El Salvador

The streets of El Salvador, once littered with bullets from years of ruthless gang violence, have finally cleared up and the country has one man to thank for it - President Nib Bukele. After a deal between gangs and the government broke down in 2022, resulting in 87 deaths in a single weekend, Bukele allowed police to arrest anyone they suspected of having ties to the gangs. With tattoos or even anonymous tip-offs sufficing as evidence, it is no surprise that nearly 75,000 individuals have been locked up since. Consequently, El Salvador’s homicide rate dropped sharply from 36 in 2024 to 2.4 per 100,000 people in 2024.

Despite Bukele’s harsh tactics, a majority of Salvadorans are pleased with the results he has brought about. With businesses opening up again and citizens feeling secure enough to go back to their normal lives, the Economist’s estimated 16% of GDP lost annually to gang-related violence preventing Salvadorans from investing and working can finally start being recovered. The legitimate economy seems to be gaining momentum and investors have good reason to be more confident in the country’s stability and future.

Although things seem brighter for its economy, all is not well in El Salvador. A majority of the imprisoned have not had proper trials and a huge number of innocent Salvadorans have been wrongly put behind bars, breaking up families and rendering children parent less. In spite of outraged human-rights groups, most polls give President Bukele an approval rating of over 80%, keeping him overwhelmingly popular among Salvadorans.

Bukele’s unconstitutional and authoritarian approach has many worried with reasonable cause. The declaration of a “state of emergency” allowing the army and police greater powers and the ability to arrest without much evidence has been continually extended. Additionally, there have been countless instances of Bukele ignoring congress and the courts, with him eventually replacing judges and legislators with his own lackeys. The people of El Salvador, however, do not seem to mind giving him this unchecked power, at least for now. For a people who have been constantly disappointed by democracy, Bukele’s quick results and offer of security in exchange for Salvadorans’ civil liberties is an understandably enticing one.

Economically, politically and even financially things seem steady for now, but what happens when Salvadorans decide that they want their civil rights back? Bukele has clearly demonstrated that he is welcoming of unconstitutional practices, going as far as to let himself into second-term elections, which is explicitly illegal in El Salvador. With his calculated changes to the way things are run in El Salvador in all three branches of government, and replacing gangsters with his own army, there is little that can be done to stop Bukele now - and as is typical of dictatorships, things are bound to go south eventually.