When Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 members were deported to El Salvador, they returned to a country that did not help them reintegrate or even want them, and they brought in senseless crime and violence that terrorized the nation. In 2019, El Salvador found its saving grace: Nayib Bukele. A figure whose disregard for proper procedures drives El Salvador toward democratic backslide.
Bukele–son of a prominent Salvadorian figure Armando Bukele–was raised in a well-to-do family in an affluent area of the capital, San Salvador. He rose to the presidency through alignment with the Salvadorian leftwing party “Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front” (FMLN), quickly becoming the mayor of San Salvador and gaining favor based on improvements to the city’s structure, lowering crime, and creating public projects with his mayoral salary. With all that success, he ran and won the presidential election, despite running as a third-party candidate. Nayib Bukele stepped into the presidency with an incredible track record as mayor and the popularity he carried allowed him to become the youngest president of El Salvador. However, with that same popularity, he acquired enough power to use radical measures to combat some of the most rampant maladies of the nation, such as gang violence. Particularly, Bukele demonstrated that with all the support he has from the people, he is not afraid to test political boundaries by using force to transform institutions to acquire more power. These radical measures reduced basic rights and democratic values.
Overuse of Force
On February 9th, 2020, Nayib Bukele in his first year as president walked into the Salvadorian Asamblea Legislativa (Legislative Assembly) accompanied by several military soldiers. He had been butting heads with the legislative assembly over their refusal to approve 109 million dollars from the Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica (BCIE) for his crackdown on gangs. He told the council of ministers that if they did not fulfill the quorum and pass this legislation, he would invoke Article 87, giving the people a right to a popular insurrection. This is not the only way in which Bukele uses the military for his political gain. He used five thousand soldiers to surround two gang members and post it as propaganda on his TikTok page.
Manaswini Ramkumar’s article “The Scylla And Charybdis Of Duty Discharge” looks at military-civilian leader relations when the civilian leader is veering towards democratic decay–like Bukele has–and how there is a disconnect between their orders and their mission to protect democracy. One would hope that in the face of such a dilemma, the military would put the good of the nation above the wishes of a malicious leader. But what if their undemocratic leader had unwavering support from the masses? In contrast to Ramkumar’s article, the Salvadorian army does not serve the people as a buffer between democracy and undemocratic leaders. Leonardo Bonilla, a minister during the February 9th military force display and who had previously supported Bukele, stated “Are they going to force us to vote with a gun to our head? This is not a democracy anymore.”
Two years later in March 2022, Bukele enacted a state of emergency–known as the Estado de Excepcion (State of Exception)–as part of his “war against gangs” that has allowed officials to arrest and imprison anyone, totaling over 70 thousand people by the end of 2023–over 5 thousand of them found innocent. While this has been effective at choking out the gangs in the country, there are reports of human rights violations. Can you say which ones or who reported them? This is even without the use of his “mega-prison” which is to hold 40 thousand inmates in 100-inmate cells. There is a lack of prior investigations or warrants before these arrests are made, and under a Bukele reform, there are “mass trials” where multiple prisoners have lawyers who are ill-equipped to handle such a massive trial. Bukele’s violations of human rights continue due to the popularity gained from parading the “outgroup” hatred as an excuse for the anti-democratic judicial practices.
In chapter 9 of “Hard White” Richard Fording and Sanford Schram argue that Trump used incendiary rhetoric against “others” such as Latino and Muslim immigrants, Black Americans, and non-Christians, who he implies are not true Americans. Similarly, Bukele has convinced the Salvadorian people that those affected by the measures are enemies of the nation. This has, as Fording and Schram said about Trump, “paid off” and enabled Bukele to twist the narrative of what is occurring in El Salvador to justify his harsh policies, exclaiming that those who are against him only want to see “Salvadorian blood run.” The excessive use of the military and flawed judicial practices geared to punish as many as possible are further examples of Bukele ignoring procedures, causing a democratic backslide.
Unconstitutional Reforms
As of March 2024, Bukele counted with a 90% approval rate in El Salvador and won reelection with 85% of votes despite a suspension of due process and the undeniable diminishing of the separation of powers in the country’s government. But reelection is unconstitutional, and Bukele achieved reelection by picking Supreme Court justices that would allow it. Bukele also reduced the number of municipalities from 262 to 44, claiming that this cuts spending, and “coincidentally” also gave Bukele the best results in numbers in the next election.
The disregard for proper procedure for the Salvadorian democratic system has not gone unnoticed. Critics have pointed out that his reelection violates seven constitutional provisions. Like other populists, Bukele uses all the tools available to acquire more power and there is a real threat that he will continue to encroach on civil liberties under the guise of national security and fighting against violence. As Jan-Werner Muller put it in “What is Populism?” one can find that “the populist…can divine the proper will of the people based on what it means to be,” in Bukele’s case, a real Salvadorian. The institutions that would have kept Bukele from being reelected were simply dismantled and an oppositional legislature and Supreme Court were replaced by ones that would remove those blocks.
There is no real doubt that Bukele has changed El Salvador in many ways, but it is imperative that the people both in and out of El Salvador remain vigilant. The people of El Salvador have been affected by gang violence for so long that they are eager for a solution, and it is undeniable that the country has changed for civilians. However, while they rejoice in the good, they are also ignoring the bad, and this is threatening to expand into other Latin American countries. Is security worth the dangers to democracy? To what extent should the people of El Salvador and other LATAM countries accept harsh crackdowns and political manhandling? This second 5-year term will answer a lot of questions for the region, and one has to hope that it will do so before other countries follow in El Salvador’s footsteps.
References:
- “What is Populism?” Jan-Werner Müller
Lidia, I found this piece fascinating! The escalation from a state emergency to an “enemies of the state” propaganda campaign to mass arrests in the thousands really speaks to the rapidness of democratic backsliding under particular nation leaders. El Salvador could be a particularly interesting case study, as we see Bukele’s leadership play out over the next few years, for other countries in Latin America that not only deal with gang violence but also unconstitutional leaders- to look to.
Bukele’s tough-on-crime approach does not differ that much from the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign against illegal drugs. Both played into actual, material fears by scapegoating a visible sector of society and pinning entire problems on them.
It’s interesting to point how crime prevalence is an easy exploit for populist authoritarians, where an appraisal of democratic backsliding is always followed by a positive popular assessment of their impact on state order.