El Salvador embraces democracy. Why is nation backing an authoritarian?

Across Latin America, it is Salvadorans who embrace democracy more than almost all of their peers do. Support for democratic governance in El Salvador stands at 73%, higher than in any country in the region except Uruguay.

Yet over the past five years of his presidency, Nayib Bukele has systematically weakened the pillars of democracy that this Central American nation has tried to build since the end of a civil war in 1992 – and his approval remains sky-high. That’s in large part because he has ushered in newfound peace in a country riven by brutal gangs, violence, and extortion.

As Salvadorans head to the polls Feb. 4, with all indications that Mr. Bukele will win reelection, these paradoxes are on full display. They show the tensions between democratic governance and security, and, particularly in a young democracy, what a populace is willing to overlook for the sake of living without fear.

“For the majority of people here, democracy is synonymous with elections,” not with independent institutions, says Álvaro Artiga González, a political scientist at El Salvador’s Universidad Centroamericana.

The authorities improved security by deploying the army against criminal gangs, and resorting to mass arrests and extrajudicial killings. But the plan was “created by a government that won the popular vote. And people are satisfied with that,” says Dr. Artiga.

A balancing act 

When Pedro Rojas got a late-night visit from his daughter on New Year’s Eve in his small community east of San Salvador, it surfaced the dueling values in his own life.

His daughter’s holiday visit “was such joy,” he says, “because for so long it was impossible.”

Today “we have security,” says Mr. Rojas, who works at a local private school. “But at what cost?”

Like so many, Mr. Rojas and his neighbors have lived under a reign of terror for most of the past decade, orchestrated by local gangs that successive governments failed to control.

Walking down the main road, bustling with churchgoers and food vendors, on a recent Sunday afternoon, Mr. Rojas ticks off some of the unspoken rules of the very recent past. He couldn’t say hello or acknowledge neighbors, and he wouldn’t dare answer a phone call or text message on the street for fear it could be construed as sharing information with an enemy.

He credits Mr. Bukele with tackling such obstacles to normal life.

In March 2022 the government declared a “state of exception,” which has given sweeping powers to arrest and detain suspected criminals without warrants – or even evidence. More than 75,000 people have been arrested since, and today roughly 2% of the adult population is behind bars.

At the same time, Mr. Bukele has stacked the courts with allies who went on to “reinterpret” the constitution to allow him to run for a second term. And he has gerrymandered to such an extent that the number of municipalities nationwide will shrink this spring from 262 to 44. 

Mr. Rojas says he has tried to talk with his middle school students about squaring the government’s democratic credentials with its authoritarian tendencies. He is academic coordinator at the Colegio Cristiano Las Cañas, a humble, one-story concrete building, where he sees his job as “orienting” youth to think critically – not as telling them that democracy is weakening.

“Is it good or bad” that Bukele has concentrated power? he asks. “I don’t know that we’ll truly know until we’re looking in the rearview mirror.”

For Dr. Artiga, looking in the mirror is something El Salvador needs to do sooner rather than later. “We have two clear examples of what [these changes] can mean over time: the case of Venezuela under [Hugo] Chávez, and Nicaragua with Daniel Ortega,” he says.

Today there’s “zero debate, zero analysis, zero discussion” in the Legislative Assembly, which is controlled by Mr. Bukele’s party, says Eduardo Escobar, executive director of Acción Ciudadana, a San Salvador-based nongovernmental organization promoting transparency. But that means that laws pass quickly and the president can effect change efficiently. “People are saying, ‘Democracy wasn’t serving us before, but now it’s delivering!’ And for that they are satisfied, even if it’s against the universal concept” of democracy, Mr. Escobar says.

The trade-offs

Nearly 82% of Salvadorans say they’re prepared to vote Mr. Bukele and his Nuevas Ideas party into a second presidential term, despite a constitutional ban on reelection.

But as the state of exception continues, support for Mr. Bukele could dip, says Ingrid Escobar, founder of Socorro Jurídico Humanitario, a local NGO.

“This is a relative peace. It’s costing us our human rights, freedom, and democracy,” she tells the Monitor following a press conference where she publicly denounced the wrongful imprisonment under the state of exception of a young man, Marco Antonio Rivera, who is deaf and uses sign language to communicate.

He was detained in June for allegedly using gang symbols. Human rights advocates say the state has criminalized his disability.

The more innocent people are caught up in this militarized approach, denying them due process, the more society will think critically about the stakes and solutions, Ms. Escobar believes.

And many experts question what will happen once the state of exception is lifted. Civil liberties likely can’t be suspended indefinitely, and a policy that centers on imprisoning tens of thousands of people is prohibitively expensive.

“The gangs are a consequence, not the origin” of El Salvador’s security challenges, says Mr. Escobar. “There has been no government activity ... to attack inequality, poverty, or to generate opportunities, employment,” he says.

Nearly 3.25 million Salvadorans – roughly half the population – face moderate to severe food insecurity, according to the United Nations. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of Salvadorans living in extreme poverty has risen.

For the mother of Mr. Rivera, the man detained for using sign language, just thinking about this weekend’s vote has her on the verge of tears.

“When he was taken away, my son was wearing a Nuevas Ideas bracelet,” identifying him as a supporter of Mr. Bukele’s party, she says. “I don’t know what the answer is, how to vote. I’m asking God to intervene.”