It is very likely that anyone who has heard of Nayib Bukele associates him with some of these ideas.
- As soon as he won the elections in El Salvador in 2019, he was nicknamed the “millennial president” for his youth, his leather jacket and his backwards cap.
- X (formerly Twitter) is your favorite platform to make announcements
- He put El Salvador on the agenda for much more than being one of the countries with the most homicides in the world.
Someone who has followed the current events of the Central American country more closely may also know that:
- He called for the establishment of an emergency regime that is on track to be in force for two years to combat the feared and violent gangs and managed to pacify the country.
- He built a megaprison for gang members and skyrocketed the incarceration rate.
- Those and other security policies earned him unprecedented popularity and accusations of human rights violations alike.
And you are also probably aware that candidates and officials from all over Latin America mention it as an example and that there are even those who coined a term to describe its formula: the “bukelism”.
But there may be lesser-known aspects that help to understand where the young politician comes from, who he is and how he evolved. After competing again for the presidency based on a controversial interpretation of the Constitution, which prohibits doing so, this Sunday he proclaimed his victory. at the polls given his wide advantage with just over 30% of the vote.
1. A wealthy origin and the influence of his father
Born in San Salvador on July 24, 1981, Nayib Bukele, 42, grew up in a wealthy environment, in a wealthy neighborhood of the capital.
He is one of the 10 children of Armando Bukele Kattánthe oldest of the four he had with Olga Marina Ortez.
Bukele Kattán, descendant of a family of Palestinian immigrants who arrived in El Salvador at the beginning of the 20th century, built a varied business consortiummade up of companies in the advertising, textile, pharmaceutical, beverage and automotive industries.
He did it, like his ancestors, overcoming prejudices and bureaucratic obstacles, such as the decree that the Legislative Assembly approved in mid-1930 and which prohibited Arab, Palestinian, Turkish and other ancestry citizens from establishing businesses even if they had nationality.
Already in 2014 it had assets worth more than US$18.4 millionaccording to a balance sheet presented to the Commerce Registry cited by the Salvadoran digital newspaper The lighthouse.
Upon his death in 2015, the Bukele patriarch would distribute it among his offspring, but in life he allowed Nayib and his brothers privileges such as studying at the Pan-American School.
“It’s a elite bilingual school”Although not the most exclusive in the country, it is reserved for a high socioeconomic segment,” Óscar Picardo, who was a teacher in the Bukele primary school, told BBC Mundo.
A prominent academic, specialist in social education and current director of the Institute of Sciences, Technology and Research (ICTI) of the Francisco Gavidia University, Picardo taught Nayib for two consecutive years, in 7th and 8th grade.
“Was a average student and a slightly introverted boy,” the researcher recalls.
“I was always with a group of friendsmany of whom, already prominent then, are with him in the government or hold public positions today,” he points out.
It refers to the Minister of Economy María Luisa Hayem — “a brilliant girl, very outstanding, with a very affable personality” — the Minister of the Environment Fernando López Larreynagathe Government, Juan Carlos Bidegaín Hananiaor the president of the Autonomous Executive Port Commission (CEPA), Federico Anliker.
He says he does not remember many traits of his character, but he does remember an anecdote in which the germ of Bukele’s most provocative tweets, now president, can be sensed.
“Each student, in his yearbook, wrote something that defined him, and he became class terrorist (“the class terrorist”) and below a phrase that more or less said: ‘The blood of the student is like that of the martyr’, a bit like that, jihadist,” Picardo recalls.
“He did it jokingly, in a joking tone, because of his Palestinian origin and because his father was a local Muslim authority,” he clarifies.
Although his ancestors were Christians, Bukele Kattán converted to Islam, founded four mosques in the country, including the first in San Salvador, and served as imam.
Beyond said community, it was a visible character in Salvadoran societyand for years he hosted a television opinion space called Clarifying concepts, and was also recognized by the academy, as doctor in industrial chemistry and author of a book on physics concepts.
Nayib Bukele has frequently spoken about the influence it was on him.
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) June 18, 2021
“For me there was never a better man than my dadand people know it,” he said, for example, during an interview when he was already president.
“I think he is the most intelligent man our country has ever given birth to, and I’m not saying it, his IQ tests of 157 say it; In addition to the fact that he was a genius, a man of prowess, a man who never in his life took an ill-gotten penny, a scientist (…)”.
“From there our president inherited it,” his followers comment on his intelligence every time that fragment of an interview is shared on social networks.
Although sources consulted by BBC Mundo and who have followed his career assure that it is part of the mythology that he has created about himself.
2. A past as a publicist, his gateway to politics
No matter how much his father influenced him, Nayib Bukele did not follow in his footsteps academically.
After graduating from high school in 1999, he studied for a time Legal Sciences at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA).
Although did not finish the racebecause at the age of 18 he started working in the family advertising agency, Obermet (1999-2006). He then went through Nölck Red América (2006-2010) and 4am Saatchi & Saatchi (2010-2012).
It was precisely that work that would open the doors of politics for him and would mark, according to his critics, all his work in that new field.
These companies were in charge, for 12 years, of the political propaganda of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)one of the two historic parties in the country, along with Arena, on the right.
And one of his first assignments was the advertising campaign for the presidential candidacy of Schafik Hándalalso of Palestinian ancestors, in 2004.
“It is an industry that Bukele knows very well, in which he learned a lot and where met the marketing politician, and he has later exploited all that capacity in his public positions”, explains the academic and analyst Picardo.
In fact, it was with the help of the FMLN that he took his first position, that of mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán (2012-2015), a municipality of about 8,000 inhabitants on the outskirts of the capital, and with him he was also at the head of the municipal government of San Salvador (2015-2018). They were good times for the FMLN: it governed the country between 2009 and 2019.
Critics refer to those beginnings who insist that, although during his first campaign for the presidency he appeared to be a newcomer, with his technological entrepreneur aesthetic, he already had years of career behind him.
“It is said that we are in an era in which outsiders They have a greater role in politics, but he is not one of them. It comes from the same structures, from within what is called ‘the same old ones””, underlines political analyst César Artiga in dialogue with BBC Mundo.
“His work as a publicist served him a lot and that is the key (to his politics),” agrees José Miguel Cruz, who once directed the University Institute of Public Opinion (Iudop) of the UCA.
“That is his ability: selling images, selling a print, telling people what they want to hear”adds Cruz, who today serves as research director of the Kimberly Green Center for Latin America and the Caribbean at Florida International University.
His favorite way to do this is social networksa tool that he handles perfectly, the experts consulted agree, and that has served him, in the absence of the structures and political operators that the traditional parties had, to get his message directly to thousands of people.
3. A politician who “does not believe in ideologies”
Precisely in an informal talk broadcast live on one of those platforms, Instagram, in March 2020, Bukele confessed to the musician René Pérez, better known as Residente: “I don’t believe in ideologies.”
The Puerto Rican had just asked her what she thought about abortion, an illegal practice under any circumstances in El Salvador, where women who have suffered spontaneous abortions or obstetric emergencies have been sentenced for homicide to sentences of up to 40 years.
And Bukele, before going on to respond, explained: “There are people who, if they have a right-wing ideology, have a concept of dogmas from which they cannot escape because they are right-wing; or if he is from the left and has a concept of dogmas from which he cannot escape because he is from the left. As I am not one of either of them”I’m going to tell you what comes from my heart.”
Having clarified that, he said he was not in favor: “In the future we will realize that it is a great genocide.”
However, his lack of ideolo gy was not something he always held.
There was a time when He defined himself as “radical left”.
“I am a radical leftist because I want radical changes in El Salvador, where the ‘law of the jungle’ should no longer prevail,” he replied to journalist Juan José Dalton in September 2012, while he was still the mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán, when he told him He pointed out that certain sectors did not view his integration into the FMLN favorably, considering it a sign of the “gentrification” of the party leadership.
“In today’s world there are conservatives and radicals: conservatives do not want changes and Radicals, like me, want changes and without waiting so long”, he added, as a kind of declaration of intent.
In the following two years he shared several publications on the social network then called Twitter that showed affinity for the left.
They are tweets today deleted and recovered by The lighthouse in an article in which Bukele, still mayor, commented on the commemoration of the birth of Ernesto “Che” Guevarasent condolences for the death of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro and gave his opinion on the turn to the left in Chile.
He also published posts about the Nicaragua of Daniel Ortega — “Progress in Nicaragua is seen everywhere, not just in the capital. It is impressive” — or the Venezuela of the deceased Hugo Chavez.
However, during a visit to Washington a month after winning the presidential election on February 3, 2019, he launched into the Heritage Foundationheadquarters of one of the most conservative organizations in the United States, a speech that managed to seduce not only the government of Republican Donald Trump, but also business sectors in El Salvador and Arena, the party that until recently had been its staunch rival.
There he spoke about the importance of free enterprise, of limited state intervention, questioned China and called it “not respecting the rules,” and pointed to a break with Nicaragua and Venezuela.
“It was a completely conservative, right-wing, almost libertariancontrary to what he had maintained until then,” academic José Miguel Cruz tells BBC Mundo.
Not much for giving interviews, he spoke twice with the talkative American political commentator Tucker Carlson, icon of the American right.
The last time, in November 2022, he defended the bitcoinwhich became legal tender in El Salvador, and mentioned the project to build Bitcoin City and the plans to mine cryptocurrencies using the energy of volcanoes as important initiatives to develop the country and create a brand.
“A relaunch of the country brand that would have cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. and that now [debido a la criptomoneda] For us it no longer costs anything,” he highlighted to the journalist, who has caused controversy for promoting far-right conspiracy theories on multiple occasions.
“He has always been very skilled at identifying what the other person wants to hear and telling them,” explains analyst Cruz.
“And in that sense it was a very skillful communication strategy, not only in terms of the masses, but with the intellectual and political elites of the country. He arrived at the FMLN with a speech of full membership and stayed until he served him. When he was no longer, he left him.”
Metamorphosis?
Like Cruz, other experts consulted by BBC Mundo also highlight Bukele’s ability to decode the environment, understand his audience and adapt to it.
When he dove into his first run for the presidency, he did so acutely aware of the landscape of general disenchantment.
Just a few months earlier, the 2018 Latinobarómetro had painted a stark story: only 28% of the population considered democracy important, and More than 50% stated that they did not care living in a democracy or a dictatorship.
“After a long civil war, when the Peace Accords were signed in 1992, people expected that the new system would distribute well-being and economic stability for the majority, but two decades later they saw that those promises were not fulfilled,” explains Cruz.
“The country’s political problems were not resolved, rather they deepened, and the violence, with the gangs, became unbearable,” he continues.
“In that context, Bukele arrives, who reads popular sentiment very well, and rides on it, attacking the system. Initially not in front, but pointing at those who represent it: the traditional political parties.”
Ana María Méndez-Dardóndirector for Central America of the Washington Office on Latin American Affairs (WOLA), agrees.
“He entered (the presidency) taking advantage of the general discontent with the historical bipartisanship and the flow of the new generations who said ‘I no longer identify with that, I am not part of what the war was, what the post-war was, and now I need something different from the FMLN and ARENA,’” he explains.
To reach that citizenship, he created an image of millennial progressive, tolerant, groundbreaking and efficientcapable of solving the most urgent problems as if he were the CEO of a company.
But once in power, that image of a modern politician began, in the eyes of many, to crack and bring to mind a past that was actually not so distant.
He did it with episodes like the one February 9, 2020when he stormed the Legislative Assembly with the military—in which his party, Nuevas Ideas, still did not have the control it has now—and threatened to dissolve it if the deputies did not authorize the negotiation of a loan.
Also with the frequent references to it being “an instrument of God”and, above all, with the establishment of an emergency regime that limits freedoms and has lasted almost two years.
“If we look at Latin American history, detention regimes or states of exception are used by authoritarian governments, by authoritarianism, by military dictatorships,” Méndez-Dardón emphasizes.
Although there were those who began to talk about a “radical transformation” of Bukele, a turnaround, that did not take everyone by surprise.
“There is a lot of talk about Bukele before and now, but I wouldn’t talk about a metamorphosis,” César Artiga tells BBC Mundo.
“All those authoritarian tendencies, concentration of power, all those inconsistencies in the speeches, inconsistencies for which he is not questioned, were already seen when he was mayor,” the analyst points out.
And he believes that the re-elected president, whom he calls an “opportunist” politician, has rather “his true face revealed” now that he holds “a position with a lot of power.”
The lawyer and analyst Tahnya Pastor Meléndez, although in a different tone, also believes that he remains “exactly the same”, with some forms that he already showed in his municipal positions.
He strengthened them in the first two years at the head of the Executive, says the expert, as he felt “cornered” with an Assembly in which his party did not yet have the majority. Nuevas Ideas would take control of the unicameral parliament in the 2021 legislative elections.
Until then, “that Assembly blocked him a lot and you could already see his style of ‘I’m going to do what I think is rightand it doesn’t matter if I override these two political parties’ (Arena and FMLN),” he explains.
According to the analyst, it was precisely this “ungovernability for the sake of ungovernability” that led her party to obtain the majority in 2021.
Difficult to classify on the political spectrum and with authoritarian tendencies, Pastor also describes him, stating that “it is someone who is interested in solving problems”.
“He wants to give results, and he wants to give them quickly. And that’s what people have seen.”
It has also used powerful machinery to spread this idea through social networks, which together with the security results have boosted its popularity.
“And that has generated a huge expectation among the population that the economic and corruption problem is going to be solved in this new period,” says Pastor.
The challenge is enormous in the country in the region that will grow the least, according to the IMF (International Monetary Fund); with a very high debt index, trade balance deficit and a high dependence on family remittances; and in which in the last four years 200,000 people have fallen into extreme poverty, according to ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean).
Although to see it you have to leave behind the boardwalk in Surf City, a 21km beach corridor that its management turned into another of the country’s images, or the impressive National Library of El Salvador built with Chinese donations in the center of the capital and that the Bukele himself inaugurated with a filmed visit.
*With additional information from Marcos González, BBC News Mundo correspondent in Mexico.
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