Image Courtesy of @SecPrensaSV on Twitter
By Fernanda Álvarez Pineiro
Latin America’s millennial caudillo, Nayib Bukele, enjoys approval ratings that soar past 70%, crowning him as one of the most popular leaders of the continent. Nevertheless, his derogatory remarks towards democracy accompanied by an encroachment on checks and balances are inching El Salvador closer to authoritarianism.
With an impressive followership that surpasses 2.5 million users, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has wielded the power of Tweets as a direct line of communication with his supporters. With an average rate of 54.2 daily tweets and a youthful image characterized by his backwards baseball cap and aviator sunglasses, Bukele has a social media presence rivalled only by the now-blocked Twitter account of Donald Trump. Just like the twice impeached American President, however, Bukele is triggering alarm bells. The greater his popularity, the greater his fixation on eroding democratic norms and institutions in a country whose history is plagued both by distrust in the establishment and by chronic cycles of gang violence.
Taking El Salvador By Storm
Nayib Bukele is a textbook example of a populist opportunist. Following the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992) – one of the bloodiest in the history of Latin America – the antagonistic factions of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) institutionalized a bipartisan system that quickly turned sour with public distrust, corruption, and an exponential homicide rate that earned San Salvador the title of the world’s homicide capital. Distrust ran so high that, according to a Latinobarómetro survey conducted right before Bukele’s election victory in 2017, 84.7% of Salvadorans thought powerful groups ruled the country for their own private benefit and 61% had no trust in political parties. Riding on this wave of boiling contempt, it is no surprise that Bukele won the Presidency with 53% of the votes, negating the need for a run-off election.
Soon after he took his seat in the Presidential chair, Bukele began moving his chess pieces in a bid to centralize power in an already fragile political board characterized by weak institutions. One of the most chilling episodes of his encroachment on democratic freedoms was the military seizure – or self-coup, depending on one’s perspective – of the Legislative Assembly on February 9 of last year when, under his orders, 50 soldiers entered the Blue Room in the Assembly chambers to force MPs to approve a US$109 million from the Inter-American Development Bank meant to fund his efforts to mitigate gang violence through his Territorial Control Plan. Reminiscent of other episodes where the alliance between the executive and the military have stymied the consolidation of democracy, Bukele made numerous attacks on MPs, accusing them of preferring to fund rampant crime rather than his policies and promising that he is “willing to give everything, even the [Presidency] or [his] life, if necessary” against the corruption of ARENA and the FMLN. Following the dramatic episode, 79% of Salvadorans expressed their support for the deployment of the military.
Despite his brazen violations of the integrity of the legislative branch and frequent attacks on critical independent media outlets like El Faro February’s Legislative elections – effectively a referendum on Bukele –unveiled that public support for the President is unabated. By securing control of 261 municipalities and 56 out of 85 seats in Congress, Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party has received more votes than the President received himself when elected to office in 2018. The electoral victory, although partially due to Bukele’s charisma and political cynicism targeted at the preceding bipartisan establishment, is mainly owed to the 7 least violent consecutive months in at least three decades with a reported 26 days without murders until June 25. Bukele has emphatically tweeted that the peace and quiet that have recently enveloped the country are owed to the success of his Territorial Plan, thereby collecting valuable political capital given the historical gang violence that has characterized El Salvador.
The Dictator’s Mirage
The entrenched support for Bukele points to the transformation of El Salvador into a benevolent dictatorship, and whilst there seems to be a degree of social stability in the country, regional trends tell a different tale. In conversation with Central America Analyst Tiziano Breda of the International Crisis Group, Breda observes that Bukele has taken notes on the rise of regional dictators like Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Honduras’s Juan Orlando Hernández to prop up the foundations of his own at home.
At a closer look, such instantiations of authoritarian learning invoke sombre forecasts of Bukele’s further iron grip on power, which could predict constitutional manipulations conducive to an illegal re-election in 2024. With the recent removal of the Attorney General and five Supreme Court magistrates, Breda notes that “[Bukele] has already signalled that he is willing to change the Constitution and mould it to new times”. Even though it is unclear which mechanism he would adopt to secure his re-election given that “he could need two different legislative assemblies to ratify this constitutional amendment” and that “by the time the second legislative assembly ratifies it he should be out of office”, there are plenty of other regional examples wherein benevolent dictators have bended the Constitution to their will. With a more lenient Constitutional Chamber in place now, Bukele would “find loopholes and ways to justify his re-election and other measures”.
Whilst from a cynical, Hobbesian perspective we could say that Salvadorans would be advocates of this move because of their support for Bukele, there is no guarantee that his political capital will be sufficient in keeping his popularity afloat given his intimate relationship with the military and the unconvincing promotion of the causality between the Territorial Action Plan and reduced violence. The pursuit of justice for victims of war crimes during the Salvadoran War continues to permeate national debates, with a push to continue trials of high military figures like Inocente Montatno who was sentenced to 130 years in jail for his involvement in the assassination of 6 Jesuit priests in 1989. For Bukele, however, pursuing justice for victims and reinforcing his relationship with the military means treading on a floor full of broken glass. According to Breda: “the role of the military is part of Bukele’s equation in the intent to consolidate power over state institutions, and will be in the future, as it has been for other authoritarian rulers”. Although Bukele has been a vociferous critic of an Amnesty Law sponsored by the FMLN and ARENA parties – which would effectively create immunity for perpetrators – he has not himself made any strides to substantively grant justice to victims. This net policy failure has “been one of the most disappointing aspects of Bukele’s administration as he has promised to disclose state-related information and try to seek redress for victims, but he has failed them”. Therefore, it seems unlikely that high profile trials like Montano’s will ever take place in a Salvadoran court.
More importantly, Bukele has also attacked the Chapultepec Peace Accords of 1992 which brought the Civil War to an end. Despite being hailed as a regional model for democratic transition, Bukele has openly accused the Accords of being a “farce” and evidence of an elite settlement between ARENA and the FMLN. Although imperfect in a number of ways, the derision of these Accords by Bukele hints at a set of policies that will not seek to prioritize justice for the victims of the Civil War. The denied judicial access to military operation files linked to the 1981 El Mozote Massacre – the worst military-perpetrated war crime in Latin American history – is the perfect example that Bukele has a stake in shielding the military from open, public scrutiny.
Bukele’s Achilles Heel
What could cost Bukele even more precious political capital, however, is the revived eruption of gang violence on the streets of El Salvador. According to a report by the International Crisis Group, it is unlikely that Bukele’s Territorial Control Plan has been the key to decreasing homicide incidence. As similarly hypothesized by El Faro, it is more likely that Bukele came to an agreement with the MS-13 and Barrio 18 faction gangs. Bukele has vehemently denied this – even accusing El Faro of working in the interests of international actors – simply because negotiating with gangs is a political taboo in El Salvador. Following a disastrous truce with gangs in 2014, the Supreme Court criminalized dialogues with them the following year. Nevertheless, Bukele’s increasing power as benevolent dictator could imply that he could overturn the decision of the Supreme Court and pursue a negotiated settlement with the gangs and achieve a sustainable peace, Breda believes “Bukele is too attentive to his popularity to risk his political capital for such an unpopular move” and adds that “it is more a matter of political will than legal restraints”.
Dangerously, if the conspiratory settlement with the gangs falls apart and crime resurges in El Salvador, Bukele could easily resort to iron fist policies given how difficult it would be to paint the moribund FMLN and ARENA as the culprits behind the rise in violence. Whether he pursues a clandestine settlement with the gangs or resorts to violent measures like previous administrations, the current status quo will be hard to maintain and will cost him political capital – with worrying repercussions for the integrity of democracy and stability in the country.
Democratic Erosion or Backsliding? It Depends
Whilst Bukele has not made major policy mistakes that may have cost him dear political points, what continues to be clear is that democracy is in peril in El Salvador. Whether through the undermined autonomy of the legislative and judicial branches or the attacks on NGOs and independent journalism outlets, El Salvador is far from the path of a model democracy. The danger is that “Bukele is the perfect formula to come as a benevolent dictator, in particular because he is not only able to serve this wave of discontent at political parties but has also been quite effective”, says Breda. Much will depend on political culture and education, which is something that will not transpire in the short-term, and “if he is going to pursue the road he is hinting at, it will be increasingly difficult to regain those bases that were gained during the Peace Accords in the future”.
Whether decisive opposition emerges from a mobilized, historically strong, civil society that nurtures democratic norms or from increased pressure from the United States through Biden’s renewed agenda for Central America is hard to predict. What is clear, however, is that El Salvador is in an unprecedented position where power is centralized in the tweet-addicted thumbs of Latin America’s first millennial caudillo. Regardless of the faults that plagued the FMLN-ARENA system, Bukele’s rise as a benevolent dictator is dangerous not only for El Salvador, but for the region at large – the international community should start acting accordingly.
Fernanda Álvarez Pineiro is a second-year student of Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Originally Mexican, she is passionate about the political history of Latin America, particularly that of her home country.
