By *Caudillo: A Spanish word for military or political leader, who attained his position as a result of his forceful personality and charisma.
According to the New York Times, the United States had just deported more than 200 migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, whose president, Nayib Bukele said his country was eager to take more. But how did this small Central American country of barely 6.5 million people become a host to an “overseas U.S. gulag prison”? And who is Bukele, this extroverted “coolest dictator”, who in a few years has dismantled criminal gangs in exchange for turning his country into a meg- prison complex and making the bitcoin as legal tender?
A Trump-Bukele Deal
For months, aides to Donald Trump had been working to fulfil the newly elected U.S. president’s signature promise to rapidly deport immigrants to Central and South America with little or no judicial oversight.
When Salvador suggested in early February that he would be willing to accept deported illegal immigrants from the U.S. in exchange for some money, the two leaders quickly found common ground.
Bukele, who sent 85,000 people to prison in a few years without any legal process, did not care if some innocent people slipped into the gang or if some died in overcrowded prisons. Bukele is very popular, with approval ratings hovering around 90 percent. Ordinary people are fed up with gang violence and corruption and see him as the answer. Bukele has also tried to establish himself as a kind of Latin American Trump, communicating primarily through social media like his role model and not shying away from outbursts against the independent press.
The prison, known as the Terrorism Confinement Center or CECOT, was inaugurated in 2023 to house the arrested criminals and, according to official figures, can hold 40,000 inmates. The prison provides inhumane conditions for criminals, with only 2 toilets and showers per 100 people and 0.6 square meters per inmate. Inmates spend the night in beds stacked close together and on top of each other.
A Hispanicized-Middle Eastern-Cool Guy
Nayib Bukele’s main promise was to fight organized crime, and he was given the tools to do so in 2022, when he declared a state of emergency after 62 murders in the country in a single day. From then on, Bukele was not interested in issues such as democracy or the rule of law, and the “ends justify the means” argument was accepted by Salvadorans, given the progress made in law enforcement.
“The best-looking and coolest president in the world”, said El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele after his inauguration in 2019. The then 39-year-old politician, who prefers jeans, biker jackets and an upturned baseball cap, has never suffered from a lack of self-confidence. He was the youngest elected president in the history of the Central American country of 6.5 million people and became the most powerful democratically elected head of state.
Nayib Bukele in September 2024. (Source: Wikipedia)
Bukele was born into a wealthy family in the capital, San Salvador. His grandparents were immigrants from the Middle East, Christian Palestinians on his father’s side and Catholic and Greek Orthodox on his mother’s. Bukele’s father converted to Islam and became an influential leader in the Salvadoran Muslim community, opening the first mosques in the country. However, his wife has Jewish roots. The first name of the head of state, Nayib, is a Hispanicized version of the Muslim Najib.
Before entering into politics he had an advertising agency and then became the Salvadoran representative of Yamaha Motors of Japan. He was barely 30 years old when he was elected mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán, near the capital, for the then ruling FMLN party.
Three years later, he became the first man of capital, San Salvador and proved to be an effective leader. He re-launched security in the historic old city, which had been ravaged along with the country by organised crime gangs.
With more than 6,600 murders recorded in 2015, El Salvador was the most dangerous place in the world outside conflict zones.
In 2017, the FMLN fired him, citing an argument with a party colleague, whom he called a witch. But Bukele said they just wanted to get rid of him because he had struck too critical a tone. The number of murders has also dropped significantly since June 2019, when Bukele took power as president.
His New Ideas (Nuevas Ideas) party was formed only in 2018 and had no representation in parliament, but won a two-thirds constitutional majority in the elections at the end of February 2021. In doing so, Bukele shattered the political order that had emerged after the brutal civil war between 1980 and 1992, which left at least 75,000 dead. The above-mentioned FMLN, founded by former left-wing guerrillas, was relegated to a secondary role. Just as the right-wing National Alliance for the Republic (ARENA), which was started by Roberto D’Aubuisson, the man who once led the dreaded death squad.
The electoral commission ruled that he could not run for president in 2019 with his newly formed party, he won the 2019 election as a candidate of a small centre-right force in the first round, which was enough to announce his fight against corruption. The country was fed up not only with violence but also with corruption in the two major parties: three of the four pre-Bukele heads of state were indicted for bribery after their terms expired.
Bukele campaigned essentially on social media, did not participate in presidential candidate debates and did not talk to journalists. His critics say he is still essentially running the country from his smartphone, and putting three of his nine brothers in positions of trust..
Thanks to his special management during the COVID pandemic, when he sent food aid packages to 1.5 million poor people and the equivalent of $300 in cash.
In his first term, he had only 11 seats in the 84-seat parliament, so he had marched into the legislature in February’s budget debate accompanied by armed soldiers to convince the representatives to accept his terms. Swept away constitutional objections, he locked up curfew violators in quarantine centres and gave the army orders to fire on street gangs—dramatically reducing violence.
Blockchain Mania and Power Grabbing
After New Ideas Party secured a two-thirds majority in the Legislative Assembly, Bukele without any hesitation, had started to undermine the rule of law. The mask of the “friendly president” has fallen, and the caudillo was born.
In June, 2021 Bukele disbanded an anti-corruption body. He expelled a journalist from El Faro, who investigated his government’s shady dealings with three prison gangs.
In August, in the same year the assembly approved a set of bills, one of which aimed to remove all judges aged 60 and above. Approximately one-third of them are impacted, although there are vague conditions established to allow for the term limits to be bypassed ‘for reasons of necessity or speciality’. Loyalty to Bukele will yield rewards.
Days later, the country’s highest court declared that, in violation of the constitution, a sitting president is eligible to seek re-election (which he won in landslide in February,2024) paving the way for a potential life-time presidency.
Latin America has its fair share of autocrats. In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega has imprisoned the majority of his opponents in anticipation of the elections scheduled for November.
Juan Orlando Hernández, the leader of Honduras, has been implicated in three drug-trafficking cases in America. In Guatemala, aspirations to combat corruption dissipated in 2019 when President James “Jimmy” Ernesto Morales dismantled a UN-backed watchdog. We already covered the situation in Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela.
In the meantime, bitcoin, the focus of his excitement, was officially recognised as legal tender in El Salvador, a country with a population of 6.5 million. This action has positioned him as an unexpected hero among certain tech enthusiasts in Silicon Valley.
The law that was enacted to recognise cryptocurrency as legal tender alongside the US dollar was assertive. It compelled businesses to embrace bitcoin, although many are reluctant to do so. Indeed, the initial launch of a new digital wallet, named “Chivo” (cool), was a complete mess. The system was taken offline for several hours due to the overwhelming demand on the servers. On September 7th, the price of bitcoin fell by 10 percent, just one day after Bukele invested millions of dollars in public funds to purchase 400 tokens.
President Bukele has pledged to establish Bitcoin City – a tax-free, innovative city extravaganza on the slopes of Conchagua Volcano. The settlement would have been sustained with cryptocurrencies that would obtain power from the geothermal energy of the Conchagua Volcano.
What’s Behind of the Mega-Projects?
The government adopted cryptocurrency, investing over $100 million to acquire bitcoins through confidential funds. In conjunction with this, Bukele unveiled a range of megaprojects in the eastern La Unión department, including the Pacific Train, the Pacific Airport, and notably, Bitcoin City.
Visualisation of the “Bitcoin City” (Source: www.loopdesignawards.com)
None of these projects have come to fruition, nor do they possess a projected timeline, yet they pose a significant threat of displacement to entire communities. In a remote area, away from the capital and the scrutiny of the public, numerous families are gearing up for a prolonged struggle over their land – a struggle that the government is conveniently ignoring, choosing instead to emphasise the ideal world it claims bitcoin will bring about.
Furthermore, local reports indicate that the cost of the basic food basket, which consists of essential food items for a family of four, has increased by approximately $50 over the past few years and now represents nearly three-quarters of the minimum wage, currently set at $365. Since 2001, the official currency of El Salvador has been the US dollar.
The nation still faces extreme poverty impacting approximately 80,000 families. This now affecting nearly 9 percent of the population, while 30 percent are categorised as poor, and half the country grappling with food insecurity.
