leader has an overwhelming mandate to dismantle its democratic institutions in the pursuit of security. The results will have far-reaching implications not only for El Salvador but also for the region, where political leaders are eager to replicate what many the miracle Bukele—the Bukele miracle.

Whether it can be sustained is another question.

I shuddered at this quote at the end of the piece from the leader of El Salvador’s armed forces:

That’s why Merino, the defense minister, believes the government has a mandate to continue mano dura. “As much as human rights groups cry and complain about the state of emergency, people here are much freer than in countries where there is no state of emergency,” he says. “Once you have the support of the population, there’s nothing that can stop us.”

Here you can read the transcript of the full interview with Bukele. (He likes to hear himself talk.)

You should also read Megan Stack’s The High Price of Safety in El Salvador, which appeared in the New York Times Opinion section today. Stack doesn’t interview Bukele, but she does share with us conversations with Salvadorans who have been freed from gang control in their neighborhoods and who also know neighbors who have been arrested without cause and without due process. He’s popular with the people she interviews, which is what she’s trying to understand:

(Bukele is) part mafia boss, part Willy Wonka: a capricious leader with showmanlike instincts, who occasionally makes terrified threats in between grand declarations of goodwill.

Stack asks whether a country can trade human rights for security in its environment:

The philosophical conundrum that Mr Bukele poses is that his supporters are, in a sense, eagerly supporting their own oppression and have, in effect, traded their rights for quiet streets.

Stack’s piece points to a new, and perhaps more difficult, challenge for Bukele: the economy and food price inflation in a country that imports most of its fruits, vegetables and grains. Problems like these are not easily solved by a presidential decree and marching soldiers through the streets. Bukele began to treat this like the gang problem, threatening loan sharks with jail time:

This was Bukele’s textbook example: a threatening, all-encompassing demand for a result — safer streets, cheaper food — with a stunning indifference to the details of how it might be achieved, or who might get hurt in the process. These diktats have created a dark carnival atmosphere in the country, events seesawing and shifting at Mr. Bukele’s whims, everyone rushing to adapt to his decree.

For Nayib Bukele, today was another chance to say to Salvadorans: we may be the smallest country in America, but look how much attention the world is paying to us now.