El Salvador

Katarina Hall | 2.27.2024 4:35 PM

"They were delicious," said a woman about the pupusas she received after casting her vote in El Salvador's recent presidential election. The stuffed corn tortillas, the country's best-known dish, were handed out courtesy of the federal government and its incumbent President Nayib Bukele, who was running for reelection despite a constitutional ban on serving consecutive terms. Giving out food at polling stations might qualify as illegal voter interference. Bukele was undeterred.

Bukele ended up winning 85 percent of the popular vote, and his New Ideas party held on to its majority control in Congress. The 42-year-old president called the landslide victory "a record in the entire democratic history of the world."

"This will be the first time where one party rules a country in a completely democratic system," he told a crowd of thousands who had gathered in San Salvador's central square on election day. "The entire opposition has been pulverized."

El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America with a population of about 6.3 million, but Bukele has made himself one of the best-known political leaders in the world. His outsized public profile stems from his public embrace of bitcoin and the staggering decline in crime and violence in El Salvador since he took office.

But Bukele has also taken control of the federal judiciary and has clamped down on press freedoms. He overrode a constitutional rule against running for a second term so that he could remain in office. His defenders point to his broad popular support as evidence that he has a mandate to do what's necessary to fix the impoverished and crime-ridden country he presides over. But this view is shortsighted: Latin America's slide toward authoritarianism points to the long-term cost of allowing political majorities to undermine the rule of law.

The former mayor of the capital of San Salvador, Bukele was elected president in 2019, becoming Latin America's youngest leader at 37. The self-described "world's coolest dictator" (he trolls his critics by owning their epithets) entered the political arena amid widespread disillusionment with traditional parties and rampant corruption. His anti-corruption pledges and his unconventional policies made him immensely popular. So did his social media savviness: A fluent English speaker, he often bashes his critics on X, formerly Twitter, where he's garnered 5.9 million followers.

The backward-hat-wearing president first caught the world's attention in September 2021, when he announced to an adoring crowd of bitcoin devotees at a conference in Miami that El Salvador would become the first country in the........

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