Nayib Bukele came to power in 2019 as the youngest “millennial president” in Latin America, who with his charisma captured the attention not only of Salvadorans, but of an entire region.
Almost five years have passed since then and, despite some polls reflecting its high popularity, international analysts and observers have harshly criticized its security policy for its impact on the human rights situation.
Now he is running (thanks to a Supreme Court ruling and with permission from the Legislature) seeking re-election, despite the Constitution immediately prohibiting it.
Bukele was an advertising businessman, in a company founded by his father and from which he provided services to the government of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a former left-wing guerrilla that, two decades after the end of the Civil War, would govern the country for 10 years.
When he was elected president in 2019, he would transform the way of governing in the Latin American country: from the rupture with the two-party system that was established in the country after the Civil War, to selfies at the UN and his casual way of communicating on social media to – although he never admitted it publicly – negotiate with gangs, invade a reluctant Congress with armed military and police, and govern under a state of exception that was extended for almost two years.
President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele / 06/01/2023 REUTERS/Jessica Orellana
This is Nayib Bukele, whose card to run once again for the presidency of El Salvador this February 4th is to continue the war against gangs in the country.
Who is Nayib Bukele?
Bukele was born on July 24, 1981 in El Salvador.
He is the son of Armando Bukele Kattán, a chemist and businessman descended from a family of Palestinian immigrants, and Olga Ortez. His full name is Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez.
After finishing high school in 1999, Bukele began studying Legal Sciences at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA El Salvador), but did not complete it, according to his biography published by the Barcelona Center for International Affairs.
Instead, at the age of 18 he decided to join his family’s advertising agency called Obermet, of which he was also president.
Additionally, he was president of the Yamaha motorcycle dealership in El Salvador.
He has been married since December 2014 to psychologist, educator and dancer Gabriela Rodríguez, after 10 years of dating. “The love of his life”, as Bukele himself said publicly, accompanies him in most of his political activities.
Mayor of San Salvador
Bukele, an avowed supporter of Alianza, a team from the first division of Salvadoran football, began his political life in the FMLN.
In March 2012, with these initials, he won the elections for the municipality of Nuevo Cuscatlán, 8.5 kilometers from San Salvador, the country’s capital.
Three years later, also with the FMLN, he was elected mayor of San Salvador, which ended up being the platform for later running for president.
President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, speaks during the inauguration ceremony of a hydroelectric plant in San Luis de La Reina / 10/19/2023 REUTERS/Jose Cabezas
In the capital, Bukele promoted the recovery of the Historic Center under the idea that “the public should not be inferior to the private”, which is why his detractors accused him of being “populist”.
In 2017, he was expelled by the FMLN Ethics Court after declaring him “guilty” of promoting the division of the party and of verbal and physical attacks against a member of the political organization, among other charges.
“I was expelled from the FMLN precisely because they didn’t like my public complaints about the government’s poor performance,” Bukele himself said in an interview with CNN em 2018.
This was the reason, he said, why he decided to run with the Gran Alianza Nacional (GANA), a center-right party, usually in coalitions in Congress with the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), a far-right party that governed El Salvador in the two decades before the FMLN came to power and which also included accusations of corruption.
“We did what for me was the most logical, the most natural, which was to form a political party,” he said.
Bukele, the controversial “coolest dictator in the world”
He came to power in 2019, at the age of 37, on an anti-corruption platform.
At that time, he became the youngest president in Latin America and also the youngest in El Salvador.
Young people and those dissatisfied with traditional political parties were the main followers of the “millennial president”, according to surveys.
Bukele is the first president since 1989 who, although he had political origins in the FMLN, reached the presidency without belonging at the time to one of the two parties that expressed the two opposing sides in the Civil War, that is, Arena and the FMLN.
Bukele is known in the region for his violent practices and demonstrations of power, such as when he invaded Congress escorted by armed military police.
Twitter profile of Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador / Reproduction/nayibbukele/Twitter (September 21, 2021)
With the outbreak, described by the opposition as “an attempted coup d’état”, the Salvadoran president sought the approval of a loan of around 109 million dollars that would allow him to carry out a new phase of his security plan.
The confrontation between the Executive and Legislative powers ended a year later, when the Legislative Assembly – now controlled by an official majority, following the victory of Bukele’s party in the legislative elections – approved the financing.
From this moment on, Bukele began to assume full control of the State’s powers.
With majority support in Congress, he fired the attorney general and replaced the Supreme Court with new members, which would later allow him to seek re-election, even though the Constitution does not allow it.
The Assembly also approved that he step away from office for six months to campaign instead of resigning, as provided for in the decision of the Court’s Constitutional Chamber. Meanwhile, Bukele appointed his private secretary to perform executive functions.
Bukele, who once described himself as “the coolest dictator in the world” in response to his detractors, defends his oppressive security strategy by arguing that levels of violence in the country have decreased.
In fact, his key to winning the presidency of El Salvador once again is to continue the war against gangs.
The government also attributes the decrease in homicides to the state of exception in force since March 27, 2022, when the most violent day of Bukele’s administration was recorded.
Protester holds the Constitution of El Salvador in protest against the Bukele government / Photo: Camilo Freedman/APHOTOGRAFIA/Getty Images
The emergency regime decree, which was extended several times by the National Assembly, was used by the authorities to detain more than 75 thousand people, since the beginning of January, for their alleged links to gangs and to internally displace more than 220 people, from according to a report by the human rights organization Cristosal.
The government only reports these numbers through statements from those responsible or the presidency, but since April 2022 it has not allowed access to detailed statistics on crimes such as homicides, stating that this information will be confidential for seven years.
International analysts and observers have questioned these practices, considering that they “systemically violate” human rights, as is the case with the megaprison that intends to confine at least 40,000 inmates.
Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the UN Committee against Torture criticize what they consider to be violations of the population’s rights.
The families of several detainees denounced the unfair imprisonment, claiming that many of those arrested have no connection with the gangs.
If re-elected on February 4, Bukele will be the first to repeat the role in El Salvador’s recent history.
This content was originally created in Spanish.
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