Hundreds of thousands of fans filled El Salvador’s national stadium to witness Shakira’s sold out five-night residency of the “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour”. Initially the residence was only three nights, but in less than 24 hours it was sold out. Shakira’s residency came after other large Latino artists performed in the country, such as Bad Bunny in 2022 and Karol G in 2024. On X, Bukele posted: “El Salvador is changing and Central America too. Shakira sold out all the tickets for her 3 dates in less than 24 hours. I know the enormous effort the producers are making to extend this impressive Central American residency, based in our country.” Tens of thousands of foreign tourists flew into El Salvador, what used to be the homicide capital of the world, to go see Shakira in concert. This is exactly what Bukele wants people to see. How did El Salvador become so safe so fast? What remains when the musical spectacle stops?
In 2015, the country’s homicide rate was the highest in the world, with 103 homicides per 100,000 people. Today, the homicide rate lies around 1.9 homicides per 100,000 people. Salvadorians feel this dramatic change in their everyday lives. Bukele delivered safety to the people that they haven’t felt in decades.
Bukele is using tourism which the safety permits as proof of the effectiveness of his governmental changes. Shakira’s residency followed international surfing tournaments and Miss Universe, all of which flooded international media with images of a safe, modern, and tourist-friendly El Salvador. The increase in security is real. However, Bukele is promoting these large events in the media to bury the cost of the safety he brought.
Bukele’s erosion of El Salvador’s democratic systems permitted him to execute the security crackdown without facing opposition. Although the SOE is only valid for 30 days, Bukele has renewed it every month since March 2022. Under it, security forces can make warrantless arrests, detain people without informing the suspect of their charges, and withhold lawyer access. Hundreds have died in the overflowing prisons and 91,000 people have been arrested, many of which have never even been convicted of a crime. After its 33rd renewal, the SOE is beginning to look less than temporary. It is becoming the new normal.
Bukele dismantled and reconstructed the institutions of horizontal accountability. He packed the Constitutional Court and Attorney General with his loyalists, reduced the number of legislative seats in the Constitutional Court, and reinterpreted the constitution to allow for his second presidential term. On the night of Bukele’s reelection, he said, “Could we have won the war against gangs with the ARENA attorney general? Could we have won with the previous Constitutional Court?” Bukele’s horizontal capture was the key to his success, but once the promoted glamour of El Salvador’s safety wears off, what is left? A country whose democratic institutions have been hollowed out remains.
Although Bukele’s methods have been criticized abroad, majority of surveyed people of El Salvador support it. It is easy to criticize from afar, where one is not feeling the effects of the policies in place, but the security transformation changed their lives. However, as safety becomes the new normal, El Salvador’s consistent suffering economy will shift into focus.
Once the tourists go home, stadium empties, and music stops, people will notice the democratic systems Bukele eroded. Those who benefited most from the Shakira residency and influx of tourism are not the same people whose poverty doubled, unions dissolved, or public defenders were fired. According to BTI’s 2026 El Salvador report, during Bukele’s first term, the poverty rate rose 5% to 27.2%, public debt became 84% of GDP, the failed bitcoin experiment wasted $200 million in public spending, and the new $1.4 billion IMF loan required wage freezes and public sector cuts.
Independent courts, free press, functioning unions, and opposition are all funnels through which citizens could express their new demands. Bukele eliminated all of these. Once citizens become dissatisfied with the government’s economic output, they will begin to withdraw support from Bukele’s and what he produces. Unfortunately, the mediums of meaningful democratic change are dissolving.
Shakira’s El Salvador residency is both an important cultural event and a political act. It shows that El Salvador’s security transformation is real and globally recognized. It also highlights how leaders can manipulate the public image of a country to hide the ugly parts of their policies. Bukele’s spectacles can only work for so much longer. Soon everyone will begin to see the poorly distributed economic gains, increasing poverty, and dissolved checks and balances. At the end of the performance is a country without gangs and the institutions through which people can demand anything else.
I really love the way you frame this! Using a concert tour to expose the bargain Bukele is offering Salvadorans is such a smart move and made it palatable to understand. It gets at something Levitsky and Ziblatt talk about a lot, which is that modern autocrats almost always look like effective managers delivering tangible results. Your line about the SOE going from temporary to “the new normal” really stuck with me, because that’s the textbook executive aggrandizement pattern Bermeo describes, where emergency powers become permanent through repeated extension rather than a single dramatic seizure. The point about who actually benefited from the tourism influx versus who is dealing with doubled poverty rates also lines up well with Haggard and Kaufman on inequality straining democratic stability. Once the spectacle fades, the people most hurt by the economic costs no longer have functional press or civil society to channel their grievances through.