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Self-promoted as an independent leader foreign to the corrupt political structures in the style of other Latin American populists , such as Jair Bolsonaro , Abdalá Bucaram , and Alberto Fujimori , Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has shown his messianic face-threatening Congress in order to obtain the funds needed for a security program, in a country ravaged by gang violence and poverty .
Last Sunday, Bukele surprised El Salvador and the international community by surrounding the Legislative Assembly in central San Salvador with thousands of followers, police, army snipers, and soldiers, to force approval of a USD $109 million loan for the third phase of his Territorial Control Plan , giving the lawmakers a deadline of one week after he “spoke” with god, who recommended him “patience.”
Fortunately, the reaction from the leadership of the unicameral assembly, where Bukele’s party New Ideas and their allies are the minority, has been strong and decided, comparing the occupation of the plenary Blue Room with a “coup attempt.”
“There is no justification for the violence used to enter [Congress] in a country that has to build up a democracy with blood,” declared on Monday Legislative Assembly leader Mario Ponce from the conservative National Coalition Party , hours after the president took his seat and began to pray, warning that he could dissolve the assembly if lawmakers did not approve the loan negotiated with the Central American Bank for Economic Integration .
For its part, the Supreme Court ordered the Executive Power not to use security forces in “activities contrary to established constitutional ends.” It also ordered the Defense Minister and the head of National Police not to deploy their units for activities outside what is in their legal purview and demanded the Council of Ministers end efforts to call an extraordinary session of Congress to consider approval of the loan.
Bukele’s initial response was to tweet that “the system protects itself. And that is how things remained the same,” though he later issued a statement saying he would heed the ruling.
Since November, the 38-year-old former publicist and San Salvador mayor has been pressuring the Legislative Assembly to fund his security plan. On Sunday, he invoked Article 87 of the Constitution to call an emergency session ; however, it gives the people the right to insurrection , yet only to re-establish constitutional order.
Even for a Latin American leader who has aligned with United States policies in the region, breaking diplomatic relations with Venezuela —the latest country that has done it is Guatemala ,—and meekly accepting Washington’s draconian migration measures, it was a step too far. U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Ronald Johnson rejected the military presence in Congress and called on all sides to engage in talks to resolve the dispute.
Meteoric career
A member from the sprawling community of Palestinian origin in El Salvador , Bukele , who has defined his ideology as pragmatic, began his meteoric career in politics winning in 2012 the mayoralty of Nuevo Cuscatlán , in the department of La Libertad , representing a coalition led by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front ( FMLN ), the former leftist guerrilla group during the 1979-1992 civil war that caused more than 75,000 dead.
Three years later, he repeated his victory in the municipal elections of the Salvadoran capital. Nevertheless, in 2017, Bukele was expelled from the FMLN , accused by the FMLN Ethics Tribunal of promoting internal division and performing defamatory acts against the party.
Having consolidated the image of an outsider , usually speaking directly to his supporters via social media , in the 2019 electoral campaign Bukele compared his rival, Carlos Calleja , from the far-right Nationalist Republican Alliance ( Arena ) with the then Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto saying that the former was an “imbecile” created by the media; he added that the Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández “stole” the elections in the neighboring country.
He is the first candidate to win the presidency since the end of the civil conflict who did not represent the FMLN or Arena , and now enjoys a popularity of nearly 90%, due in part to the implementation of the first stages of the Territorial Control Plan , which targets gang hot spots and has increased military presence in these areas.
The small country of 6.5 million , still one of the most violent in the world reaching a peak of more than 6,000 killings in 2015 (a rate per capita higher than Mexico ), experienced a 28% drop of homicides from 2018 to 2019 ( Bukele took office last June), and in January recorded 119 murders, its lowest monthly tally since 1992.
According to the government, the effective control of the prisons (17,000 gang members are incarcerated, and El Salvador ranks second in the world to the U.S. for the respective rates, with 604 people per 1,000 inhabitants), is another reason that explains the success of its security plan.
However, Jannete Aguilar , a researcher at the Central American University “ José Simeón Cañas ” ( UCA ) of El Salvador , told AFP that pressure from authorities has led to the main rival gangs, Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha , better known as MS-13 , to stop in their attacks against each other.
It is noteworthy that ten years ago, the government of President Mauricio Funes —a television journalist selected as a candidate by the FMLN —also achieved a notable reduction in homicides, secretly helping negotiate a truce between the gangs , who took control of prisons and expanded its influence nationally.
Once the truce collapsed, the country suffered a surge of murders , counteracted by the authorities with U.S.-trained troops forming clandestine extermination groups, similar to the death squads responsible along with the armed forces for over 85% of civil war victims.
Therefore, Bukele’s long-term challenge is to maintain positive security trends reducing chronic poverty, unemployment, and social inequality which has prompted many to flee towards the U.S., in a time when the Trump administration is deporting thousands of immigrants following a policy established by former President Barack Obama .
Between 2014 and 2018, the U.S. deported about 111,000 Salvadorans back to their homeland; meanwhile, the number of Salvadorans seeking asylum in the U.S. grew by nearly 1,000% between 2012 and 2017, many citing threats from maras. Only about 18% a year are granted asylum.
This month, a Human Rights Watch study revealed that at least 138 people deported to El Salvador from the U.S. were subsequently killed. A majority of the deaths occurred less than a year after the deportees returned to the country, and some within days. The organization also confirmed at least 70 cases of sexual assault or other violence following their arrival in El Salvador .
Under the new U.S. immigration rules, asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle ( Guatemala , Honduras , and El Salvador ) of Central America and other nations are forced to wait in Mexico while their claims are evaluated or sent back to their homelands if their claim is rejected. Others are sent to Guatemala to seek asylum there instead, despite the country's lack the means to host asylum seekers and is a net source of immigrants.
In a statement, the UCA , a world-renowned defender of human rights in El Salvador , stressed that “the recent Latin American experience and the history of our country show that acting with intolerance, promoting hate and disrespecting institutions only leads to polarisation and confrontation between brothers”.
Editing by Sofía Danis
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