Since 2019, El Salvador has shown two faces to the world.
One is a glimmering vision of a hi-tech future: a country that hosts Miss Universe and dreams of bitcoin mines powered by volcanoes.
The other is a kind of police state, where more than 2% of the adult population has been locked up, many without trial, turning one of Latin America’s most violent countries into one of its safest.
Both have helped make Nayib Bukele one of the region’s most popular presidents. And on Sunday he seems set to win an unconstitutional second consecutive term, possibly by such a margin that the country comes close to being a one-party state.
“Bukele is highly undemocratic, highly abusive – and highly popular. For some, it’s hard to accept that these three things can coexist,” said Juan Pappier, the Americas deputy director at Human Rights Watch. “But they do right now in El Salvador.”
Since Bukele became president in 2019 while still in his 30s security has improved dramatically in El Salvador.
Two gangs – Barrio 18 and MS13 – had dominated life in El Salvador since the 1990s. By 2015, they counted on 60,000 members in a country of 6 million. Most businesses were extorted and the annual homicide rate was 103 per 100,000.
By the end of last year, according to official data, the homicide rate had fallen to 2.4 per 100,000.
Though billed as a “war on gangs”, Bukele’s approach has involved both confrontation and negotiation.
Previous governments also negotiated ad-hoc deals with the gangs to increase voter turnout at elections or periodically lower the murder rate.
But in March 2022, after an apparent breakdown in talks resulted in 74 murders in a single weekend, Bukele installed a state of exception that persists to this day.
Roughly 80,000 people have been incarcerated. Human rights organisations have documented arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture and massive violations of due process.
“More than 200 deaths in custody have been documented,” said Ana María Méndez-Dardón, director for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America.
No exit strategy from the state of exception has been put forward, nor is it clear how the system will be sustained.
“What is happening in the prisons is at some point going to reverberate back in the streets,” said José Miguel Cruz, an academic who studies El Salvador’s gangs. “Because we know that in prison organised crime tends to reorganise and strengthen.”
For now, though, security has improved – providing the bedrock for Bukele’s popularity heading into Sunday’s election.
Although El Salvador’s constitution bars presidents from a second consecutive term, Bukele appointed new judges to the constitutional court who paved the way for him to run again.
Bukele has eroded the rule of law in other ways, too, for example using soldiers to occupy the legislative assembly and intimidate lawmakers, and continually attacking independent media outlets that have investigated and criticised his government.
Nonetheless, polls suggest any reservations that voters have about such actions – or a lacklustre economy – are for now outweighed by the perception of security and progress: of a new El Salvador.
“Bukele has been very successful with his political propaganda: how he manages social media, how he distributes fake news, how he persuades Salvadorians to follow him,” said Pappier. “He’s an excellent publicist.”
Having failed to negotiate a united ballot, most of the political opposition now faces being wiped out after Bukele’s New Ideas party voted through electoral reforms to favour its own representation.
An analysis based on polling data showed that these changes would result in New Ideas capturing 57 of the 60 seats in the legislature, as opposed to 48 with the previous method.
“One of the risks of this election is that El Salvador becomes a one-party system,” said Méndez-Dardón. “Bukele has almost completely displaced the political opposition.”
On the campaign trail, Bukele, 42, has said he will not pursue indefinite re-election. But analysts point out that he once said the same thing about this election.
The Biden administration, which initially expressed concern about the democratic deterioration in El Salvador, has since changed its stance, apparently prioritising cooperation on migration over human rights.
Meanwhile, Bukele’s appeal stretches beyond the borders of El Salvador in a region that has seen almost 3 million violent deaths since 2000.
Whether or not they will be able to reciprocate his success, politicians around the region are taking cues from Bukele’s recipe for power and popularity.
“Latin American history is full of authoritarian leaders who use their initial popularity to undermine the checks on their power– and when they are no longer popular, they are able to keep themselves in power, to silence criticism, to repress demonstrations,” said Pappier.
“And citizens then have nowhere to turn.”
