President has everyone’s attention as he seeks re-election
LOVE HIM or hate him, all eyes are on Nayib Bukele.
To many, El Salvador’s president is a national hero who took on the country’s violent gangs with an unrelenting hand. To others, the populist is a 21st-century autocrat who has committed mass human rights abuses and has altered the rules of the game to concentrate power in his own hands.
Bukele has captured the world’s attention in a way few other Latin American leaders have in recent times.
The self-described “world’s coolest dictator” is likely to easily skate into a second presidential term in the election Sunday. After side-stepping El Salvador’s constitution prohibiting re-election in six different places, Bukele has the support of from seven to nine of every 10 voters, according to recent polling.
Alex Cisneros is among those who plan to vote for Bukele, many saying they have few options after years of corruption and violence under El Salvador’s traditional parties.
“He’s done many good things and many bad things,” said Cisneros, 32. “People criticise him, but he’s at least changed something.”
Growing up in one of the most dangerous areas of San Salvador, Cisneros fled to the US when he was 20 after his cousin was slain by the Mara Salvatrucha gang. Now back home, he said he was disturbed when police jailed an elderly neighbour for protecting her son, a likely gang member, but he added he can walk the streets freely at night for the first time in his life.
Bukele’s almost certain victory will further cement his grip on power as his tough tactics ripple out from this small Central American nation to other places with their own security crises like Ecuador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. That worries rights advocates across the region.
Tyler Mattiace, America’s researcher at Human Rights Watch, considers Bukele “one of the biggest risks for human rights and for democracy that we see in Latin America right now”.
“Bukele is incredibly popular, not only at home in El Salvador,” Mattiace said. “We see a growing number of people in countries across Latin America who are supporting this kind of authoritarian populism because they believe that it could be the only way to address rising levels of violence.”
When he was first elected in 2019, Bukele, a former publicity manager of Palestinian descent, became Latin America’s youngest leader. Fond of spectacle, he has attracted some of the world’s biggest names, recently hosting the Miss Universe pageant and pulling in soccer star Lionel Messi to play a pre-season match.
But his rise to wide recognition came in 2022 with his harsh war on the gangs that had long terrorised El Salvador.
Under a state of emergency, his government has locked up 76,000 people — more than one per cent of the population — in prisons where rights groups have documented cases of torture and the deaths of more than 150 inmates. The government also has been accused of systematic human rights abuses.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Bukele’s vice presidential running mate, Félix Ulloa, acknowledged the government “made mistakes” in detaining thousands of people who had committed no crimes. He also conceded officials may have set arrest quotas.
But he denied the government has suspended the rights of “honourable” Salvadorans. He justified the crackdown as being for the greater good of the country and widely popular.
“This is not a police state, it’s a state that provides security,” Ulloa said.
El Salvador’s homicide rate has shrivelled to among the lowest in the Americas, when just a few years ago the country was deemed one of the most dangerous places in the world.
In fulfilling his promise to bring security, something the country’s two traditional parties failed at, Bukele has gained the adoration of millions of Salvadorans like Paola Ventura.
The shop where the 25-year-old works in downtown San Salvador is plastered with the president’s face, on hats and soccer jerseys reading “Bukele 2024”. It also once stocked Bukele scarves and blankets, but they were all bought up by customers visiting from other countries.
Ventura said her boss also painted an entire wall of his nearby pupusa restaurant with a mural of Bukele, which has drawn in customers.
“He’s famous,” she said. “Bukele’s face sells.”
Others told AP they were too scared to talk about the election because of the mass detentions.
Bukele has pinned his campaign on the gang crackdown, warning Salvadorans that if his New Ideas party doesn’t win the election, the “war with the gangs would be put at risk”.
“The opposition will be able to achieve its true and only plan, to free the gang members and use them to return to power,” he said in one video as his message is spread widely on television, radio and social media.