Opinion | The world finally sees how dangerous President Nayib Bukele is really by El Salvador

In May 2020, El Salvador was under a military reduction during Covid’s highlight. At a press conference, I asked President Nayib Bukele a simple question about meeting the business world after reopening the economy. Mr. Bukele was bursting and criticizing the founder of El Faro, the news agency in which I work.

Then I received death threats from Mr. Bukeles. One that is still noticeable was written by someone outside the country on Twitter: “I want to return to El Salvador so badly and shoot them three times so that they stop being a fool.”

The reaction was typical of a certain tribe of the supporters of Mr. Bukele, who treat the criticism of the president as an unforgivable sin. After six years it is still very popular, with a national approval rate of over 80 percent. A large part of the diaspora is also dedicated to him. While the idealized version of him – an efficient, eloquent leader who has reduced the crime in the country and is committed to combating corruption – sounds great, the reality is that he is a mercury and unbridled politician who controls every institution at the expense of the country’s democracy.

Now he has become President of Trump’s prison sentence and welcomed deported from the United States, which are locked up in El Salvador’s brutal prison system. Venezuelan and American families, whose relatives have been sent to these prisons, are now going through what many families have gone through since Mr. Bukele came to power-and felt the terrible arbitrary as a whole of his regime to rule his self-interested way. Many now recognize what some of us have warned for years: Even if Mr. Bukele ironically described the “coolest dictator in the world”, he is still a dictator.

The so-called Bukele model of national security is based on thousands of cases such as that of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoranian immigrant, which was not shown to El Salvador in March. In 2022, Mr. Bukele explained an emergency – still in force – to weaken the country’s mighty gangs and reduce the increasing crime and the murder rate.

It also undermined the constitutional rights of the Salvadorans, and thousands of people without criminal records were arrested in a comprehensive operation, which finally dismissed the territorial control of the gangs and drastically reduced the murders. Since the beginning of the state of emergency, around 80,000 people have been arrested and locked up in El Salvador. Last year Mr. Bukele admitted that 8,000 innocent people were arrested and released in the Sweep, but civil society groups say that the number is much higher.

Mr. Bukele has been a prominent personality in El Salvador’s political scene since 2012 when he became mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán, a city that is about as large as the Los Angeles International Airport. As Mayor, he donated his salary for College scholarships and promised that he would attract a billion dollar investment in the city. (He didn’t.) In 2015 he was elected mayor of San Salvador, the capital, voters to vote by criticizing both his own political party and the opposition against the endemic violence and corruption of the country. In 2019 he ran on an anti -corruption platform for the President and was elected with 53 percent of the vote – more than 20 percentage points more than his closest opponent.

One of the first things that Mr. Bukele did after taking office was a security plan to send members of the police and the military in gangs controlled districts. Eight months after his presidency, he stormed the legislative assembly surrounded by armed troops in order to put pressure on the opposition of the legislators to approve a loan for his administration, to buy monitoring cameras, tactical equipment and a helicopter for the plan. The loan was not approved, but after Mr. Bukele’s party secured a legislative super major in 2021, the legislator gave him the green light.

He also aimed at the judiciary: after the meantime, the legislators replaced five judges of the Supreme Court by him, and in August 2021 the legislature approved changes to rinse a third of the judges of El Salvador, and helped him to consolidate control over the three branches of government.

Then Mr. Bukele explained the state -wide state of emergency. The most important constitutional rights, including the right to a lawyer and the need for an arrest warrant for the development of personal communications, were quickly disregarded. The government arrested thousands of people in a way that sometimes seemed accidentally. But the procedure caused the murders to storm to almost 500 this year after 2,398 deaths in 2019. People who lived under the control of the gangs for almost two decades were relieved to get their lives back – to get home safely from work or bring their children to the playground.

Although more than 36 percent of Salvadorans knew someone who was unfairly detained, most people did not push back. They exchanged theoretical rights – like a proper procedure – against immediate results such as personal security. After Mr. Bukeles appointed judges to give him the second term, he won the 2024 presidential election in a landslide with 85 percent of the vote.

Today, Mr. Bukele’s broken promises are everywhere. During his first presidential campaign, he vowed together with the students of the University of El Salvador – the only publicly financed university in the country – to protest the education system. Instead, his administration has held over 30 million US dollars for the institution. In 2022 he promised to renovate 5,000 schools in five years, but from October 2024 only 424 schools were completed. He also suggested that El Salvador built a new, prosperous economy based on Bitcoin, but this year Bitcoin was eliminated as a form of a statutory tender contract due to a loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

Now Mr. Bukele’s violations are no longer limited to El Salvador’s borders. He mocked US court decisions and trolled American politicians. “Upsie … too late,” he joked X on X, after a judge El Salvador had instructed the first deportation flights of the Venezuelans. He recently published pictures by Senator Chris van Hollen from Maryland, who visited Mr. Abrego Garcia in a Salvadorical prison, and said that the two sipped during their meeting Margaritas. Mr. van Hollen said that the drinks were placed there on the table and that neither he nor Mr. Abrego Garcia had drunk them.

According to reports, the Trump government has reportedly agreed to pay El Salvador’s 6 million US dollars for the deportants who are to be sent in Salvadora prisons. Mr. Bukele said that the money would help shape the country’s prison system, which it costs for $ 200 million a year. In addition to the money, it is unclear what El Salvador gets from a global punch line and punishment in American politics. The country is neither freed from Mr. Trump’s customs duties, nor has he introduced any immigration aid measures for Salvadorans.

But Mr. Bukele seems to get something from it. The US State Department recently improved El Salvador’s travel advice -as well as Norway and New Zealand -although several US and other foreign citizens were arrested as part of the state of emergency. The Foreign Ministry also certified in April that the Salvadoran government strengthens the rule of law, improves transparency and protects human rights defenders and journalists.

The administration of Mr. Bukele was also accused of having secretly negotiated with the gang MS-13. According to an indictment against the US US amendment, the gang agreed to kill fewer people on the street in exchange for different promises, including financial advantages and less restrictive terms of his government. At least one witness whose testimony could have been involved in Mr. Bukele had been among those who had returned to El Salvador on a deportation flight.

Mr. Bukele repeatedly denied these allegations, but in 2021 the US Ministry of Finance imposed two civil servants in his administration, including the prison director, for the roles that they reported in the negotiations. On Thursday, El Faro published an interview with a gang leader from Barrio 18, an MS-13 rival, about the negotiations that Mr. Bukele had accused with gangs. The gait guide said that Mr. Bukele’s officials asked for political support and took him to a prison with maximum certainty to meet the leaders of gangs.

Before the party of Mr. Bukele replaced El Salvador’s Attorney General in 2021, members of his administration were investigated by the General Prosecutor in connection with allegations of packages with the gangs and other cases. After the administration of Mr. Bukele, a high -ranking civil servant who headed an anti -corruption unit in the office went into the self -imposed exile, as well as other prosecutors who had examined the government’s corruption.

Today there are no judicial orders, no legislative inquiries and no criminal investigations in El Salvador that pose a real threat to the president. He ensured this and stacked the Supreme Court with judges who support him and interpret the constitution according to his will.

Mr. Bukele remains a popular figure, but he has set up everything for the moment that changes. It is too late for Salvadorans to worry about checks. But the Americans still have time.