Two new looks at Bukele's populist authoritarianism in El Salvador

Two long articles about Nayib Bukele's rule in El Salvador appeared today in the US press.  Bukele is on the current cover of TIME magazine, with the caption  "The Strongman -- How El Salvador President Nayib Bukele became the world's most popular authoritarian."  Bukele revels in this kind of spotlight (it dominates his Twitter feed right now) but he has not mentioned the opinion piece in the New York Times titled The High Cost of Safety in El Salvador, perhaps because it does not have a single image of the "coolest dictator/philosopher king"

The TIME interview represents Bukele's first interview with an international media journalist in three years. In recent times he is more likely to give an interview to a YouTube influencer or to Tucker Carlson.   

The TIME article, written by Vera Bergengruen, is titled How Nayib Bukele’s ‘Iron Fist’ Has Transformed El Salvador and explores in depth the remarkable changes, for good and bad, in El Salvador.  She notes:

For Bukele’s admirers, El Salvador has become a showcase for how populist authoritarianism can succeed. His second term will be a test of what happens to a state when its charismatic young leader has an overwhelming mandate to dismantle its democratic institutions in pursuit of security. The results will have sweeping implications not just for El Salvador but also the region, where political leaders are eager to replicate what many call el milagro Bukele—the Bukele miracle.

Whether it can be sustained is a different question. 

I shuddered at this quote toward the end of the piece from the head of El Salvador's armed forces:

Which is why Merino, the Defense Minister, believes the government has a mandate to continue mano dura. “No matter how much these human-rights groups cry and complain about the state of emergency, people here are much freer than in countries where there isn’t a state of exception,” he says. “Once you have the support of the population, there is nothing to stop us.”

You can read the transcript of the full interview with Bukele here.   (He does like to hear himself talk).

You should also read The High Price of Safety in El Salvador by Megan Stack which appeared in the Opinion section of the New York Times today. Stack has no interview with Bukele, but does share with us conversations with Salvadorans freed from gang control of their neighborhoods who also know neighbors arrested without cause and without due process.  He is popular with the people she interviews, which she attempts to understand:         

[Bukele is] part mafia boss, part Willy Wonka — a mercurial leader with a showman’s instincts, dropping dead-eyed threats between grand declarations of benevolence.

 Stack poses the question whether a country can trade off human rights for safety in its neighborhoods:

 The philosophical conundrum presented by Mr. Bukele is that his supporters are, in a sense, eager sponsors of their own oppression, having essentially swapped their rights for quiet streets.

Stack's piece points to a new, and perhaps more difficult challenge for Bukele -- the economy and food price inflation in a country which imports the great majority of its fruits and vegetables and grains.  Problems like this are not so easily fixed by presidential decree and marching soldiers through the streets. Bukele started by treating this like the gang problem -- he threatened food price gougers with prison:

This was textbook Bukele: An ominous and sweeping demand for a result — safer streets, cheaper food — with magnificent indifference to the details of how such a thing could be accomplished, or who might be hurt in the process. These dictates have created a dark carnival atmosphere in the country, events swinging and shifting on the whims of Mr. Bukele, everyone scrambling to adjust to his decree.

For Nayib Bukele, today was another chance to say to Salvadorans -- we may be the smallest country in the Americas, but look how the world is paying attention to us now.