How Nayib Bukele Refounded a State

The young president of El Salvador skillfully rose to power then wielded it to install a new elite and crush violent gangs. He is now focused on delivering economic growth to a newly-peaceful country.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in 2024. Source.

Nayib Bukele is the president of El Salvador, a post he has held since 2019. At just 43 years of age, Bukele has established himself as a de facto ruler with widespread popular legitimacy and support through his decisive defeat of the gangs that had made El Salvador one of the most violent countries in the world prior to his accession to the presidency. Bukele is a live player in politics and government in the Western Hemisphere, with other signature moves like making Bitcoin legal tender in the country in 2021. Located in Central America, El Salvador is one of the smallest and poorest countries in Latin America and was, until Bukele, also one of the most dangerous. In the Americas, widespread violent criminality and disorder in poor countries has been frequently treated as an effectively unsolvable problem, or perhaps a problem solvable only with an indeterminate amount of foreign financial support to help generate economic growth through investment and fund generous social programs. Instead, Bukele has solved this problem on his own, for the first time achieving a key step for much faster economic growth and development in the country. Like other unusually successful small states such as Estonia or the United Arab Emirates, El Salvador may become a model of governance for autocratic governments in small countries without significant natural resources.

Prior to Bukele’s rise to power, El Salvador was riven by a long-running violent conflict between a number of large and competing criminal gangs on the one hand, and between the gangs and the state on the other. Successive governments proved unable to eradicate the gangs and alternated between equally unsuccessful policies of repression and negotiation. In March 2022, Bukele declared a state of emergency and launched a campaign of mass incarceration aimed at destroying organized crime by imprisoning as many of their members as possible, without subsequently releasing them. The result is that El Salvador’s incarceration rate is now the highest of any country in the world, while the murder rate has fallen to below the U.S. rate. Close to 2% of the entire population are in prison.¹ The policy has broken the networks of extortion that the gangs relied on for funding and the Salvadoran state under Bukele has achieved an uncontested monopoly on violence that is largely viewed as legitimate, arguably something that no Salvadoran government has managed since 1932.

This policy is extremely popular in El Salvador. In 2019, Bukele won his first presidential election with 53% of the popular vote. He won re-election in 2024 with an astounding 85% of the vote in a free and fair election, with his party also taking 54 out of 60 national legislative seats.² Bukele has not shied away from using his popularity to extend his power. In order to circumvent a constitutional ban on successive presidential terms, Bukele had replaced the entire membership of the country’s Supreme Court; a new bench of judges creatively reinterpreted the constitution to find him eligible to serve again. A variety of key posts in government are now filled by long-time Bukele allies and schoolmates, while his three brothers serve as his closest advisors.

Through his self-advocacy on social media, Bukele has also achieved popularity with a wider Latin American audience and even a U.S. conservative audience, meeting with President Donald Trump in the White House in April 2025 after negotiating an agreement to take in U.S. deportees to El Salvador.³ Governments in Ecuador and Honduras have already tried to replicate his policies, albeit with much less success. Bukele faces long-term domestic challenges, as El Salvador’s debt levels are high, economic growth is weak, and the country lacks industrial live players and is dependent on agriculture, tourism, and low-value foreign-owned manufacturing of products like t-shirts. Nonetheless, if Bukele can deliver economic growth along with continued security, he is well-placed to rule El Salvador for a long time to come.

Bukele Established a State Monopoly on Violence Where None Existed Before

Salvadoran police and security forces assembled outside Bukele’s flagship CECOT prison in 2023. Source.

El Salvador is a low-income country with high levels of poverty and unemployment. With a GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power of about $13,000, it is comparable to Jamaica or Lebanon.⁴ El Salvador is far poorer than Mexico or even a regional neighbor like Panama, which is by far the wealthiest country in Central America due to its eponymous canal connecting shipping in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.⁵ In recent years, El Salvador’s population was estimated at around 6.5 million, with some uncertainty since there had been no census since 2007 and emigration levels have been high in the intervening years.⁶ After a new census was completed in 2024, the population was found to be significantly lower than expected, at just around 6.03 million people.⁷ Somewhere between 1-3 million Salvadorans are believed to live in the U.S., whether legally or illegally.⁸ Roughly one-third of the country lives in the metropolitan area of the capital city San Salvador.

Before Bukele, El Salvador was one of the most violent countries in the world, a fact that contributed to high emigration perhaps as much as material poverty. In 2015, the homicide rate peaked at 107 per 100,000 people, the highest in the world and twice as high as second-ranked Honduras.⁹ In 2019, when Bukele took power, the homicide rate had declined somewhat to 38 per 100,000 people, still nearly the highest in the world—nearly eight times higher than the U.S. homicide rate and roughly forty times higher than the French or British homicide rates.¹⁰

The two major gangs driving this violence, MS-13 and the 18th Street Gang, both originated in Los Angeles among Salvadoran immigrants who fled the country during the Salvadoran Civil War that lasted from 1979 to 1992, but became most powerful in El Salvador itself after the war.¹¹ In part this was due to the effects of the U.S.’ Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which led to the deportation of approximately 90,000 Salvadoran immigrants with criminal records between 1997 to 2015, a figure equivalent to around 1.5% of the country’s entire population.¹² The gangs then flourished in El Salvador due to the country’s impoverishment and the catastrophic lack of post-war state capacity to enforce the law.

The gang problem metastasized into an ongoing national crisis. Whereas the political and economic power of the Mexican drug cartels or Colombian guerillas has always revolved around revenues generated by the international drug trade, especially to the valuable U.S. market, in El Salvador the business model of the gangs was more straightforward extortion of locals, a business model perhaps enhanced by in particular MS-13’s sadism and bloodthirstiness towards its victims. By 2016, the central bank estimated that 3% of GDP was being spent on paying gang protection fees.¹³ The total economic cost of the gangs was estimated at approximately 16% of GDP, accounting for lost income and the costs of private security for firms.¹⁴ The extortion-based business model fueled aggressive competition for territory between gangs.

Bukele’s achievement in crushing organized crime is especially remarkable insofar as no Salvadoran government has enjoyed a legitimate monopoly on violence since the 1930s. Bukele’s plan to destroy the gangs was called the “Territorial Control Plan” and involved effectively besieging and conquering many gang-controlled settlements. By the precepts of classical political science, this makes Bukele effectively the founder of a new Salvadoran state, and his rule in El Salvador not just a story of reform but of state formation. The reasons for failure of the previous state are closely tied to the country’s history. After independence from Spain and Mexico in the 19th century, Salvadoran society was bifurcated between a land-owning, Spanish-descended elite who dominated the agricultural sector and particularly the valuable coffee trade, and the indigenous peasantry.¹⁵

Ethnic tensions and economic weakness in the aftermath of the Great Depression led to anti-elite rioting in 1932, which was followed by a retaliatory state massacre of at least 10,000 Salvadorans. Carried out by a military government which had just come into power via a coup, the massacre heralded almost fifty successive years of military rule, the longest such stretch in the history of the region. Throughout this time, successive waves of junior officers successfully launched coups against their leaders: in 1948, 1961, and 1979, each time promising land reform and to rule in the interests of the broader population.

Failure to deliver on these aspirations led to the growth of a left-wing insurgency that developed into a civil war. By October 1980, competing communist and leftist guerrilla factions united to form the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). A rapid FMLN offensive in January 1981, aiming to overthrow the military regime before U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, failed to achieve its objectives, and the ensuing war led to a bloody conflict. The Salvadoran military was backed by U.S. military advisors and weapons transfers, but failed to defeat the insurgency and a peace treaty was signed in 1992, negotiated between FMLN, the military, and the center-right democratically-elected government which had held the presidency since 1989.

The peace treaty was a success. The FMLN renounced violence, entered democratic politics, and became the mainstream party of the Salvadoran left, eventually winning the presidency and a plurality of seats in the National Assembly in 2009 after twenty years of electoral dominance by the center-right party ARENA. The traditional repressive politics forged out of an alliance between military officers and agricultural elites ended in favor of more normal political divides. Seven successful elections have been held since the peace treaty was signed. But the peace treaty did not lead to a build-up of state capacity or rapid economic growth and the country instead was overrun by the gangs until Bukele’s sudden intervention in 2022.

A key weakness of the Salvadoran gangs was their economically parasitic business model. To varying degrees, drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia are not far removed from being profit-seeking corporations who produce and distribute valuable goods that merely happen to be illegal, necessitating violent outlaw structures to police themselves and compete with each other. Their preferences are nonetheless to avoid violence and conflict when possible and reach accommodations with the state and other players to facilitate money-making, something which government, business, and social elites in such countries are often more than happy to participate in due to the financial rewards.

Without profitable drug revenues, the Salvadoran gangs could not afford to arm themselves with expensive military equipment, outcompete the state to buy the loyalty of enough key figures in the military, police, and civil government, or even generate some genuine popularity among the poor locals, who in Mexico and Colombia might find gainful employment under the auspices of narcotics production and trafficking or benefit from drug lords’ local largesse. In El Salvador, instead, the locals became the primary victims of organized crime. This lack of firepower, financial resources, and popular support left the Salvadoran gangs vulnerable to a determined and resourceful attack by a theretofore absent state. It also means Bukele’s methods are unlikely to work in other Latin American countries where organized crime is a more positive-sum activity for locals, but may work in other countries around the world where rampant crime primarily victimizes locals.

The Radical Leftist Who Became the World’s Coolest Dictator

Nayib Bukele in 2023. Source.

Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez was born in 1981 in the Salvadoran capital city of San Salvador. His paternal grandparents were Palestinian Christians who emigrated to El Salvador; his maternal grandparents were Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox. Bukele’s father Armando Bukele Kattán, however, was an unusual man who converted to Islam as an adult, practiced polygamy, and founded the country’s first mosque, at which he himself served as imam. He also built a small business conglomerate with interests in the automobile sector, pharmaceuticals, and textiles. Global Motors, one of the largest companies in the conglomerate, is a Yamaha dealership. In 2014, the combined declared assets of the main companies controlled by the Bukele family totalled almost $20 million.¹⁶ After an education at the elite, bilingual Panamerican School in San Salvador, Nayib Bukele briefly enrolled in law school, but dropped out in his second year to work in the family businesses. He never returned to higher education, making him a college dropout.

Bukele’s family was closely linked to the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), the party of former left-wing guerrillas in El Salvador’s civil war. His paternal uncle, Mario Bukele Kattán, was a close friend and ally of Schafik Hándal and his brother Farid, both leading figures in the 1980s anti-government insurgency—both also of Palestinian descent.¹⁷ Schafik Hándal was general secretary of the Communist Party of El Salvador from 1973, before later co-founding the FMLN in 1980 to form the armed movement that fought the civil war.

Nayib’s father was reportedly close friends with Schafik Hándal from university, while Humberto Bukele, another of Nayib’s uncles, married Caroline Hándal, daughter of Farid.¹⁸ Nayib’s first introduction to politics came in 1999, when an advertising agency he founded won the contract to provide services to the FMLN. It is unclear if Armando Bukele helped to fund the FMLN throughout its period of war against the state: no publicly available reporting suggests this, although the post-war family connections to FMLN leadership were remarkably strong. Erlinda Hándal Vega, daughter of Schafik Hándal, led the chemicals department of the Bukele conglomerate from the 1990s onwards.¹⁹

Nayib Bukele became the mayor of a suburb of the capital San Salvador in 2012, then became the mayor of San Salvador itself in 2015. By 2013, it is likely that Bukele had already begun to incubate a long-term plan to eventually build a national political organization based around his own cult of personality, staffed by his family and close friends, and a rejection of the existing political system he frequently and accurately decried as corrupt. In a recorded address in that year to students at the University of El Salvador, the country’s largest institution of higher education, Bukele explicitly defended the concept of populism as a viable concept for governing, arguing that it simply means defending the aspirations and interests of the people—but that under the dominant paradigm of Salvadoran politics, the interests of the people were ignored.²⁰ In 2012, he argued that he belonged on the radical left since he believed in radical and immediate change for the country and that the “law of the jungle” should no longer determine outcomes.²¹

Despite his background in the country’s left-wing political tradition, Bukele and his allies today appear to have no particular commitment to any ideologically left-wing form of politics—nor any ideologically libertarian or conservative form of politics. While Bukele has enacted distinctively left-wing policies, such as a large increase in the minimum wage, these appear to be pragmatic measures aimed at retaining popular support. More recently, Bukele has stated that he is neither right nor left and that the left-right distinction is an anachronism that does not make sense in the modern day.²² He has added that the left has “lost its way across the world” and no longer has a “clear direction.”²³ Bukele seems to be a sincere former progressive with traditional liberal values who determined that the most humanitarian and altruistic government in El Salvador, or anywhere else, would be one that crushed corruption and crime by any means necessary. He is an extreme pragmatist willing to take or drop any policy depending on its usefulness in building a functional state and society in El Salvador.

While Bukele’s father and his fellow Palestinian immigrants engaged in consistently left-wing politics as part of their advocacy for the Palestinian cause, Bukele has arrested Erlinda Hándal Vega—the daughter of his father’s old ally—on corruption charges and has publicly backed Israel in its war in Gaza, arguing that the best thing for the Palestinian people would be if Hamas disappeared altogether.²⁴ Importantly, Evangelical Christianity is rapidly becoming more popular in El Salvador, and today almost as many Salvadorans identify as Evangelical (35%) as Roman Catholic (45%).²⁵ Evangelicals across the Americas tend to hold Zionist views, which are electorally convenient to endorse.²⁶

Bukele has in the past stated that he is “not religious,” but that he however believes in God, Jesus Christ, and “his word revealed in the Holy Bible.”²⁷ In an interview with American conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, Bukele repeatedly stressed the importance of prayer in finding the moral and spiritual strength to confront the gangs, while extensively discussing the gang’s own Satanic belief systems.²⁸ Bukele did not, however, mention his own Muslim upbringing, and consistently implies that he holds Evangelical Christian beliefs.²⁹ It is possible Bukele holds private syncretic religious beliefs. His wife Gabriela, with whom he has two daughters, is evidently of mainline Salvadoran Hispanic background and is a former ballerina.

Bukele’s core skills are in persuasion, dealmaking, and marketing. He has repeatedly built coalitions of support and made tactical deals that in many cases he later reneges on without any downside to himself. To the Chávez regime in Venezuela, he was seen as a left-wing populist, securing initial funding that helped boost the early stages of his career. To the criminal gangs of his country, he appeared as a conventional short-termist politician willing to strike secret deals whereby the gang leaders would secure privileges and immunity in exchange for electorally well-timed reductions in violence. In both instances, Bukele subsequently used the time these deals secured to advance his own position and eventually assert his authority over his former deal partners.

Bukele’s relationship with the second Trump administration is another example of this deal-making ability. Until late 2024, Trump had made a number of hostile remarks about Bukele, alleging that his homicide reduction strategy was to dump criminals into the United States.³⁰ In Trump’s second term, however, Bukele has been positively received in the Oval Office and has struck a deal whereby El Salvador will accept and incarcerate deportees from the U.S., in exchange for a fee and, possibly, the U.S. exerting its influence at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to secure more favorable loan terms for El Salvador.³¹ Bukele likely achieved this improvement in the relationship through his activity on social media and among American right-wing media figures such as Tucker Carlson. Another of Bukele’s conditions was the return to El Salvador of a number of senior MS-13 leaders imprisoned in the U.S. His motivation is probably to prevent them testifying in court about his negotiations with the gangs prior to March 2022.³²

Bukele’s rise to power was aided in no small part by his skills in public relations, marketing, and social media. Before entering politics, he worked at his advertising firm that did work for political campaigns. Over the years, Bukele has frequently appeared in public—including in formal and official settings—wearing casual clothing to emphasize his youthfulness and unconventionality as a politician: leather jacket and jeans; backwards baseball cap and aviator sunglasses; plain slim-fit shirts, and so on. More recently, he has taken to wearing an apparently uniquely-tailored formal jacket with an embroidered collar, in tandem with describing himself on social media as a “philosopher king” and “world’s coolest dictator.”³³

By the time he ran for president in 2019, Bukele had already accumulated 1.4 million followers on Facebook and 500,000 on Twitter, a huge amount for a country of 6 million people.³⁴ In his time as a mayor, a range of municipal architecture was branded with Bukele’s personal iconography of a large white “N” on a turquoise-cyan background.³⁵ While campaigning and governing as a nominal member of the FMLN, Bukele entirely abandoned the FMLN’s traditional red imagery, which harkened back to the party’s communist origins, and likewise jettisoned its collectivist language, beginning to shape a message of non-alignment with the governing ideologies of both the FMLN and the center-right ARENA. Today, Bukele’s 11 million followers on TikTok, 10 million followers on Instagram, 8.5 million followers on Facebook, and 7.6 million followers on the platform X all dwarf the population of El Salvador, and Bukele regularly uploads posts and short-form videos tailored for the online medium.³⁶

Key Allies and Rise to Power

Nayib Bukele in 2025. Source.

Nayib Bukele’s first major involvement in politics came in the 2003 San Salvador mayoral election, where his advertising agency helped the FMLN’s candidate win the mayoralty of the capital city despite lukewarm support from the wider party. Nayib’s services appear on this occasion to have been provided for free, at the behest of his father.³⁷ As a reward he was named treasurer of the San Salvador festivities commission. By 2011, his relationship with the FMLN was close enough that he was parachuted in as the party’s candidate for the mayoralty of Nuevo Cuscatlán, a suburb of San Salvador with a population of around 10,000 people.³⁸

Once elected, Bukele’s main achievements appear to have been the expansion of drinking water availability and expanding a scholarship program for local youths to attend university.³⁹ Throughout the mayoral campaign he distributed medicines donated by his father’s pharmaceutical firm. After his election, he founded a short-wave radio station where he hosted a phone-in show.⁴⁰ Infrastructure improvements were funded through a very large increase in municipal debt.⁴¹ These improvements to local living conditions were popular and appear to have successfully set Bukele up for his later political career.

Notably, the Nuevo Cuscatlán scholarship program was funded by Alba Petróleos, a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA, who extensively used El Salvador to launder funds and evade U.S. sanctions. Alba Petróleos, through shell companies, also invested in tax-free real estate projects in Nuevo Cuscatlán during Bukele’s mayoralty, and also funneled money to Bukele personally. The total is estimated at up to $2 million.⁴² Other close Bukele allies likewise received extensive funding from Alba Petróleos, such as Pablo Anliker Infante, subsequently the Minister of Agriculture, who received $13 million in loans over a four-year period.⁴³ Alba Petróleos also backed Starlight, a company controlled by Bukele whose main activity was the operation of television channel TVX, founded in 2012, which promoted Bukele’s career all the way through to his accession to the presidency.⁴⁴

PDVSA’s spending in Venezuela was largely directed by José Luis Merino, another FMLN co-founder and former guerilla war commander, who continued to back Bukele even after his defection from the FMLN in 2017, floating the possibility of an alliance between Bukele and the FMLN for the second round of the 2019 presidential elections.⁴⁵ Merino has also been linked to international drug trafficking via his links to the Colombian FARC left-wing guerilla group: a 2017 bipartisan congressional letter to the U.S. Treasury called for the department to open an investigation into Merino under the Kingpin Act.⁴⁶ It appears, therefore, that the Hugo Chávez government in Venezuela had taken Bukele for a likely future left-wing populist leader and was prepared to spend heavily to back his career. This strategy was not exclusive to El Salvador: the Chávez government used the same tactic of backing left-wing politicians and governments with oil money across the region through Alba Petróleos and other initiatives. It also means Bukele demonstrated early skill at managing relationships with foreign powers while being only a suburban mayor.

Despite Bukele’s clear attempts to build an independent brand, his links to the FMLN were still close enough for the party to nominate him as their candidate for the San Salvador mayoral election in 2015. The party was also motivated to some degree by desperation: despite winning the presidency in 2009, FMLN’s support in San Salvador itself had been falling and the party lost the mayoral election in that year, despite three previous successive victories. It was defeated again in 2012.⁴⁷ Bukele’s youth and popularity appealed to a party led by aging former guerilla fighters in a country increasingly weary of both established parties and their publicly well-documented corruption scandals, although at least some members of FMLN’s Political Commission were aware that Bukele had broader ambitions.⁴⁸ Despite this, Bukele secured the Commission’s backing, in part due to the long-standing ties between the FMLN and his family, and in part also due to the fact that José Luis Merino was an influential Commission member.⁴⁹

The growing rift between Bukele and the FMLN became apparent even before he won the mayoral election, as a major internal dispute arose as to whether or not Bukele would campaign using the FMLN’s traditional visual imagery or his own brand using the “N.” In the end, the FMLN backed down.⁵⁰ Another dispute arose over the selection of the candidates for the FMLN’s slate of city councilors. Bukele wanted his personal allies on the slate, even when they had no previous connection to the FMLN altogether, pushing for Federico Gerardo Anliker López to be nominated, an old school friend and now in charge of CEPA, the ports, airports, and railways authority.⁵¹ Likewise, Bukele successfully sought to have Pedro Víctor Dumas Santamaría installed as San Salvador’s police commissioner, against the party’s wishes.⁵² Dumas now serves as the head of national intelligence.⁵³ One of his cousins, Hassan Ricardo Bukele Martínez, was successfully installed as secretary of the city council. Already by 2015, the Salvadoran press was questioning to what degree the partnership between Bukele and the FMLN would last.⁵⁴

The relationship ultimately lasted two years before breaking down completely in October 2017, when the FMLN expelled Bukele from the party, citing among other reasons Bukele’s “personalistic behavior.”⁵⁵ In that same month Bukele founded his own political party, Nuevas Ideas (lit. “New Ideas”), although the party was not registered with the Supreme Electoral Court in time for Bukele to run for the presidency in the 2019 election as the party’s candidate. Therefore he sought and won the nomination for the right-wing GANA party, formerly a relatively minor party initially filled with defectors from the traditional center-right ARENA. Bukele had already built bridges with GANA through appointments he made as mayor: his press secretary, Ernesto Sanabria, had also worked for GANA, while Peter Dumas, his police chief, had previously stood for elected office as a GANA candidate.⁵⁶ Despite his left-wing past, Bukele was willing to work with the right.

Bukele’s 2019 electoral rhetoric was firmly anti-establishment and he used his own distinctive branding throughout. His charges of corruption against the mainstream political parties worked especially well since three former presidents had been charged with graft, and one had been jailed.⁵⁷ He did not heavily campaign on the promise of a hardline approach to the gangs, and did not pursue such an approach as Mayor of San Salvador. As mayor, Bukele had in fact negotiated extensively with the gangs to allow for untroubled construction of major municipal infrastructure projects and for some degree of access by city personnel to gang-controlled territory.⁵⁸ The negotiations went through Carlos Marroquín and Mario Duran: the latter later became Bukele’s first Minister of the Interior, and is currently himself serving as Mayor of San Salvador.⁵⁹

Bukele’s path to the presidency depended at least as much upon the systemic discrediting of the existing mainstream political parties as it did his own powers of persuasion. Turnout was low at 52%, indicating high levels of voter disillusionment and apathy, whereas 63% of voters had turned out in the 2009 election that saw the FMLN come to power for the first time. In this environment, Bukele was able to keep his campaign promises vague and avoid making any strong commitments. Although the mainstream Salvadoran press largely backed ARENA, Bukele was able to capitalize upon now-widespread smartphone ownership to spread his campaign messages via social media.⁶⁰

Upon winning the presidential election with an outright majority of 53%, thus obviating the need for a second-round run-off vote, Bukele’s immediate need was to form a government. Old school friends and family became its key members, along with allies from Bukele’s previous political career. Across his different cabinets, Bukele’s appointees seem to be a mix of these personal connections, mixed with a cadre of relatively youthful technocrats with no real history in Salvadoran politics. María Luisa Hayem Brevé, appointed as Minister of the Economy, attended the elite Panamerican School with Bukele in the 1990s. Rogelio Rivas Polanco, the Security Minister, had been a paid advisor to Bukele during the latter’s time as Mayor of San Salvador. Pablo Salvador Anliker Infante became Minister of Agriculture.

Pablo Anliker’s first cousin, Federico, had been one of Bukele’s closest school friends, and himself became general secretary of the Nuevas Ideas party. Fernando Andrés López Larreynaga, Bukele’s other best friend from the Panamerican School, became Minister of the Environment. Mario Duran, Minister of the Interior and Bukele’s chosen gang negotiator from the mayoralty, had also worked as a presenter on the Bukele-controlled TVX channel. Miguel Kattán, one of Bukele’s uncles, became Secretary of Commerce and Investment.⁶¹ Michelle Sol, Housing Minister, is a personal friend of the president and was Bukele’s successor as Mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán. Her husband, Ernesto Castro, is Bukele’s long-time private secretary, and is now President of the Legislative Assembly. The president of Nuevas Ideas, meanwhile, is another cousin of Bukele.

The most important members of the new administration, however, held no official posts at all. Bukele’s three full younger brothers, Karim, Yusef, and Ibrajim, have all played critical roles throughout Bukele’s tenure. His half-siblings from his father’s other marriages reportedly play no role in his government.⁶² Karim, aged 37, is his elder brother’s chief advisor and plays a key role in defining the government’s strategy. Karim was campaign manager during Nayib’s 2015 mayoral run, and again for the 2019 presidential election. Karim also worked as chief government liaison to the Assembly, where Bukele did not have a majority until 2021, and has also functioned as an unofficial liaison for El Salvador’s business community.⁶³

Yusef and Ibrajim, twin brothers both aged 34, are junior to Karim in the informal family hierarchy, but also play vital roles in Bukele’s government. Yusef has an economics degree and is reported to wield substantial influence over economic policymaking: he is thought to be the origin of much of his brother’s support for Bitcoin. Ibrajim was closely involved in personnel selection for the administration: one candidate for a senior government officeholder role reported being interviewed by Ibrajim.⁶⁴

Ibrajim himself has publicly discussed conducting hundreds of interviews for government posts after his brother won the presidency: the interviews apparently took place in the offices of one of the family-owned Yamaha dealership.⁶⁵ Friends of the younger brothers also achieved ministerial status: Edgar Romeo Rodríguez Herrera, Minister of Public Works and Transport, was a university classmate and thesis co-author with Yusef at Central American University.⁶⁶ Herrera later went to work for the Bukele family’s auto dealership. After taking office, Bukele successfully staffed his government with a range of younger outsiders personally loyal to him through family or childhood school ties. Broad personnel turnover is a key ingredient for successful regime change.

Shortly after winning the presidency, Bukele sought to assert executive control over El Salvador’s political institutions. In February 2020, a dispute between Bukele and the Legislative Assembly over a proposed $109 million loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration escalated. Bukele had requested to use the loan to equip the police and expand the military, which he planned to deploy domestically to combat the gangs, but congressional approval was slow to materialize.⁶⁷ In response, Bukele sent troops into the Legislative Assembly chamber while rallying his supporters outside, in a theatrical show of force.⁶⁸

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bukele likewise picked a fight with the country’s Supreme Court, ignoring its rulings relating to his enforcement of quarantine restrictions for citizens who violated lockdown rules.⁶⁹ The conflict between Bukele and existing institutions would be resolved in his favor after February 2021, when Nuevas Ideas and GANA won a combined supermajority in the Legislative Assembly, allowing Bukele to both pass any desired legislation without restraint, change the constitution, and replace the entire bench of Supreme Court judges—which he duly did three months after the elections were held.⁷⁰ Bukele, therefore, was careful to ensure that he controlled the entire Salvadoran state before taking on the gangs, and his control in turn relied on procedural and electoral victories enabled by his democratic popularity.

Prospects For Developing El Salvador

Nayib Bukele meeting with President Donald Trump in 2019. Source.

Bukele did not open hostilities for three years, in the meantime secretly negotiating with gang leadership to limit violence in exchange for freedom for some gang leaders and better prison conditions for others, while also preparing and modernizing the police and military. Bukele kept the negotiations going until March 2022, when a group of senior MS-13 leaders were arrested while traveling in a state-owned car, with a driver provided by the prisons director.⁷¹ In response to this betrayal, the gangs retaliated with untargeted killings of 87 Salvadoran citizens.

Bukele’s immediate—and likely planned—response was to institute a state of emergency that remains in place today. The state of emergency abolishes rights to legal defense, allows for indefinite detention, and further allows the state more sweeping powers of arrest and surveillance. In the first two months, 33,000 people were arrested.⁷² Separately, Bukele passed laws lowering the age of permissible arrest for gang-related crimes to 12 years old, and altered the definition of gang membership to include collaborators and aspiring members.⁷³ To accommodate the massively increased prison population, the government swiftly constructed the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a maximum security prison with a capacity of 40,000 according to the government.⁷⁴

Sweeping arrests destroyed the gangs’ ability to generate revenues through extortion. Extortion complaints reported to police fell by 54% in five months.⁷⁵ In turn, the absence of revenue weakened the gangs’ ability to influence more peripheral members of their networks or bribe key state officials. While two previous attempts at such aggressive policing in the 2000s failed to achieve long-term change, Bukele’s control of the judiciary, legislature, and executive branches allowed him to essentially abolish El Salvador’s human rights regime and implement security policies with essentially zero limitations beyond public opinion.

Bukele has allowed for some successes in economic growth. Tourist arrivals have grown significantly since 2019. The government has successfully tried to spur the tourism boom by constructing and marketing “Surf City” and “Surf City 2,” a number of villages on the Pacific coast provided with upgraded amenities by the state. Competitive international surfing tournaments have been regularly held in El Salvador over the last several years, including the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games.⁷⁶ The government estimates that the tourism sector constitutes around 11% of GDP.⁷⁷

Bukele’s longer-term plan for economic development is focused around a number of planned large-scale infrastructure projects, which are designed to support his vision of a country that appeals to foreign tourists and investors. The most ambitious is the plan to construct the country’s second international airport. The planned Airport of the Pacific is currently under construction to serve both the existing city of La Union and Bukele’s envisaged “Bitcoin City,” a proposed special economic zone designed as a tax haven to attract foreign residents. The La Union Port is also due for expansion, with funding from Turkish port operator company Yilport, which has signed a fifty-year concession agreement to jointly operate La Union and the Acajutla port on the west coast.⁷⁸

A number of these infrastructure projects have been funded by China following Bukele’s state visit to China in 2019, such as a new pier at La Libertad, upgraded water treatment facilities in that region, and $200 million to develop the “Surf Cities.” The total sum of promised Chinese development finance, $500 million, is insignificant for China but very meaningful for El Salvador. The money, and the prospect of growing Chinese influence that comes with it, has also allowed Bukele to extract more investment from the U.S., with the Development Finance Corporation supporting the construction of a gas-fired power plant and liquefied natural gas regasification facility at Acajutla.⁷⁹

Bukele has also secured financing from South Korea for the Los Chorros viaduct project, a $410 million elevated road building program to improve connectivity between San Salvador and the west of the country. A South Korean construction firm, Dongbu, is the lead contractor on the project.⁸⁰ These infrastructure, tourism, and foreign investment projects will not create long-term industrial growth on their own, but are a necessary precondition to any economic growth as they both establish foreign confidence in the staying power of El Salvador's public security and government and boost Bukele’s domestic popularity in the short term.

Nayib Bukele is a live player. For all his achievements, he is a man in many ways too ambitious for a country as small as El Salvador. His rise to power took place effectively all in one mid-sized city that happens to rule over a poor and irrelevant countryside that, until Bukele’s tenure, the city was happy to ignore and loot. From another angle, Bukele’s success could be compared to that of someone like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who cleaned up crime in the city in the 1990s—a jurisdiction that even back then had more people than El Salvador does today. Bukele has spoken in favor of the integration and perhaps even unification of Central American countries before, harkening back to the Federal Republic of Central America that briefly existed in the 19th century following independence from Mexico.⁸¹ Today, such a country would have roughly 50 million people. With decades of power and popularity likely ahead of him, it will be important to track not just Bukele’s domestic governance, but his foreign policy too.

1. Papadovassilakis, Alex. “Keeping a Lid on El Salvador's Prisons.” InSight Crime, 6 December 2023, https://insightcrime.org/investigations/el-salvador-keeping-lid-on-prisons.

2. See here: “2024 Salvadoran general election.” Wikipedia, 21 April 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Salvadoran_general_election.

3. “Key immigration moments from Trump and Bukele meeting.” BBC, 14 April 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c78jz7g64l7o.

4. “GDP per capita, PPP (current international $) | Data.” World Bank Group, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true.

5. “GDP per capita, PPP (current international $) - El Salvador, Panama.” World Bank Group, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=SV-PA.

6. “El Salvador - The World Factbook.” CIA, 10 June 2025, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/el-salvador.

7. “Population of El Salvador is 6 million.” El Salvador Perspectives, 9 November 2024, https://www.elsalvadorperspectives.com/2024/11/population-of-el-salvador-is-6-million.html.

8. “Salvadorans.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadorans.

9. “Intentional homicides (per 100,000 people) - El Salvador, United States.” World Bank Group, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=SV-US.

10. Ibid.

11. Garsd, Jasmine. “How El Salvador Fell Into A Web Of Gang Violence.” NPR, 5 October 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/10/05/445382231/how-el-salvador-fell-into-a-web-of-gang-violence.

12. Ambrosius, Christian. “Deportations and the transnational roots of gang violence in Central America.” World Development, vol. 140, 105373, 2021. ScienceDirect, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305750X20305015

13. “The gangs that cost 16% of GDP.” The Economist, 21 May 2016, https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2016/05/21/the-gangs-that-cost-16-of-gdp.

14. Ibid.

15. Tenzin, Choetsow. “A Caffeinated Crisis: An Unfiltered Look at the Struggles of the Coffee Industry in El Salvador.” Harvard International Review, 15 January 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/a-caffeinated-crisis-an-unfiltered-look-at-the-struggles-of-the-coffee-industry-in-el-salvador.

16. Alvarado, Jimmy, et al. “The Bukele Clan that Rules with Nayib.” El Faro, 17 June 2020, https://elfaro.net/en/202006/el_salvador/24542/The-Bukele-Clan-that-Rules-with-Nayib.htm.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Canizalez, Luis, and David Ernesto Pérez. “Cómo los Bukele se hicieron millonarios.” Revista Elementos, 19 November 2021, https://revistaelementos.net/politica/como-los-bukele-se-hicieron-millonarios.

20. Labrador, Gabriel. “How Bukele Crafted a Best-Selling Political Brand.” El Faro, 3 May 2022, https://elfaro.net/en/202205/el_salvador/26155/How-Bukele-Crafted-a-Best-Selling-Political-Brand.htm.

21. Ibid.

22. Bergengruen, Vera, and Christopher Gregory. “Read the Transcript of President Bukele's Interview With TIME.” Time Magazine, 29 August 2024, https://time.com/7015636/president-nayib-bukele-interview.

23. Ibid.

24. C., Jorge. “La Fiscalía ofrecerá abundante prueba técnica y documental en la Audiencia Inicial del Caso Desfalco.” FGR, July 25, https://www.fiscalia.gob.sv/la-fiscalia-ofrecera-abundante-prueba-tecnica-y-documental-en-la-audiencia-inicial-del-caso-desfalco; Bukele, Nayib. “As a Salvadoran with Palestinian ancestry, I'm sure the best thing that could happen to the Palestinian people is for Hamas to completely disappear. Those savage beasts do not represent the Palestinians. Anyone who supports the...” X, 9 October 2023, https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1711220281820278875?lang=en-GB.

25. Rikkers, Isabel, and Noelle Brigden. “Christian Zionism in Bukele's El Salvador.” NACLA, 9 October 2024, https://nacla.org/christian-zionism-bukeles-el-salvador.

26. Ibid.

27. Ahren, Raphael. “His dad was an imam, his wife has Jewish roots: Meet El Salvador's new leader.” The Times of Israel, 7 February 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/his-dad-was-an-imam-his-wife-has-jewish-roots-meet-el-salvadors-new-leader.

28. Carlson, Tucker. “President Nayib Bukele: Seeking God’s Wisdom, Taking Down MS-13, and His Advice to Donald Trump.” YouTube, 5 June 2024, link.

29. Bukele, Nayib. “The complete original name of El Salvador is "Provincia De Nuestro Señor Jesucristo El Salvador Del Mundo," which translates to "Province of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World." It was later shortened to "El Salvador," meaning "The Savior,” X, 4 October 2024, https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1842390595249004748?lang=en.

30. Valencia, Ricardo. “In Trumpland, Bukele Is Just Another “Bad Hombre.”” El Faro, 13 August 2024, https://elfaro.net/en/202408/opinion/27525/in-trumpland-bukele-is-just-another-bad-hombre.

31. Kanno-Youngs, Zolan, et al. “Behind Trump's Deal to Deport Venezuelans to El Salvador's Most Feared Prison.” The New York Times, 1 May 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/us/politics/trump-deportations-venezuela-el-salvador.html.

32. Farah, Douglas. “What Bukele Wants from Trump.” Americas Quarterly, 5 May 2025, https://americasquarterly.org/article/what-bukele-wants-from-trump.

33. Sherman, Christopher. “'Coolest dictator' to 'philosopher king,' Nayib Bukele's path to reelection in El Salvador.” AP News, 5 February 2024, https://apnews.com/article/nayib-bukele-el-salvador-president-0ab3b1d63d3633c535b2cb9b60c56879.

34. Green, Emily. “Nayib Bukele: El Salvador’s young social media star — and next president.” The World, 31 January 2019, https://theworld.org/stories/2019/01/31/meet-nayib-bukele-el-salvador-s-rising-social-media-star-and-presidential-hopeful.

35. Labrador, Gabriel. “How Bukele Crafted a Best-Selling Political Brand.” El Faro, 3 May 2022, https://elfaro.net/en/202205/el_salvador/26155/How-Bukele-Crafted-a-Best-Selling-Political-Brand.htm.

36. “Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele).” TikTok, https://www.tiktok.com/@nayibbukele.

37. Canizalez, Luis, and David Ernesto Pérez. “Nayib, un pastor evangélico y una historia de traiciones.” Revista Elementos, 14 January 2022, https://revistaelementos.net/politica/nayib-un-pastor-evangelico-y-una-historia-de-traiciones.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Canizalez, Luis, and David Ernesto Pérez. “Aquí comenzaron los delirios faraónicos de los Hermanos Bukele.” Revista Elementos, 1 February 2022, https://revistaelementos.net/politica/aqui-comenzaron-los-delirios-faraonicos-de-los-hermanos-bukele.

41. Labarador, Gabriel. “How Bukele Crafted a Best-Selling Political Brand.” El Faro, 3 May 2022, https://elfaro.net/en/202205/el_salvador/26155/How-Bukele-Crafted-a-Best-Selling-Political-Brand.htm.

42. Silva, Héctor, et al. “Nayib Bukele recibió $1.9 millones de Alba Petróleos.” Revista Factum, 11 September 2019, https://www.revistafactum.com/nayib-bukele-prestamos-alba.

43. Alvarado, Jimmy. “Alba Petróleos dio préstamos a dos ministros del Gobierno Bukele.” El Faro, 9 September 2019, https://elfaro.net/es/201909/el_salvador/23634/Alba-Petr%C3%B3leos-dio-pr%C3%A9stamos-a-dos-ministros-del-Gobierno-Bukele.htm.

44. Arismendi, Arysbell, and Jimmy Alvarado. “Bukele se divorció del Frente, pero no del grupo Alba.” El Faro, 8 January 2019, https://elfaro.net/es/201901/el_salvador/22845/Bukele-se-divorci%C3%B3-del-Frente-pero-no-del-grupo-Alba.htm.

45. Ibid.

46. Alvalos, Héctor Silva. “US Congress Members Request Investigation of El Salvador Official Linked to Organized Crime.” InSight Crime, 23 June 2017, https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/us-congress-requests-investigation-official-el-salvador-links-organized-crime.

47. Pérez, David Ernesto, and Luis Canizalez. “FMLN conocía el comportamiento tiránico de Bukele pero por conveniencia lo disimuló.” Revista Elementos, 19 April 2022, https://revistaelementos.net/politica/retratos-politicos/fmln-conocia-el-comportamiento-tiranico-de-bukele-pero-por-conveniencia-lo-disimulo.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. André Duchiade, “ El Faro journalists fear arrest after reporting on Bukele’s alleged gang ties.” LatAm Journalism Review by the Knight Center, May 6, 2025, https://latamjournalismreview.org/articles/el-faro-journalists-fear-arrest-after-reporting-on-bukeles-alleged-gang-ties/

54. Arauz, Sergio. “¿Quién ha ganado la alcaldía de San Salvador: Nayib Bukele o el FMLN?” El Faro, 16 March 2015, https://elfaro.net/es/201503/noticias/16709/%C2%BFQui%C3%A9n-ha-ganado-la-alcald%C3%ADa-de-San-Salvador-Nayib-Bukele-o-el-FMLN.htm.

55. Arauz, Sergio. “FMLN expulsa a Nayib Bukele y este se declara 'independiente' en un tuit.” El Faro, 11 October 2017, https://elfaro.net/es/201710/el_salvador/21010/FMLN-expulsa-a-Nayib-Bukele-y-este-se-declara-.

56. Arauz, Sergio. “¿Quién ha ganado la alcaldía de San Salvador: Nayib Bukele o el FMLN?” El Faro, 16 March 2015, https://elfaro.net/es/201503/noticias/16709/%C2%BFQui%C3%A9n-ha-ganado-la-alcald%C3%ADa-de-San-Salvador-Nayib-Bukele-o-el-FMLN.htm.

57. Call, Charles T. “The significance of Nayib Bukele's surprising election as president of El Salvador.” Brookings Institution, 5 February 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-significance-of-nayib-bukeles-surprising-election-as-president-of-el-salvador.

58. Martínez, Carlos. “Nayib Bukele también pactó con pandillas.” El Faro, 29 June 2018, https://elfaro.net/es/201806/el_salvador/22148/Nayib-Bukele-tambi%C3%A9n-pact%C3%B3-con-pandillas.htm.

59. Lemus, Efren, et al. “Nueva información de la reunión entre Mario Durán y Renuente de la MS-13.” El Faro, 7 July 2020, https://elfaro.net/es/202007/el_salvador/24612/Nueva-informaci%C3%B3n-de-la-reuni%C3%B3n-entre-Mario-Dur%C3%A1n-y-Renuente-de-la-MS-13.htm.

60. Montoya, Ainhoa. “The election of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador shows how wartime polarities have dissolved into pragmatism - LSE Latin America and Caribbean.” LSE Blogs, 13 May 2019, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2019/05/13/the-election-of-nayib-bukele-in-el-salvador-shows-how-wartime-polarities-have-dissolved-into-pragmatism.

61. Labrador, Gabriel. “Amigos, socios y parientes en el nuevo Gobierno.” El Faro, 2 June 2019, https://elfaro.net/es/201906/el_salvador/23362/Amigos-socios-y-parientes-en-el-nuevo-Gobierno.htm.

62. Alvarado, Jimmy, et al. “The Bukele Clan that Rules with Nayib.” El Faro, 17 June 2020, https://elfaro.net/en/202006/el_salvador/0000024542-the-bukele-clan-that-rules-with-nayib.

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid.

65. Ibid.

66. Ibid.

67. Alvarado, Jimmy. “Bukele's International Credit Line: The Next Step toward Militarizing Public Safety.” El Faro, 12 March 2020, https://elfaro.net/en/202003/el_salvador/24115/Bukele%E2%80%99s-International-Credit-Line-The-Next-Step-toward-Militarizing-Public-Safety.htm.

68. Neuman, Scott. “Troops Occupy El Salvador's Legislature To Back President's Crime Package.” NPR, 10 February 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/02/10/804407503/troops-occupy-el-salvadors-legislature-to-back-president-s-crime-package.

69. “El Salvador: President Defies Supreme Court.” Human Rights Watch, 17 April 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/17/el-salvador-president-defies-supreme-court.

70. “US concerned over removal of top Salvadorean judges.” BBC, 3 May 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-56970026.

71. “Bukele's Pact with the Gangs Lasted Three Massacres.” El Faro, 1 March 2023, https://elfaro.net/en/202303/opinion/26745/Bukele's-Pact-with-the-Gangs-Lasted-Three-Massacres.htm.

72. Papadovassilakis, Alex. “How El Salvador's Crackdown Succeeded Where Others Failed.” InSight Crime, 6 December 2023, https://insightcrime.org/investigations/too-many-soldiers-how-bukele-crackdown-succeeded-where-others-failed/

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid.

76. “2023 Surf City El Salvador ISA World Surfing Games.” International Surfing Association, 2023, https://isasurf.org/event/2023-world-surfing-games.

77. “The other “Bukele effect”: international tourism boom in El Salvador.” Invest in El Salvador, 6 September 2024, https://investinelsalvador.gob.sv/the-other-bukele-effect-international-tourism-boom-in-el-salvador.

78. “Turkey's Yilport to invest $1.6 billion in El Salvador ports.” Reuters, 12 August 2024, https://www.reuters.com/business/turkeys-yilport-invest-16-billion-el-salvador-ports-2024-08-12.

79. Ellis, Evan. “China and El Salvador: An Update.” CSIS, 22 March 2021, https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-and-el-salvador-update.

80. Rogers, David. “Korean firm wins El Salvador’s biggest-ever infrastructure project.” Global Construction Review, 12 April 2023, https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/korean-firm-wins-el-salvadors-biggest-ever-infrastructure-project

81. Williams, Lachlan. “President Bukele's Vision for Central American Unity.” The Rio Times, 4 January 2024, https://www.riotimesonline.com/president-bukeles-vision-for-central-american-unity.