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BloombergBusinessweek March 23, 2020I
n earlyFebruary,soldiersandpoliceinriotgearbarged
intothelegislatureinSanSalvador.Lawmakerssatin
shock,andthenewpresident,whobroughtthetroops
in,warnedthem,“Ithinkit’sclearwhohascontrolofthesit-
uation.”EvenveteranobserversofCentralAmericawerecon-
fused.Whatwashappening?
Untilthen,ElSalvador’sPresidentNayibBukelehadbeen
hailedbytheTrumpadministrationandU.S.investorsasone
ofthemostpromisingyoungleadersinthedevelopingworld.
Heis 38and,untilnowanyway,seemedsavvy,gutsy,andimpa-
tientforreform.BukelesaidSalvadoranswerefleeingtothe
U.S.becausepreviousgovernmentshadfailedthem.Don’t
sendmoreaid,heimploredAmerica.Investinourcountry
sowecancreatejobsandbringourpeoplehome.
BukeleseemedtoknowjustwhattodotomakeAmerican
officialssitup.Henameda youthfulcabinet,halfofthem
women.HegotChinatopromisetobuildsewersandroads
tothecountry’sundevelopedblack-sandPacificcoastfora
touristdestinationhe’salreadydesignatedSurfCity.Before
hisdebutspeechattheUnitedNationsinSeptember,deliv-
eredtieless,heposteda selfietoTwitterfromthepodium.
Andhewasgettingquickresults.Homicides,a toxicchal-
lengeinthegang-infestedcountry,weredown60%from
whenhetookofficeinJune;emigrationhaddroppedbyhalf.
TheU.S.StateDepartmentreduceditsriskassessment,put-
tingElSalvadorona parwithMexico.
ThencameSunday,Feb.9.Whilemuchofthecountry
waswatchingtheOscars,ElSalvador’slegislativeassembly
wassurroundedbytensofthousandsofBukelesupporters
andsecurityforces,includingsnipersontheroof.Thepresi-
dentsaidthatlawmakershadbeenslow-walkingapprovalofa
$109millionloantobeefupsecurityservices.(Bukele’ssecu-
ritybudget,thelargestinthecountry’shistory,hadalready
beenpassed;thiswasa supplementalrequest.)It hadbeen
morethanthreemonths,and,byhiscalculation,everyday
meantmoredeathsonthestreets.Hedemandeda legislative
sessionforthatSunday;thelawmakerssaidthey’dmeeton
theirschedule,nothis.Hemobilizedthemilitaryandpolice,
sendingtroopstoknockonlegislators’ doors. After entering
the assembly and praying for three minutes, he left and took
the troops with him. God, he said, had urged him to be patient.
Human rights groups, opposition leaders, major newspa-
pers, and governments, some of whom had welcomed Bukele’s
election, condemned his move as an assault on democratic
norms. U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson, who’d thrown his
weight behind the new president, posting photos of their fam-
ilies vacationing together, tweeted disapproval.
After the military intrusion, two lawmakers went to the
Supreme Court, which told Bukele to back off while it exam-
ines the case. He agreed, but he’s kept up a steady stream
of speeches, op-eds, and tweets justifying his move against
the “corrupt” and “crooked” congress he hopes to replace
in elections in February 2021. (The party he founded, Nuevas
Ideas, has no representation in the 84-member legisla-
ture, though it has a handful of sympathizers.) Earlier thismonth, in keeping with his penchant for big gestures, Bukele
imposed the western hemisphere’s first ban of foreigners
entering the country and ordered a 30-day quarantine on
locals returning from abroad to curb the spread of corona-
virus despite there being no confirmed cases.
Bukele is the first president in three decades from neither
of the two sides that fought in the vicious civil war of the
1980s, Arena on the right and FMLN on the left. His arrival
seemed to augur an important new era of cooperation with
Washington and the start of economic policies relying far
less on remittances from those who’ve left and more on jobs
and infrastructure built at home, as Bukele said he wanted.
The military action in the legislature embarrassed some
of Bukele’s supporters, who argue that the president isn’t a
would-be dictator but a young man who lost his cool. “We
need to see this in the right context as a mistake and turn the
page,” says Francis Zablah, who was in the legislature that
day and still has high hopes for his country under Bukele.
Carlos Dada, who founded the Salvadoran investigative
journalism site El Faro a quarter century ago, is far more
worried. “When Bukele came to power, he ended the old
political system. We hoped he’d unify the country. Instead,
we now have a state centered around one man.”B
ukele, who declined an interview request, has cast him-
self as a Trumpian outsider vowing to drain the swamp
in the Massachusetts-size country, where a dozen or
so old families still control most of the wealth. He comes from
the large Palestinian Christian community that settled here a
century ago. Bukele’s father, Armando, was an iconoclastic
intellectual and businessman who converted in adulthood to
Islam and then set up an ecumenical council of religious lead-
ers. Nayib, said by family friends to have been his father’s favor-
ite of 10 children, showed an early interest in politics but had
little patience for academics. After two semesters of univer-
sity, he dropped out, investing with a friend in a discotheque.
Bukele started his political career in 2012 as mayor of a
small town outside San Salvador and was later the capital’s
elected mayor. In addition to rebuilding a central park, he
focused on youth rehabilitation and job training. He began in
the leftist FMLN, which then held the presidency of the coun-
try of 6 million. He started moving to the center, and when
the party didn’t trust him to be its candidate, he ran on his
own. Many dismissed the candidacy as chimerical, but he
wonina landslide.“We hoped he’d
unify the country.
Instead, we now have
a state centered
around one man”