Bukele re-elected: the victory of violence

The reelection of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador on Sunday, February 4, comes as no surprise. His popularity and approval among Salvadorans stands at above 70%, and the rigging of the Constitution — which officially bars presidents from a second consecutive term — coupled with the irrelevance of the opposition, made it all but inevitable. Bukele’s popularity is largely down to his apparently effective strongman approach to El Salvador’s gang violence which he appears to have solved in record time.

But is Bukele’s approach sustainable, and is it worth the cost to Salvadoran society?

Bukele, 42, is the result of 30 years of post-war democracy in which the majority of the population witnessed ever increasing social inequalities, increased migration/expulsion among its most vulnerable sectors, unfulfilled promises from both the right and left and, of course, the uncontrollable expansion of gang violence throughout the country. During this period, El Salvador came to be recognized as one of the most dangerous countries in the world. In 2015, the homicide rate reached 106 per 100,000 inhabitants.

In March 2022, after breaking the pact he had made with these criminal groups, Bukele established a state of exception that gave him the power to pursue and imprison anyone suspected of belonging to a criminal organization. Approximately 2% of the population has since been jailed with human rights organizations documenting mass volumes of arbitrary arrests and violations of due process.

When Bukele broke onto the scene in 2019 with his magic formula to quash the gangs almost 30 years after El Salvador signed peace accords to end its civil war, the word democracy meant little or nothing to the majority of the population. Filling the vacuum, Bukele’s authoritarian and repressive approach had a tangible impact on the lives of many Salvadorans, namely the reduction of violence and an increase in the quality of daily life. El Salvador closed 2023 with a homicide rate of 2.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. Given this drastic drop in the murder rate, the cost to democracy has seemed to many to be a reasonable enough price to pay.

However, the violence in El Salvador is rooted in historical social inequalities that cannot be addressed through mere repression. Repressing a problem does not solve it. If the causes of that problem are still there, sooner or later, it will resurface, perhaps in a different guise, but there all the same, reminding us that it had in fact, never gone away.

Beyond the controversy, it is crucial to remember that Bukele’s strategy has a high human cost. He has achieved what he has achieved because he and his New Ideas government violate the human rights of thousands of men and women, especially those in living in vulnerable conditions.

The president’s actions target neither the elite nor the middle classes but have a biased focus on the poor. Those who for the past 30 years were the gangs’ main victims have now become the target of government repression. But they are not the only ones to suffer at the hands of Bukele’s policies. The two-year state of exception has also been cruel to children, young people, women and dissidents. Dozens of children and teenagers have been left homeless following the arrest of their parents. Grandmothers, aunts and sisters have had to step in to supply economic support and physical and psychological care. The burden has been placed squarely on women’s shoulders. The state of exception has also become a tool to persecute those defending both human rights and the environment. Given that anyone can be suspected of belonging to a gang, several rural leaders and their families have been intimidated or detained.

An indefinite state of exception that violates the fundamental rights of some in exchange for relative and temporary tranquility of others is yet another form of violence for El Salvador. It is a violence that is proving to be ineffective in achieving true social stability, and should be understood as proof of the president’s inability to offer real and lasting solutions that do not involve the systematic violation of human rights in the country he governs.

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