Nationalism and Nayib Bukele
Liberalism has a problem, and his name is Nayib.
Nayib Bukele, who first took office at the age of 37, has secured his second term as President of El Salvador. The incumbent president captured a staggering 85.22% of the vote at the time of this writing. This victory is unsurprising considering that President Bukele’s approval rating has consistently hovered between 80% and 90% over the course of his first term. Even highly reputable polling organizations such as GALLUP have shown Bukele to hold an approval rating of 92%, a figure which would make any other politician anywhere else in the world drunk with satisfaction, but Bukele is not satisfied.
President Bukele has not secured such high polling numbers because of his speeches, or small tweaks to the system which the media hypes as monumental change. Nor has he engaged in incrementalism. He has not pitted different demographics of El Salvadorans against one another over tangential cultural issues, and he has consistently refused to revisit core positions. Instead the El Salvadoran president has risen to immense popularity by way of his policies.
Since taking office in June of 2019 Nayib Bukele has transformed his nation from the most violent state in the world to the safest in all of the Americas. Safer than even America and Canada. Gangs are a thing of the past in El Salvador and the good people of that nation can now walk around safely, even at night. Whereas before the rise of Bukele they were at risk of being shot and mutilated in broad daylight while walking home from the market.
Nayib Bukele has achieved his many policy victories by being decidedly anti-liberal. He has rejected the advice of the NGO class, the United Nations, the United States and countless other post-war institutions which attempt to push liberalism on the world. In his pursuit of anti-liberal politics and policymaking the El Salvadoran president has made the 6 million people of his small nation more free and drastically increased their opportunities and quality of life. Liberalism and freedom do not go hand in hand, and Mr. Bukele proves this.
Upon taking office Mr. Bukele was faced with a dire situation. 80% of El Salvador was under the control of gangs and drug cartels. The murder rate was the highest in the world, and sexual violence was an aspect of every day life for the nation’s women and girls. In response Bukele took a hard turn away from the liberal prescription for “reform and understanding” and enacted a hardline militarized operation known as the Territorial Control Plan. The cornerstone of the plan was the mass-arrest of some 75,000 suspected gang members and the construction of a prison capable of housing 40,000 inmates in the most spartan of conditions.
The plan worked, decreasing the homicide rate from 36 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019 (the year Bukele took office) to 2.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023. The United States now boasts a homicide rate more than twice as high as El Salvador, with 5.5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023.
Bukele locked gang members up not merely for possession of drugs or firearms, but based on their tattoos or familial connections. “Benefit of the doubt” was taken away from anyone suspected of gang affiliation, and the NGOs roared about the injustice that gang members, murderers and rapists, were facing at the hands of the Bukele government. Amnesty International has referred to Bukele’s crime crackdown as a “human rights crisis” while the Human Rights Watch has called for foreign governments, including the United States, to push against and even sanction El Salvador for its current slate of policies.
Publics, particularly those in the West, have been told for decades that “profiling does not work”, yet profiling criminals based on their traits is exactly what the Bukele administration engaged in, and it transformed his nation only for the better.
Before Bukele rose to power Human Rights Watch rarely if ever commented on El Salvador, despite the massive and systemic violations of human rights by the gangs which controlled the country in the pre-Bukele era. The only substantial piece they ever penned was an article lambasting the United States for deporting illegal immigrants back to the country, because it was too unsafe for deportees. It would seem that Human Rights Watch does not live up to its name, and only cares to enforce liberalism’s worldview.
The institutions of liberalism do not offer, and do not want to offer, actual solutions to the publics of the West, or any other nation for that matter. They have a set of dogmatic beliefs: equity, diversity, “understanding”, and tolerance which supersede all logical policy paths.
Bukele did not seek to “understand” the criminal rapists and murderers of his nation, he set out to protect the public, and it worked.
It is not only his tough on crime policies which have enraged the elite which skulk through the global policymaking institutions and NGOs.
The purchase of 140 new ambulances, medical helicopters, boats and various other equipment by the El Salvadoran government has also engendered outrage among the NGO classes of the world. Before Bukele enacted these reforms the government of the country had only 9 ambulances, for a population of 6 million. Instead, when someone in the nation called for an ambulance or doctor, it was an NGO which was most likely to show up. But medical care is never the only, or even primary, concern of a liberal NGO.
El Salvador has long had laws against abortion, laws which Bukele has upheld and even strengthened, and this has sent the NGO class into a fit of rage. NGOs which operate across the third world often promote “abortion” and “reproductive” education to these populations, undermining their values and laws.
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is a well known and very left-of-center NGO which operated ambulances and “local health committees” across El Salvador. MFS also engages in a great deal of pro-abortion education and training. Attempting to convince local populations to support the practices, and often offering classes and training to local midwives and medical professionals about how to perform abortion.
But, with the vast increase in the state capacity to respond to health emergencies across the nation the influence of these organizations decreases substantially. Liberal institutions can be cut out of a nation when the state has a strong capacity to act of its own accord.
President Bukele has lambasted the NGO class and global elite for their treatment of his nation and policies, and in this way it makes him an ardent nationalist. He asserts the right of his nation to govern itself as the people of El Salvador see fit, and to enact policies which improve their lives and opportunities.
Bukele was able to reduce electricity prices by 14% by finally completing a dam project which was decades in the making, and subject to incredible graft and corruption before he took power. This comes at a time when electricity prices in the West remain at record highs.
Bukele also raised the minimum wage by 20%, and instituted a scholarship program to send many of the nation’s brightest children to university so that they may serve their homeland in the future.
Bukelism is often described as “big tent”, but a core aspect of this unique and largely nebulous political philosophy is nationalism and the sovereign right of a people to be prosperous in their own homeland free of interference. And the world has taken notice.
Bukele has become a global figure because of his transformative and anti-liberal policymaking. Marches have taken place in other South American nations. Costa Rica’s security minister wishes to enact a territorial control plan based on Bukele’s model, and Tucker Carlson, among other American right wingers, has hosted Bukele numerous times on his show. Among other admirers are a slate of US republicans, European conservatives, and African leaders struggling with their own domestic stagnation.
Westernerss have a lot to learn from Nayib Bukele. It is not difficult to lock up criminals, it does not have to take 20 years to finish an infrastructure project, your roads do not need to crumble, and immigration is not a fact of life. Infact Bukele has done more for Americans than their own government by instituting a 1,130 dollar fee on African and Indian arrivals in his country. This move was aimed solely at attempting to prevent people from using El Salvador to transit to the United States.
A people can be free, prosperous, and safe without the trappings and false promises of liberalism. If El Salvador can transform itself in a single presidential term imagine what pro-Western policymakers could do in just a few years.
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Excellent summary of Bukele's policies and impact.