SAN SALVADOR — The last time I was in El Salvador, nearly a decade ago, the capital was gripped by the violence of gangs who terrified people — dictating where they could shop, work, go to school, or even cross a street. Homicides were mounting steadily, with little police investigation and no justice. Bodies were being dumped on neighborhood sidewalks and in clandestine graves.
Returning this summer, San Salvador was transformed. It was safe to walk out at night, to move around the city as normally as one might in a U.S. capital. Officially, at least, only a handful of people were being murdered per capita, fewer than in Los Angeles or Washington, on a daily basis.
**The Rise of Nayib Bukele**
Claiming credit for the new atmosphere is the autocratic president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who assumed a constitutionally suspect second term in office in June. The inauguration was attended by some of Bukele’s biggest admirers, including Donald Trump Jr. and former Fox TV host Tucker Carlson. Bukele has built a well-financed PR machine that touts his administration’s ability to reduce the homicide rate in El Salvador to a fraction of its past numbers.
In crafting a carefully orchestrated public persona, he has also trampled on human rights and worked to dismantle democracy, critics say. Outside analysts question the statistics that Bukele frequently cites. But such doubts have not stopped politicians from across the Americas from voicing admiration for Bukele, a 43-year-old ad man with almost no political experience. Bukele and government officials declined to comment for this story. He has dismissed accusations of corruption, abuse, and rights violations as the propaganda of his enemies.
**The Cost of Change**
Assuming crime has been reduced by as much as the government claims, the question is how. For the last two and a half years, Bukele has been ruling under a “state of exception,” essentially an emergency decree that suspends many constitutional and civil rights and allows massive, arbitrary detentions without due process, among other harsh measures.
Dragnets have swept up tens of thousands of people, more than 1% of the national population, shoving them into overcrowded prisons. Many are gang members, but many are not, human rights activists say, and authorities have been slow to make the distinction. Several thousand of those in prison are children. They are exposed to dire conditions and torture, and several hundred have died, according to human rights organizations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Bukele’s government denies torture is commonplace and says most of the deaths have been from natural causes.
**The Cult of Personality**
Bukele began to dabble in electoral politics when he ran successfully for mayor of San Salvador in 2015, allied at first with the leftist ideas of the former guerrillas who fought in the country’s civil war, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, and then abruptly shifting to the right and hitching his wagon to conservative so-called family values — adamantly opposing LGBTQ rights, women’s equality, and abortion. Bukele has said he wants to be the “world’s coolest dictator.”
It is true that he won both presidential elections by good margins, and Bukele often cites polls that give him an extraordinarily high approval rating. Yet experts say some of the opinion surveys that Bukele has used to demonstrate his popularity do not meet the rigorous standards of international polling, while critics say Bukele has managed to silence much opposition.
**The Price of Silence**
My experience in El Salvador was always that people were generally chatty, politically engaged, and willing to share their thoughts. On this trip, however, I found people, including sources I’ve known for decades, more cautious than at any time since the civil war that ended in 1992. Few wanted to discuss politics or criticize Bukele on the phone unless it was an encrypted line.
Under Bukele, El Salvador’s vibrant world of journalism has also suffered. The website El Faro, generally regarded as one of the best news organizations in Latin America, has been so rigorously hounded by government officials that most of its reporters have had to flee the country. Its reporting has exposed Bukele’s alleged secret deals with gangsters and drug traffickers, among other corruption scandals.
**The Future of El Salvador**
Bukele has sought to rewrite some aspects of El Salvador’s storied history — which includes being a complex political staging ground that birthed an important revolution, hosting U.S.-backed death squads, and yielding Central America’s only native-born Roman Catholic saint. The new El Salvador, in his view, is a paradise for tourism and business and is also the region’s champion of bitcoin and a crypto-currency economy. He canceled the annual ceremony marking the signing of the peace accords that ended the civil war, dismissing the importance of a historic document that stopped fighting between guerrillas and a right-wing U.S.-backed government that claimed more than 75,000 lives.
Initially, the Biden administration was highly critical of Bukele’s tactics, even questioning the validity of his reelection. U.S. officials were appalled at what they saw as egregious backsliding on democracy in a country that still received nearly half a billion dollars in aid. They slapped sanctions on a number of Salvadorans.
Within the last year or so, however, Biden administration officials have softened their attitude toward Bukele, crediting his reduction of violence with a parallel reduction in the flow of Salvadoran migrants entering the U.S. illegally. This comes as illegal immigration becomes a volatile electoral issue.
“We have to work with who’s there,” a senior administration official said in acknowledging partnership with a sanctioned government.
**Conclusion**
In conclusion, the clean-up efforts of President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador have come at a high cost, with reports of human rights abuses, suppression of dissent, and a consolidation of power that raises concerns about the state of democracy in the country. While some praise Bukele for reducing crime and improving safety, others warn of the dangers of authoritarianism and the erosion of fundamental rights. As El Salvador moves forward under Bukele’s rule, the true impact of his policies and actions remains to be seen.
