Saving El Salvador: The Bukele Story
The President of El Salvador Reminds Me of Somebody ...
El Salvador is a tiny Central American nation which has endured massive problems. In 1992, it concluded a 12-year civil war. Even apart from the devastating war—which cost over 75,000 lives, destroyed the infrastructure, and decimated the economy—El Salvador had some of the highest crime rates in the world, especially for rape and homicide. In fact, San Salvador, its capital, was known as “the murder capital of the world.”
Then a few years ago, the government changed and now El Salvador is considered by the United States Department of State to be safer than France for American tourists. The war is over, the economy is recovering, Salvadoran smart guys are scientifically navigating an ecology debate as to how to safely mine their rich deposits of precious metals (they have around $131B in gold alone, but it’s in the ground). The political landscape shifted when public financing of campaigns by taxpayers was outlawed. There are still massive problems in El Salvador: high unemployment, natural disasters (hurricanes in particular), violent crime, and a gang culture that is poisoning their youth. The two main gangs in El Salvador are Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 and Barrio 18. In fact, the infamous MS-13 gang was born in Los Angeles by Salvadoran refugees there. Let’s just say when it comes to gang violence, the criminal class of El Salvador practically invented it.
Who is Nayib Bukele?
Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez, known mostly as Nayib Bukele, is the president of El Salvador. He assumed office in June of 2019, detouring into politics after running an ad agency. Some of that advertising mojo has stuck with him, since he sometimes bills himself as “the world’s coolest dictator” and his nation’s “philosopher-king.” He’s not above wearing a cap at the podium and posing for cameras. And unlike the gerontocracy ossifying in Washington, D.C., Bukele is just 43 years old. Joe Biden had already been in the Senate for nine years the day that Bukele was born!
Bukele recently sat down in the White House with Donald Trump. For most Americans, particularly those in the media, this was their first glimpse at Bukele, who is an engaging, charismatic, yet slightly scary man who seems to have suddenly just come onto the political scene. Of course, for most of the media, this was their first awareness that a country called El Salvador exists and also their first appreciation that there are some humans who do not share the same soft-on-crime policies of the American Democrat party.
El Salvador is a small Central American nation that, like the United States, has a two-party system. Their political parties were taxpayer funded, virtually assuring that one or the other gang of thieves would get into office in any given term and none of these corrupt clowns would ever have to pay their own campaign expenses. Imagine if Kamala Harris could have just billed the taxpayers for her $1.2B (or higher) campaign?
In El Salvador, no President could serve two consecutive terms, but he could serve as many nonconsecutive terms as he could win. This just assured a perennial political flip-flop, first one party, then the other, ad infinitum, all paid for by the taxpayers.
The first major victory scored by Nayib Bukele is that he managed to get into the presidential palace without being a member of either party. He bucked the system and rapidly made a name for himself as a vigorous fighter against crime and corruption. He is charismatic, outspoken, sometimes funny, but extremely focused person.
Is Bukele the Central American Version of Donald Trump?
Bukele’s abrupt rise to power was almost as startling to the Central American elites as Trump’s election was to our woebegone Democrat Party. They never saw it coming. Even after it happened, they couldn’t imagine it had happened. And once they came to terms with the fact that it did happen, they raged and took antidepressants.
Another thing that links Bukele to Trump is that he is doing what he said he was going to do. In Bukele’s case, he said he was going to lock up criminals. In a nation dominated for decades by crime in the street perpetrated by vicious and violent gangs, he built prisons that were tougher than the gangs. Extortion, even of poor private citizens, was simply a way of life in El Salvador until Bukele started building prisons and filling them up with criminals, particularly gang members. There were a lot of them, too, and Bukele had no mercy for the gangs who had terrorized his country for decades.
Trump, too, is cleaning up corruption of a different kind in his efforts to drain the D.C. swamp. Both men told us what they wanted to do if they got elected, both got elected, and both are doing what they said they were going to do. This is startling to the left.
Politico, always eager to make something interesting into something tawdry, declared that Bukele was entering into a “bromance” with Trump. It’s like the commie press cannot see two men working together in the same room without speculating on their possible love affair. That tells you more about Politico crackpots than Trump or Bukele.
Both Bukele and Trump are enjoying phenomenal popularity. In America, Trump’s actual popularity is somewhat muted by the paid social media trolls who’d like you to think the majority of Americans want higher taxes and more crime. In El Salvador, Bukele has incarcerated 84,000 people (that’s more than died in their civil war) and the majority of the country applaud him. Right now, gangs in El Salvador are more scared than threatening. The balance of power has shifted from the thugs to the police, and most citizens think this is as it should be.
What Kind of a Name is Nayib Bukele?
If you think his name sounds ethnic, you’re right. Bukele’s mother, Olga Ortiz Bekele, was born in El Salvador and raised Catholic.
His father, Armando Bukele Kattan, is a bit more enigmatic. Born to a Palestinian Christian family in Jerusalem, Armando Bukele was raised as a Christian but converted to Islam as a young man, even rising to the position of imam (cleric). Armando Bukele planted four mosques and was head of the Arab-Islamic Association of El Salvador, but he also ran a very lucrative advertising agency. Armando Bukele died, as a Muslim, in 2015. His son Nayib Bukele has tap-danced around the religion issue, although he has gone on the record identifying as a Catholic and stating he believes in God, Jesus Christ, and the Bible. However, on other occasions he has said he is not really drawn to any particular religion. He is not known to be a member of any church or other religious organization.
And that Islamic influence is not the only thing that makes Bukele an unusual citizen of El Salvador. Unlike most of his fellow Salvadorans, Nayib Bukele grew up in a wealthy home with his nine siblings. Like Donald Trump, he grew up with money and he was raised by people who knew how to make money in business. Trump’s mother was an immigrant, Bukele’s father was an immigrant. Both men were raised to appreciate the values of their country and to see it as a land of opportunity rather than a land of oppression.
Bukele initially took up law but dropped out to pursue the family’s advertising business. Trump studied business and spent most of his life in real estate until running for President in 2016. Like Bukele, Trump seemed to just catapult into the Presidency without having a long debauched political career.
What About His Politics?
From the outset, Bukele was different. Way different. For one thing, he prefers social media to traditional media and favors the use of in-person appearances instead of press releases. Sounds like Trump.
Bukele was originally a member of one of the major Salvadoran parties (the FMLN) until they booted him out. The incident that caused his expulsion is almost Trumpian in its comedy. He allegedly threw an apple core at another party member and called her a “witch” during a closed-door meeting.
Bukele, undeterred by being censured by a dominant party, founded his own party called Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas) in October 2017. In 2019, he was an outspoken populist who ran on an anti-corruption platform. At 38, he was the youngest person ever elected President of El Salvador. He got results, too. Crime dropped sharply as soon as he was in power and he used the Rudy Giuliani strategy of crime fighting: he arrested people committing crimes and put them in prison.
By February 2021, Bukele was running El Salvador with a super majority that allowed him to pick several Supreme Court justices and get a new attorney general. If anyone ever had unstoppable popular support in his home country, it’s Bukele. Trump, too, has picked some Supreme Court justices in his day.
Like Trump, Bukele sometimes comes up with some unusual ideas. He made bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador—they are the first nation on earth to have cryptocurrency as legal tender. Trump is now floating the idea of getting rid of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), can I get an amen?
Bukele’s tough-on-crime tactics worked and in July 2022, the city of San Salvador set a record. They had one 24-hour day during which not one single homicide occurred. It only took Bukele a few years to turn the murder capital of the world to a city that even the United States State Department declares is safer than many Western European nations.
Extortion and bribery, once part of the cost of doing business or even just residing in El Salvador, were fading fast. Power was being drained from the gangs.
Of course, some people hate Bukele the same way some people hate DOGE. These privileged elitists like corruption and want to keep it going. They point out that Bukele by now has incarcerated about 1% of the population, he has curtailed certain rights such as the right to legal counsel, and he permits monitoring the communications of anyone suspected of being in a gang.
He has been known to order soldiers into the legislature to persuade the representatives to vote the way he wants. The powerful find him oppressive; the oppressed find him powerful.
Has This Guy Evolved? Or Is This Just a Stack of Waffles?
Now the question in all of this is who is he, really? He cuts a pretty impressive, even Trumpian, figure, but his past has some twists and turns. Before he got entangled in politics, Bukele described himself as a leftist, even a “radical leftist.” But that was when he was running an ad agency, so maybe that leftist banter was just posturing to attract business. Then again, maybe he really was a left-winger.
Since his election, Bukele prudently avoids labeling himself, but political commentators in his country call him a conservative and a populist. It’s like Trump—who was a registered Democrat at various points in time in New York and who donated six figures to Hillary’s campaign in 2005. People change and Bukele seems to have moved away from his radical left-wing assumptions to a more pro-populist stance. This sort of change is admirable but sometimes it results in a mixed bag of political ideologies.
Clearly, Bukele is willing to bend the rules to suit him. The Constitution of El Salvador does not allow the president to serve consecutive terms, but the Supreme Court ruled Bukele could be re-elected to a consecutive term. In February 2024, he won in a landslide (85% of the vote). Did I mention he helped select some of those Supreme Court judges? Bukele is young but he can wheel and deal like Grandma Pelosi.
Bukele is married to Gabriela Rodriguez de Bukele, a woman with an interesting trifecta of careers. She is a psychologist, a ballet dancer, and the leader of a prenatal education center. They have two young daughters, Layla and Aminah (six and two years of age). Mrs. Bukele was instrumental in setting up the National Ballet of El Salvador. She is young, beautiful, classy, devoted to her children, and largely keeps out of the political spotlight. Reminds me a bit of Melania.
Bukele and Trump get along. They both see the world through the lens of a businessman, not a political criminal. They both want to make their countries better. They both laugh at their enemies.
Just like Trump, Bukele continues to pursue some secular business interests. Trump has his hotels and resorts, Bukele launched a “Bean of Fire” coffee brand. He has even donated his proprietary coffee bean to local businesses to help promote coffee production.
Bukele and Trump
Are these two polarizing and populist figures in global politics similar? Let’s look at Bukele:
He’s been called “The Trump of Central America”
He was one of the first world leaders to call Trump to congratulate him on his 2024 victory
He is a very vocal critic of George Soros and his wayward son
He is against immigration but for opposite reasons from Trump; Trump does not want Salvadorans to come to America and Bukele does not want them to leave
Like Trump, he has an outspoken style and can often be very funny
The lefty lunatics just despise him. Despite his success in quelling the criminal rampage and gang violence of El Salvador, the lefty rag The Atlantic assures us that the nation of El Salvador is critical of “his handling of gang violence.” That’s right, Salvadorans are upset that Bukele is stopping gang violence. Left-wing National Public Radio (NPR) states emphatically that Salvadorans are “concerned” about incarcerating criminals, since, according to NPR, most people prefer crime to law and order. He gets the same kind of knuckleheaded and fake-news coverage as Trump
He won a large majority of the vote but is often minimized by leftists as being a rogue outsider with little to no popular support
Both like to wear caps, although Bukele favors a white cap worn backward, while Trump sports the iconic red MAGA cap
Social Policies in El Salvador
Central America as a whole can be culturally quite conservative. Bukele has waffled on same-sex marriages and could best be described as “ambivalent” on the topic. This is surprising since he grew up Catholic and Muslim and neither group favors same-sex marriage. This is perhaps an example of how Bukele separates faith from politics. In El Salvador right now, same sex marriage is not recognized, although homosexuality is legal and same-sex couples may live together.
He is strongly opposed to abortion, which fits right in. El Salvador has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the world. Then Bukele made an exception and went against the Salvadoran total prohibition of abortion by saying abortion was acceptable if the pregnancy endangered the life of the mother. However, Bukele has flip-flopped on that, too. Sometimes he says abortion should be allowed in order to save the mother’s life, other times he’s opposed even in those cases. He has never come out for abortions of convenience, that is, an abortion because the mother just finds a new baby inconvenient. In the United States, most abortions are abortions of convenience.
Bukele is against euthanasia. This may sound obvious but remember that Canada is expanding its Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, which is now one of the nation’s top 10 causes of death. In fact, over 5% of Canadian deaths in 2023 involved MAID, which now allows even the mentally ill to self-select euthanasia. This does not exist in El Salvador and if Bukele stays in power, it never will. Remember, Canada isn’t all that removed from Central America. As the crow flies, just 2,523 miles separate Ontario from San Salvador.
Bukele wants to mobilize Central America. He would like Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua to form a Federal Republic of Central America and feels it would give the region more political and economic power. This is not a shy man. He understands power, negotiations, alliances, and keeping people safe.
Look at the Guy Before
In understanding both Trump and Bukele, we have to understand the president, or rather the criminal, who preceded them. Trump was preceded in this last term by Biden, a cognitively diminished man whose regime was used as a Trojan horse to install far-left policies that threatened to destroy the country economically and socially. Biden was always corrupt, always a law-breaker, always scamming to get money for his family. We are continuing to pick up the pieces of the disaster that the Biden presidency left behind: Biden left a legacy of corruption. There are well over 150 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed against various inner-circle Bidens; these are bank “red flags” that are required by law when the bank has cause to suspect money laundering or other fraudulent activity. One or two SARs are ominous and can kill a career. The Biden family has “at least 150” SARs. If somebody suspects you of financial hanky-panky to the extent it has to be documented by law 150 separate times, maybe there is some financial hanky-panky going on.
Now look at Mauricio Funes, the president of El Salvador right before Bukele. Funes led El Salvador during the bad old days when the nation was ravaged by gang crime, San Salvador was the murder capital of the world, the infrastructure was collapsing due to hurricanes, and the unemployment rate in the nation was nearly 50%. Once Bukele got into power, Funes ran away and took refuge in Nicaragua in 2019. Guess what country has no extradition treating with El Salvador? That’s right, Nicaragua. Funes thought he was safe. He has even since become a citizen of Nicaragua, which seems unusual for a man who a couple years earlier was El Presidente of El Salvador. It would be like Biden running away to South Africa and applying for citizenship there.
Well, Funes could run but he couldn’t hide. Nicaragua would not extradite Funes, but Salvadorans put him on trial and convicted him anyway. Bukele is such a stickler for law and order, he’ll try a guy in absentia. Mauricio Funes got a couple of prison sentences in 2019, but since he’s living in Nicaragua, he’s not serving them.
Fake news publications state that Bukele is no hero; he’s just continuing Funes’s reign of corruption, but I cannot find any evidence of this. By all available metrics, El Salvador is doing much better under Bukele than Funes (lower unemployment, far less crime, stronger international relations). By the same token, the lefty media in the United States say right now that Trump and Musk are investigating fraud in the government in order to enrich themselves through theft, even though neither man is even taking a salary. So both Bukele and Trump are the victims of vicious smear campaigns that do not even make sense.
Why? I suspect it’s because they share the same enemies.
Let’s see where Bukele will take El Salvador in the coming years. Is Bukele just an interesting outlier, or could it be … is the cabal really dead?