Who is the real Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador? | The LatinNews Podcast

Description

Weaponizing social media with his own brand of populist authoritarianism, promoting cryptocurrency and imprisoning 70 thousand of his countrymen in order to pacify El Salvador's gang warfare, we ask, who is the real Nayib Bukele?

Manuel Melendez-Sanchez, a PhD candidate in political science at Harvard University, joins us on the LatinNews podcast to discuss, not only Bukele's security policy - admired by some and abhorred by others - , but also his economic policy and concentration of power in El Salvador.

Is El Salvador really the safest country in Latin America as President Bukele often claims?

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Transcription

Speaker #0
Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogotá, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.
Speaker #1
This is The LatinNews Podcast. I'm Richard McColl here in Bogotá, Colombia. My very special guest this week is Nalanda Dan Manuel Meléndez Sánchez, a PhD candidate in political science at Harvard, and he's from El Salvador so we shall be addressing the situation. Yes, El Salvador is in the news a lot, obviously, primarily because of the controversial president currently in power, Nayib Bukele. And well, we'll be talking about his security, his security policy, his economic policy, and of course, his threat to democracy, because of course, we've been seeing that popping up as he's concentrated power very rapidly over the past three years. So Manuel. Welcome on The LatinNews Podcast.
Speaker #2
Thank you, Richard. It's great to be here.
Speaker #1
No, it's an absolute pleasure to be talking with someone so knowledgeable about El Salvador. I think before we get into security and before we get into sort of the authoritarian nature of President Nayib Bukele, let's talk about the rise of President Nayib Bukele. But prior to becoming president, where did this guy come from?
Speaker #2
Sure. So. Nayib Bukele really enters the political scene in 2012 when he becomes mayor of a small, middle-class municipality in El Salvador called Nuevo Cusco Plan. He runs under the banner of the FMLN, which is historically the kind of traditional left-wing party, and he does very well. He does a good job as mayor, and he also is a very good politician. He has a fresh... style and three years later he runs and is elected as mayor of San Salvador which is besides the presidency the most visible and powerful post in the country this sort of sets him up to really be a natural presidential candidate now what's interesting is that during this time so while he's mayor of San Salvador kind of starting in 2015 well he's mayor of San Salvador he starts to clash with his party with the FMLN. The FMLN is a party that Nayib Bukele and his family had been close to for decades. Nayib Bukele had described himself before this as a leftist. He once, and you can Google this, he described himself as a socialist. He said the FMLN is the only path. And now, as mayor of San Salvador, he starts to criticize the party. So the FMLN is in government, they hold the presidency, and Nayib Bukele starts saying things like, ah you know they're just neoliberals they're just as bad as as the right-wing party they're not implementing structural reforms but anyway to make a long story short eventually the fmln decides to kick Nayib Bukele out of the park and this sort of represents a critical moment for for Nayib Bukele he announces that he's going to create his own party mueras ideas but because he gets out of the FMLN so close to the presidential election of 2019, he strikes a pact of convenience with this small party called Ghana, and goes on to win that election in a landslide. He wins with 53% of the vote, which is about 20 percentage points above the second place. But to really understand what that means, you need to know that Since 1989, so between 1989 and 2019 when Nayib Bukele was elected, two parties had had a basically a duopoly over electoral politics in El Salvador. The FMLN, which we've already talked about on the left. These are the former guerrillas who then become a political party in the 90s. And ARENA on the right. So Nayib Bukele becomes the first candidate. from outside of these two parties to win the presidency since the early 1980s and more importantly he does it on a platform that is all about running against his establishment so Nayib Bukele is a traditional populist is i often get asked is Nayib Bukele right-wing or left-wing and i say yes he's a populist yeah his entire platform is running against these two parties he calls to them los mismos de siempre the same ones as always he accuses the fml plan of being a 2.0 basically these are sides of the same coin Anyway, his election truly marks a sort of a break, a critical juncture before and after in the Salvadoran political system. And the narrative, the populist narrative really resonates with Salvadoran voters who at this point, I think rightly so, are pretty sick of this establishment. So that's where he comes from.
Speaker #1
I mean, so as a populist, neither right, neither left, both right. both left who is who can we say is the real Nayib Bukele i mean that's the thing because we just we watch these announcements and declarations and stigmatizing all dissent and this populist authoritarianism that he you know he displays who is he this weaponization of social media the baseball cap backwards in the un and the selfies everyone wants to call he wants to to call themselves a millennial and then, you know, the coolest... dictator. These are all very good soundbites, and they're all very good for imaging and social media. But who is the real Nayib Bukele?
Speaker #2
You know, the truth is, it's hard to tell. I think here's a couple of things we can say for sure about him. So number one, he has been consistently populist. And I think that's... telling because, you know, I don't know him. We would have to interview him. But I do think that he genuinely believes in this idea that this political establishment and this network of economic elites behind it, I think he truly believes that this is the source of El Salvador's problems. And I think it truly believes that this has been the source of El Salvador's problems, basically, since El Salvador has existed. So I think that's one thing we can say for sure. The other thing that he has demonstrated is that if there is a guiding principle behind populism, it is the search for power, right? The very reason why we see him sort of shift from left to right. in different areas, whenever it's convenient, is because he's making calculations about what is going to allow him to maintain as much power as possible. You know, I'm not a political scientist. I'm not in the business of psychological profiling. But I think it's pretty safe to say that those two things are very important for Nayib Bukele. And I think it's safe to say that those two things have been consistent.
Speaker #1
I mean, this is it, isn't it? I mean, you talk about the populist and the need to stay in power. Nothing will stop a populist strongman from trying to win re-election. So he'll do anything, as you say. He'll jump back and forth between whatsoever, continue extending this state of emergency, which he's been extending month by month since March. 2022. But again, before we get into security, because I know it's going to take up a great portion of this conversation, I want to know, there was so much noise about El Salvador taking on the cryptocurrency as an economic policy. Tell us about the economics going on. What is the economy like when we refer to the cryptocurrency in El Salvador right now?
Speaker #2
Sure. So the economy in general is not great. The biggest, there's sort of two issues regarding the economy that keep this government up at night, and that will probably continue to do so. The first, and this has now been true for a while, is that the Salvadoran government has an unsustainable amount of debt. And this becomes very important when we talk about cryptocurrency. The second problem, and this has been especially true in the past year and a half or so, Salvadorans are increasingly saying, the thing I'm most worried about is essentially the amount of money in my pocket, the cost of living, inflation. And so far, Nayib Bukele government hasn't really had a clear answer to this. It's very easy for... You know, me to give you the 32nd version of the security policy, the 32nd version of this foreign policy, the 32nd version of a bunch of things. I can't really give you the 32nd version of this economic policy. because there hasn't been a clear economic policy. But those two things, I think, are important to understand, both for the current context and for the context in which Bitcoin gets introduced. And so Bitcoin is introduced in sort of the second half of 2021. And there's two ways of looking at what was going on. Actually, to be fair, there's three ways of looking at what was going on there. The first is a little... closer to the official narrative. And the official narrative goes, this is good public policy. On one hand, it's going to generate jobs. It's going to reduce the cost of receiving remittances, which are very important, particularly for lower income households. And it's also going to help incorporate more people into the formal economy. And in addition to all that, it's sort of going to put us on the map internationally, and it's going to bring investment. This is kind of the first rationale for big colonization. The second, and there's some evidence for this, the second rationale is that this is essentially a pet project of some of Nayib Bukele closest allies, and in particular, his brothers. And I don't think going down that rabbit hole is particularly productive, but it's worth saying there is some evidence of this. The third. perspective on victimization, though, and I think there's a lot to this, is that this was a bit of a Hail Mary to try to solve the kind of medium-term fiscal problem without having to resort to more painful measures. And so if you think about it from Nayib Bukele perspective, it would have been ideal. We know now that this is not what happened. It would have been fantastic. if he could invest some money into the Bitcoin market, see that money go up, in addition to that, sell some Bitcoin-backed bonds, which was a thing, also sort of failed spectacularly, but that was an idea, right? And in a sense, if that worked out, fantastic. If it didn't, the costs were actually not very high. We can say now, sort of two years later, yeah, Bitcoin's not very popular. And he's lost some money. I'll tell you more about that in a second. But has it really had a political cost? Not really. Has it made the economic problem worse? The fiscal problem worse? It has, but not qualitatively worse. So I think there's some truth to all three of these perspectives on Bitcoinization. I tend to think of that third idea of this basically being a... sort of Hail Mary carries a lot of weight. Just to kind of wrap up, yeah, the gamble didn't really work, right? So part of the problem is sort of by design, there's very little accountability around Bitcoin. And so we can't really say for sure what the numbers look like, but we can, at the very least, take the kill at his word. And so um Nayib Bukele says that he's invested about $125 million in Bitcoin. And his losses stand at around $40 million, if we just look at the value of Bitcoin and compare it to what the value was when these different purchases were being made. So that's about a third in losses. And kind of what's ironic about this is that that amount $40 million that were lost in Bitcoin is exactly what El Salvador's debt payment that was coming up was. It was $40 million. So obviously his critics made sure to point that out. But look, yes, this was in terms of helping the government climb out of this fiscal hole, this was unsuccessful. I think that's fair to say it was unpopular. El Salvadorans sort of say this was a bad idea and it didn't really take on. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that it has been successful in terms of putting El Salvador on the map. For better or worse, that part of it has worked. So that's the big point story, I think.
Speaker #1
Yeah, I mean, that's true. It was on the front page of every newspaper. Everybody uses El Salvador as a point of reference for this. And of course, you know, it doesn't do any damage to his image overseas, something that has been damaged recently. Before we move on, I would like to ask. When Bitcoin was introduced and sort of made legal tender and so on, how far did it permeate society? I want to put the most superficial example out there. Were you paying for a pupusa, you know, tortilla with Bitcoin? Could you go down this route?
Speaker #2
Sure. To answer the pupusa question specifically, yes, there were some places where one could pay.
Speaker #1
Incredible.
Speaker #2
We're going to buy a proposal using Bitcoin, but a couple of caveats. So there is some, I apologize. Let me take a step back because you need the following data point to kind of understand the answer. So one important characteristic of the Bitcoin reform was that the introduction of Bitcoin was to be centralized through this wallet app that was created by the government. It's called Chivo. And so most of what we know about. whether this took on comes from sort of data we have on whether people have been using Chivo, the wallet. And sort of what you see is that right as the reform is being rolled out, there was indeed a surge in the use of Chivo. And in surveys, when you ask people why they decided to kind of give Bitcoin a try, the answer has to do with this, basically this cash bonus. that you got just by kind of downloading the app and kind of playing around with it a little bit. So this is all to say that in sort of in the early days and weeks, there was for sure a moment when Salvadorans sort of turned to Bitcoin and said, all right, let's see what you're all about. That appears to have fizzled out fairly quickly and fairly permanently. You know, yeah, sure. There are still some places particularly sort of... more touristy hot spots yeah where you can go and buy a pupusa using bitcoin but has this fundamentally transformed the ways the way salvadorans go about their their daily economic life absolutely not very interesting the 40 million very interesting that it's his brothers uh
Speaker #1
you know and and of course the lack of accountability to be able to chase and trace Bitcoin. So we'll move on a little bit. And we need to we need to talk, we've talked about the economic policy of Bitcoin. In the recent episode, we spoke to Dr. Manuel Orozco, the Inter-American Dialogue. And we, you know, we discussed Nicaragua, we were discussing the region, and so on. He said, well, look at Nayib Bukele, he has no economic policy, the economy doesn't go well, it's just shielded by the whole Bitcoin story. And then he mentions, you know, the security situation. the maras or the gangs were already in a decline when Nayib Bukele came in to create his security policies before you respond to that obviously this goes hand in hand with the authoritarianism of Nayib Bukele the issue or the idea of the gangs and to try and i would say muta them is i think what i want to say is but before we get there he has been able to obviously ride a wave of populism, a wave of popularity through creating this, you know, this security situation in El Salvador. And you sort of say, at what cost? The threat to democracy, the storming of the legislative assembly back in the day, this concentration of power that we've previously mentioned, the ability to find the judges to evade problems of him running again for presidents in 2024 by... questioning the legality of the constitution itself and at the same time what's he done we i'm sure he's done something to change the electoral system because if you could explain why he reduced the size of the 84 member legislative to 64 seats and the number of elected municipalities from 262 to 50 this all goes hand in hand there's a lot in that last intervention. Perhaps you'd like to explain some of it.
Speaker #2
Sure. So look, you're totally right. Let me just put it this way. If you were to draw a graph of Salvador democracy, this is a line that starting in 1992 up to 2019, it goes up and up and up and up and starting in 2019, it plummets. And that's because of this process of concentration of power. and the erosion of checks and balances. And we could talk about that. I think you pointed out some of the kind of some of the greatest hits. of the Nayib Bukele presidency but yes right now this is a president who has essentially accumulated the entirety of political power really under under his thumb let's talk about this electoral reform because i think it's it's gone under the radar a little bit yeah let me tell you what the reform does and then we can talk again about some of the possible reasons behind this so as you said basically um you know this reduces kind of you know, dramatically the number of mayors as well as a number of legislators. And it does so in part by redistricting, by kind of sort of lumping together districts into now bigger districts. And really what we need to think about is, okay, well, what are the, what are sort of the political consequences of doing this? And anyone familiar with sort of the recent The recent trends in American politics will be aware of this idea of gerrymandering.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #2
So one thing that some of us have done, and I can't take credit for all of these analysis, but one thing you can do is you can go back to the last time there were elections for mayors and for legislators. So this was in 2021. And you can do the following exercise. Let's look, just look at the vote, look at how people voted and look at how many. A or some legislators, they won that election. Great. Now do the exact same thing, applying these new rules, applying these new boundaries, the new electoral formula, and look at what happens. Look at who is benefited and who loses. So here are some numbers. So under the old rules, in other words, in the real world in 2021, Nayib Bukele and his allies won about... 76% of the seats in the legislature. That's a very big number. They did great. Okay. If that election had happened under the new rules, they would not have won 76%. They would have won 93%. So that's pretty significant, but they already had a supermajority. Let's look at mayors, though. In that election, Nayib Bukele party... won about 58% of all local governments. That's still pretty good. Under the new rules, Nayib Bukele party would have won 93% of local government. The FMLN, under the new rules, would essentially disappear. ARENA would hold on to, I believe, I'm sorry, I don't have this number in front of me, but would... hold on, I think, to one or two seats in the legislature and like a handful of local governments. Ghana, Nayib Bukele ally, the party that allowed him to actually reach the presidency, would also virtually disappear. So if Juan does that exercise, what the new rules do is they basically give Nuevas Ideas, Nayib Bukele party, a complete dominance. over electoral politics, and over these sort of formal levers of power.
Speaker #0
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Speaker #2
Now, obviously... People may choose to vote differently, and who knows what's going to happen between now and the election. So, you know, these numbers are just kind of an academic exercise, but they do tell us something about what might be going on here and how these new rules may have been drawn. The other thing that this sort of allows Nayib Bukele to do, and this is kind of, at least for me, a slightly harder argument to wrap my head around, is it sort of allows Nayib Bukele to purge his party a little bit. And, you know, people often think of Nayib Bukele as like this powerful, strong man who doesn't need anyone else and rules on his own. You know, that's kind of true. But I think he has felt for a while that his party is a liability. His mayors, his legislators, they aren't as popular as he is. There have been a few cases of mayors and legislators kind of walking into scandals and being engaged in shady business. And so what this allows him to do is, well, now I have to choose about a quarter as many people to run for mayor. I can now filter out. people who are not totally loyal to me, people who don't have a good reputation. And we've seen some evidence of that. So that's the story of the electoral rules. And by the way, I should say, right, the kind of other side of this, the Bucalista narrative is, look, we had a fat, corrupt state. We were wasting a lot of money on a lot of mayors and a lot of legislators and didn't need to do this. That narrative, by the way, has been pretty successful in convincing Salvadoran voters. But yeah, that's the story of the electoral rules and the electoral system.
Speaker #1
So, I mean, we're looking at 2024 elections. Obviously, he's poised with 93% already. The opposition, very possibly, the traditional opposition of the FMLN and the ARENA could disappear.
Speaker #2
Yes, that's a real possibility. My sense is that they probably won't. I think they will survive in some even more diminished shape. You know, they might hold on to a couple of local governments and they might be able to elect a couple of legislators. So I think they'll be around, but, you know, they really will be kind of a paper opposition, right? Not a real opposition in any meaningful sense. of that one.
Speaker #1
Okay. Well, it's that moment we have to, we have to dive in to security. And that's what I know people are listening for, obviously, because it's the most, uh, newsworthy and, and I think so very visual, uh, story coming out of, uh, El Salvador at the moment. So El Salvador, as we well know, had an, uh, an absolutely dreadful history. to the Maras, you know, I would say the deportation of gangs started in the 1980s from the Los Angeles area back down. And of course, they come back fully intact and, you know, with their own sort of command system. We don't need to get into that too much. But the Maras, the Salvatrucha and the 18 essentially had the country on its knees in terms of security and so on. Nayib Bukele comes in, He says there's 70,000 free. You tweeted this all. put on X. There are 70,000 free gang members in El Salvador. We're going to jail them all. He has arrested arbitrarily 70,000 people. And he now says, and this was, you know, this is in September 2023, that there are still 43,000 free gang members out there. It's peculiar to me obviously these figures, this is, I mean. He is popular because he has created security. Let's not lie. The situation was dreadful. You couldn't cross the road. People couldn't manage their own sort of, you know, business. And you're not even a corner shop without paying some sort of extortion or protection fee. Murders sky high. I'm sure it was the murder capital of the world for a while. Obviously, there's popularity to this thing. And it's far from it. Far be it for me to pontificate from the security of my home. You know, it's like, well, this is this is against human rights. This is so on and so forth. But we know it is. So so tell us about the security policies. Tell us what is going on now.
Speaker #2
All right. So there was you just said many, many interesting and insightful things. But so let me just say as a side note before we. before we dive into it, that these numbers that you quoted, in fact, all numbers related to this policy should be treated with extreme caution. The point is that if you take Nayib Bukele and representatives of his government at their word and assume these numbers are correct, the numbers don't really add up. And we can talk about what that might mean in a second. I just sort of wanted to... to put that out there. I don't want anyone to accuse you or us of spreading fake news. So I just want to clarify. So what's going on? As usual, I would like to just take a step back first and point out a couple of things. So there is a lot of talk about the Nayib Bukele model. And right now, the Nayib Bukele model is an extremely repressive model. It is the most dramatic, sustained crackdown against criminal organizations. Certainly in recent...
Speaker #0
years, potentially in Latin American history. It's really important that we understand, and not for kind of political reasons, but just so that we can understand how this works. It's really important that we remember that for two years before this war against gangs, the policy was completely different. This was a policy of negotiating with the same gangs, of striking a deal. to keep homicides down in exchange for a number of benefits. This is very crucial. And the reason why is the following. Basically, every experience we've had with crackdowns like these in Latin America, there are some exceptions, but basically every experience we've had like this teaches us that these crackdowns backfire. They backfire in the sense that they lead to more violence. And this is usually, I'm simplifying here. But this is usually because criminal groups fight back. This is about as close as we can get to kind of an iron law of anti-crime policy. The most fascinating aspect of Nayib Bukele crackdown is that this didn't happen. There was no moment after the crackdown when the gangs gave any sign of fighting back. And I would suggest that if we want to understand what's really going on, we need to be able to understand why that was the case. Now, my own argument, I'll give you a couple of suggestions, all of which I think are important for understanding the present. My own argument is that the effectiveness of the crackdown has a lot to do with the pact that came before it. And so what you need to know about the pact is that. The pact generally lowered homicide rates. There were a couple of blips along the way when the gangs did go on short killing sprees. After every blip, the government would come out and say, we're declaring war on you. We're pressed for a day or two, but then things would go back to normal and everyone would come back to the negotiating table. So the pact, in a sense, sort of taught gangs that this is how things work. So in March 2022, when there is a new blip, what does the government do? The government comes out and says, we're declaring war on you. And then it starts repressing. I think at this point, the dynamic of this pact has taught the gangs that what they should do now is to just lay low. And in a couple of days, just as we have in the past, we're going to be back at the negotiating table. Of course, that's not what happens. And now we know that this crackdown has been going on. for a year and a half. There are some other theories about it. So one theory is that in reality, the pact never really ended. One theory is, look, Nayib Bukele might... be repressing sort of primarily kind of like the grunts and the foot soldiers of these gangs and also a lot of amazing people but you know it does seem like he's still giving benefits and maybe negotiating with some of the higher levels this by the way is is the people who believe in this argument but look at these numbers that we learned about last week to say there's still 43,000 gang members out there and say ah there you go i told you the gangs are still out there they're not fighting back. because they're still getting some sort of benefit. And there's another set of theories. There's any number of theories we could discuss about this. But let's talk about what's happening right now and more importantly, what's coming up. The current situation appears to be one in which the Salvadoran government... has arrested more people than it can really handle. And so just for context, this is about 2% of the population is currently in prison. Before the state of exception, Salvadoran prisons were already terribly overcrowded. I think we can all imagine what they must look like now. And when I talk to... officials in the Mugella government, what they say is we've sort of backed ourselves into a corner. On one hand, we can't really, we don't really have the capacity to keep these many people in the prisons, particularly if we're still going to go out there and arrest another 43,000 gang members. But on the other hand, how do we release them? Assuming that they truly are mostly gang members, as Nayib Bukele says. obviously can't put them back into the streets, assuming that there really are a lot of non-gang members among those who have been arrested, as many organizations say, then, you know, even the idea of potentially suddenly releasing 20,000 people like this can lead to massive disruptions in sort of the social fabric of this country. And so I know because they told me.
Speaker #1
that some of the people in charge of looking at this are terrified they don't really know what to do it's an incredibly concerning moment and perhaps we wind back a little bit as you say the pat was already so let's say yielding results prior to Nayib Bukele it's a suggestion here so Nayib Bukele what kind of relationship does he have with these these top level uh uh would we say officials no these top level leaders in the gangs themselves are you asking me about Nayib Bukele personally or Nayib Bukele government ah well either way which one's more interesting sure i think Nayib Bukele government so uh as
Speaker #0
far as i know and i could be wrong about this as far as i know uh we actually don't have any evidence of Nayib Bukele himself sort of ever even having met any any top uh the top gang leaders again i could be wrong about that and i'm not saying it hasn't happened i just don't know if it never did the the relationship between uh his government and the top gang leaders actually begins before he even becomes mayor of san salvo so during that campaign members of his inner circle start to basically reach out to gang leaders from san salvo And what this allows them to do basically is to run a campaign, to enter Ganturf and run a campaign. Once Nayib Bukele is mayor, that relationship allows them to actually implement some public works. As far as we can tell, and this is basically coming out of investigative reporting by El Fado, as a side note, absolute treasure of Latin American journalism. Everyone should go read El Fado, please.
Speaker #1
The best.
Speaker #0
Absolutely. But anyway. So this relationship then basically seems to translate as Nayib Bukele becomes president, this relationship sort of becomes broader. There is evidence, for instance, that many high level gang leaders were released from prison before their time was up. And not only that, there is some evidence that at least one of them was. actually aided by the government in leaving El Salvador and reaching safety, I believe, in Mexico. And so as is often the case with these relationships between public officials and criminals, we are not able to see almost any of the actual information, the actual data. We can only see the tip of the iceberg. But I think that sort of gives you a flavor of what may or may not be going on here so in other words to summarize this has been a relationship between Nayib Bukele inner circle and and gang leaders that has been developing for a while the big open question is whether that relationship is still alive today or whether there truly has been a break since since the since the crackdown for what it's worth my sense is that there probably has been a break But the truth is, we can't say for sure. And that's going to be a really important question for how things develop moving forward.
Speaker #1
Well, I mean, as we always know, sooner or later, the truth will out. But for now, as you say, it's a tip of an iceberg. I see. I think we need to wind this down. But we could take hours discussing this. But I want to I want to just ask because, of course, you know, Latin America, people. and governments and people coming up to elections are looking at the Nayib Bukele model. You know, there's the cost of living issue, rising crime, or the perception of insecurity in a great deal of countries, not least where I am here in Colombia. And I know in other Central American countries, they're all calling out for the Nayib Bukele model of, you know, no tolerance, total security. is Is this model, is El Salvador really the safest place in Latin America, as Nayib Bukele says?
Speaker #0
I think it very much depends on who you ask. And so for the average person, the evidence that we have suggests that, yes, right now El Salvador is a very safe place. That's what all signs point to. I don't know if it's the safest place or not in America, but it's a fairly safe place. But for example, if you are a young man living in an underprivileged community, if you happen to have a tattoo on you, and if you happen to, I don't know, maybe have some neighbors who don't like you, or a next girlfriend or ex-boyfriend who doesn't like you. Then El Salvador is really not at all a safe place. There is nothing protecting you from the police or the military showing up in the middle of the night and taking you away. So my point, I think, is, yes, when we measure it by kind of these traditional indicators, are there murders, are there extortions, are there thefts? Yes, this plan has worked. It really has. But it's come at a pretty high cost. And I think everyone needs to think about those costs very seriously. By the way, you know, I know we don't really have the time to get into this, but I would like to remind anyone listening that there is a strong case to be made that the only reason the crackdown worked is because Nayib Bukele spent two years negotiating with the criminal groups, and that allowed him to take them by surprise. So if you want it. to really implement the Nayib Bukele model, that's what the Nayib Bukele model is. The Nayib Bukele model is extensive negotiations during which you essentially lull the criminal groups into sleep. And by the way, during which you concentrate as much power as you can politely, followed by a crackdown. So if anyone wants to give that a try, try that speech out in a political campaign, I'd love to watch.
Speaker #1
two-year run-in of negotiations and of course therefore identifying all the people you need to jail to therefore concentrate power as well and then of course the crackdown seen as popularity it's been fascinating manuel it really has uh my knowledge of el salvador was very much superficial but much more related to the civil war period and then you know post-Civil War. And then, of course, just what I've read in the press recently. So to have you talking about this in such depth and with such authority has been a real pleasure. And I know that the listeners of The LatinNews Podcast will have enjoyed this. We have been talking to Manuel Meléndez Sánchez, who is a PhD candidate in political science at Harvard. Manuel, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker #0
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Speaker #1
It's been absolutely great. This has been The LatinNews Podcast. We will be back in a fortnight with further information about the region. But thank you again to our interviewee. That's it, Manuel Meléndez Sánchez, PhD candidate in political science at Harvard University. Check out his writings. He is, of course, on X Twitter and elsewhere. Thank you for listening to me, your host, Richard McColl, here in Bogotá, Colombia. This has been The LatinNews Podcast, and goodbye.
Speaker #2
You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.latinnews.com.

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Is El Salvador really the safest country in Latin America as President Bukele often claims?

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Transcription

Speaker #0
Welcome to The LatinNews Podcast, a fortnightly deep dive into key developments from across Latin America and the Caribbean. Here's your host from Bogotá, Colombia, journalist Richard McColl.
Speaker #1
This is The LatinNews Podcast. I'm Richard McColl here in Bogotá, Colombia. My very special guest this week is Nalanda Dan Manuel Meléndez Sánchez, a PhD candidate in political science at Harvard, and he's from El Salvador so we shall be addressing the situation. Yes, El Salvador is in the news a lot, obviously, primarily because of the controversial president currently in power, Nayib Bukele. And well, we'll be talking about his security, his security policy, his economic policy, and of course, his threat to democracy, because of course, we've been seeing that popping up as he's concentrated power very rapidly over the past three years. So Manuel. Welcome on The LatinNews Podcast.
Speaker #2
Thank you, Richard. It's great to be here.
Speaker #1
No, it's an absolute pleasure to be talking with someone so knowledgeable about El Salvador. I think before we get into security and before we get into sort of the authoritarian nature of President Nayib Bukele, let's talk about the rise of President Nayib Bukele. But prior to becoming president, where did this guy come from?
Speaker #2
Sure. So. Nayib Bukele really enters the political scene in 2012 when he becomes mayor of a small, middle-class municipality in El Salvador called Nuevo Cusco Plan. He runs under the banner of the FMLN, which is historically the kind of traditional left-wing party, and he does very well. He does a good job as mayor, and he also is a very good politician. He has a fresh... style and three years later he runs and is elected as mayor of San Salvador which is besides the presidency the most visible and powerful post in the country this sort of sets him up to really be a natural presidential candidate now what's interesting is that during this time so while he's mayor of San Salvador kind of starting in 2015 well he's mayor of San Salvador he starts to clash with his party with the FMLN. The FMLN is a party that Nayib Bukele and his family had been close to for decades. Nayib Bukele had described himself before this as a leftist. He once, and you can Google this, he described himself as a socialist. He said the FMLN is the only path. And now, as mayor of San Salvador, he starts to criticize the party. So the FMLN is in government, they hold the presidency, and Nayib Bukele starts saying things like, ah you know they're just neoliberals they're just as bad as as the right-wing party they're not implementing structural reforms but anyway to make a long story short eventually the fmln decides to kick Nayib Bukele out of the park and this sort of represents a critical moment for for Nayib Bukele he announces that he's going to create his own party mueras ideas but because he gets out of the FMLN so close to the presidential election of 2019, he strikes a pact of convenience with this small party called Ghana, and goes on to win that election in a landslide. He wins with 53% of the vote, which is about 20 percentage points above the second place. But to really understand what that means, you need to know that Since 1989, so between 1989 and 2019 when Nayib Bukele was elected, two parties had had a basically a duopoly over electoral politics in El Salvador. The FMLN, which we've already talked about on the left. These are the former guerrillas who then become a political party in the 90s. And ARENA on the right. So Nayib Bukele becomes the first candidate. from outside of these two parties to win the presidency since the early 1980s and more importantly he does it on a platform that is all about running against his establishment so Nayib Bukele is a traditional populist is i often get asked is Nayib Bukele right-wing or left-wing and i say yes he's a populist yeah his entire platform is running against these two parties he calls to them los mismos de siempre the same ones as always he accuses the fml plan of being a 2.0 basically these are sides of the same coin Anyway, his election truly marks a sort of a break, a critical juncture before and after in the Salvadoran political system. And the narrative, the populist narrative really resonates with Salvadoran voters who at this point, I think rightly so, are pretty sick of this establishment. So that's where he comes from.
Speaker #1
I mean, so as a populist, neither right, neither left, both right. both left who is who can we say is the real Nayib Bukele i mean that's the thing because we just we watch these announcements and declarations and stigmatizing all dissent and this populist authoritarianism that he you know he displays who is he this weaponization of social media the baseball cap backwards in the un and the selfies everyone wants to call he wants to to call themselves a millennial and then, you know, the coolest... dictator. These are all very good soundbites, and they're all very good for imaging and social media. But who is the real Nayib Bukele?
Speaker #2
You know, the truth is, it's hard to tell. I think here's a couple of things we can say for sure about him. So number one, he has been consistently populist. And I think that's... telling because, you know, I don't know him. We would have to interview him. But I do think that he genuinely believes in this idea that this political establishment and this network of economic elites behind it, I think he truly believes that this is the source of El Salvador's problems. And I think it truly believes that this has been the source of El Salvador's problems, basically, since El Salvador has existed. So I think that's one thing we can say for sure. The other thing that he has demonstrated is that if there is a guiding principle behind populism, it is the search for power, right? The very reason why we see him sort of shift from left to right. in different areas, whenever it's convenient, is because he's making calculations about what is going to allow him to maintain as much power as possible. You know, I'm not a political scientist. I'm not in the business of psychological profiling. But I think it's pretty safe to say that those two things are very important for Nayib Bukele. And I think it's safe to say that those two things have been consistent.
Speaker #1
I mean, this is it, isn't it? I mean, you talk about the populist and the need to stay in power. Nothing will stop a populist strongman from trying to win re-election. So he'll do anything, as you say. He'll jump back and forth between whatsoever, continue extending this state of emergency, which he's been extending month by month since March. 2022. But again, before we get into security, because I know it's going to take up a great portion of this conversation, I want to know, there was so much noise about El Salvador taking on the cryptocurrency as an economic policy. Tell us about the economics going on. What is the economy like when we refer to the cryptocurrency in El Salvador right now?
Speaker #2
Sure. So the economy in general is not great. The biggest, there's sort of two issues regarding the economy that keep this government up at night, and that will probably continue to do so. The first, and this has now been true for a while, is that the Salvadoran government has an unsustainable amount of debt. And this becomes very important when we talk about cryptocurrency. The second problem, and this has been especially true in the past year and a half or so, Salvadorans are increasingly saying, the thing I'm most worried about is essentially the amount of money in my pocket, the cost of living, inflation. And so far, Nayib Bukele government hasn't really had a clear answer to this. It's very easy for... You know, me to give you the 32nd version of the security policy, the 32nd version of this foreign policy, the 32nd version of a bunch of things. I can't really give you the 32nd version of this economic policy. because there hasn't been a clear economic policy. But those two things, I think, are important to understand, both for the current context and for the context in which Bitcoin gets introduced. And so Bitcoin is introduced in sort of the second half of 2021. And there's two ways of looking at what was going on. Actually, to be fair, there's three ways of looking at what was going on there. The first is a little... closer to the official narrative. And the official narrative goes, this is good public policy. On one hand, it's going to generate jobs. It's going to reduce the cost of receiving remittances, which are very important, particularly for lower income households. And it's also going to help incorporate more people into the formal economy. And in addition to all that, it's sort of going to put us on the map internationally, and it's going to bring investment. This is kind of the first rationale for big colonization. The second, and there's some evidence for this, the second rationale is that this is essentially a pet project of some of Nayib Bukele closest allies, and in particular, his brothers. And I don't think going down that rabbit hole is particularly productive, but it's worth saying there is some evidence of this. The third. perspective on victimization, though, and I think there's a lot to this, is that this was a bit of a Hail Mary to try to solve the kind of medium-term fiscal problem without having to resort to more painful measures. And so if you think about it from Nayib Bukele perspective, it would have been ideal. We know now that this is not what happened. It would have been fantastic. if he could invest some money into the Bitcoin market, see that money go up, in addition to that, sell some Bitcoin-backed bonds, which was a thing, also sort of failed spectacularly, but that was an idea, right? And in a sense, if that worked out, fantastic. If it didn't, the costs were actually not very high. We can say now, sort of two years later, yeah, Bitcoin's not very popular. And he's lost some money. I'll tell you more about that in a second. But has it really had a political cost? Not really. Has it made the economic problem worse? The fiscal problem worse? It has, but not qualitatively worse. So I think there's some truth to all three of these perspectives on Bitcoinization. I tend to think of that third idea of this basically being a... sort of Hail Mary carries a lot of weight. Just to kind of wrap up, yeah, the gamble didn't really work, right? So part of the problem is sort of by design, there's very little accountability around Bitcoin. And so we can't really say for sure what the numbers look like, but we can, at the very least, take the kill at his word. And so um Nayib Bukele says that he's invested about $125 million in Bitcoin. And his losses stand at around $40 million, if we just look at the value of Bitcoin and compare it to what the value was when these different purchases were being made. So that's about a third in losses. And kind of what's ironic about this is that that amount $40 million that were lost in Bitcoin is exactly what El Salvador's debt payment that was coming up was. It was $40 million. So obviously his critics made sure to point that out. But look, yes, this was in terms of helping the government climb out of this fiscal hole, this was unsuccessful. I think that's fair to say it was unpopular. El Salvadorans sort of say this was a bad idea and it didn't really take on. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that it has been successful in terms of putting El Salvador on the map. For better or worse, that part of it has worked. So that's the big point story, I think.
Speaker #1
Yeah, I mean, that's true. It was on the front page of every newspaper. Everybody uses El Salvador as a point of reference for this. And of course, you know, it doesn't do any damage to his image overseas, something that has been damaged recently. Before we move on, I would like to ask. When Bitcoin was introduced and sort of made legal tender and so on, how far did it permeate society? I want to put the most superficial example out there. Were you paying for a pupusa, you know, tortilla with Bitcoin? Could you go down this route?
Speaker #2
Sure. To answer the pupusa question specifically, yes, there were some places where one could pay.
Speaker #1
Incredible.
Speaker #2
We're going to buy a proposal using Bitcoin, but a couple of caveats. So there is some, I apologize. Let me take a step back because you need the following data point to kind of understand the answer. So one important characteristic of the Bitcoin reform was that the introduction of Bitcoin was to be centralized through this wallet app that was created by the government. It's called Chivo. And so most of what we know about. whether this took on comes from sort of data we have on whether people have been using Chivo, the wallet. And sort of what you see is that right as the reform is being rolled out, there was indeed a surge in the use of Chivo. And in surveys, when you ask people why they decided to kind of give Bitcoin a try, the answer has to do with this, basically this cash bonus. that you got just by kind of downloading the app and kind of playing around with it a little bit. So this is all to say that in sort of in the early days and weeks, there was for sure a moment when Salvadorans sort of turned to Bitcoin and said, all right, let's see what you're all about. That appears to have fizzled out fairly quickly and fairly permanently. You know, yeah, sure. There are still some places particularly sort of... more touristy hot spots yeah where you can go and buy a pupusa using bitcoin but has this fundamentally transformed the ways the way salvadorans go about their their daily economic life absolutely not very interesting the 40 million very interesting that it's his brothers uh
Speaker #1
you know and and of course the lack of accountability to be able to chase and trace Bitcoin. So we'll move on a little bit. And we need to we need to talk, we've talked about the economic policy of Bitcoin. In the recent episode, we spoke to Dr. Manuel Orozco, the Inter-American Dialogue. And we, you know, we discussed Nicaragua, we were discussing the region, and so on. He said, well, look at Nayib Bukele, he has no economic policy, the economy doesn't go well, it's just shielded by the whole Bitcoin story. And then he mentions, you know, the security situation. the maras or the gangs were already in a decline when Nayib Bukele came in to create his security policies before you respond to that obviously this goes hand in hand with the authoritarianism of Nayib Bukele the issue or the idea of the gangs and to try and i would say muta them is i think what i want to say is but before we get there he has been able to obviously ride a wave of populism, a wave of popularity through creating this, you know, this security situation in El Salvador. And you sort of say, at what cost? The threat to democracy, the storming of the legislative assembly back in the day, this concentration of power that we've previously mentioned, the ability to find the judges to evade problems of him running again for presidents in 2024 by... questioning the legality of the constitution itself and at the same time what's he done we i'm sure he's done something to change the electoral system because if you could explain why he reduced the size of the 84 member legislative to 64 seats and the number of elected municipalities from 262 to 50 this all goes hand in hand there's a lot in that last intervention. Perhaps you'd like to explain some of it.
Speaker #2
Sure. So look, you're totally right. Let me just put it this way. If you were to draw a graph of Salvador democracy, this is a line that starting in 1992 up to 2019, it goes up and up and up and up and starting in 2019, it plummets. And that's because of this process of concentration of power. and the erosion of checks and balances. And we could talk about that. I think you pointed out some of the kind of some of the greatest hits. of the Nayib Bukele presidency but yes right now this is a president who has essentially accumulated the entirety of political power really under under his thumb let's talk about this electoral reform because i think it's it's gone under the radar a little bit yeah let me tell you what the reform does and then we can talk again about some of the possible reasons behind this so as you said basically um you know this reduces kind of you know, dramatically the number of mayors as well as a number of legislators. And it does so in part by redistricting, by kind of sort of lumping together districts into now bigger districts. And really what we need to think about is, okay, well, what are the, what are sort of the political consequences of doing this? And anyone familiar with sort of the recent The recent trends in American politics will be aware of this idea of gerrymandering.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #2
So one thing that some of us have done, and I can't take credit for all of these analysis, but one thing you can do is you can go back to the last time there were elections for mayors and for legislators. So this was in 2021. And you can do the following exercise. Let's look, just look at the vote, look at how people voted and look at how many. A or some legislators, they won that election. Great. Now do the exact same thing, applying these new rules, applying these new boundaries, the new electoral formula, and look at what happens. Look at who is benefited and who loses. So here are some numbers. So under the old rules, in other words, in the real world in 2021, Nayib Bukele and his allies won about... 76% of the seats in the legislature. That's a very big number. They did great. Okay. If that election had happened under the new rules, they would not have won 76%. They would have won 93%. So that's pretty significant, but they already had a supermajority. Let's look at mayors, though. In that election, Nayib Bukele party... won about 58% of all local governments. That's still pretty good. Under the new rules, Nayib Bukele party would have won 93% of local government. The FMLN, under the new rules, would essentially disappear. ARENA would hold on to, I believe, I'm sorry, I don't have this number in front of me, but would... hold on, I think, to one or two seats in the legislature and like a handful of local governments. Ghana, Nayib Bukele ally, the party that allowed him to actually reach the presidency, would also virtually disappear. So if Juan does that exercise, what the new rules do is they basically give Nuevas Ideas, Nayib Bukele party, a complete dominance. over electoral politics, and over these sort of formal levers of power.
Speaker #0
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Speaker #2
Now, obviously... People may choose to vote differently, and who knows what's going to happen between now and the election. So, you know, these numbers are just kind of an academic exercise, but they do tell us something about what might be going on here and how these new rules may have been drawn. The other thing that this sort of allows Nayib Bukele to do, and this is kind of, at least for me, a slightly harder argument to wrap my head around, is it sort of allows Nayib Bukele to purge his party a little bit. And, you know, people often think of Nayib Bukele as like this powerful, strong man who doesn't need anyone else and rules on his own. You know, that's kind of true. But I think he has felt for a while that his party is a liability. His mayors, his legislators, they aren't as popular as he is. There have been a few cases of mayors and legislators kind of walking into scandals and being engaged in shady business. And so what this allows him to do is, well, now I have to choose about a quarter as many people to run for mayor. I can now filter out. people who are not totally loyal to me, people who don't have a good reputation. And we've seen some evidence of that. So that's the story of the electoral rules. And by the way, I should say, right, the kind of other side of this, the Bucalista narrative is, look, we had a fat, corrupt state. We were wasting a lot of money on a lot of mayors and a lot of legislators and didn't need to do this. That narrative, by the way, has been pretty successful in convincing Salvadoran voters. But yeah, that's the story of the electoral rules and the electoral system.
Speaker #1
So, I mean, we're looking at 2024 elections. Obviously, he's poised with 93% already. The opposition, very possibly, the traditional opposition of the FMLN and the ARENA could disappear.
Speaker #2
Yes, that's a real possibility. My sense is that they probably won't. I think they will survive in some even more diminished shape. You know, they might hold on to a couple of local governments and they might be able to elect a couple of legislators. So I think they'll be around, but, you know, they really will be kind of a paper opposition, right? Not a real opposition in any meaningful sense. of that one.
Speaker #1
Okay. Well, it's that moment we have to, we have to dive in to security. And that's what I know people are listening for, obviously, because it's the most, uh, newsworthy and, and I think so very visual, uh, story coming out of, uh, El Salvador at the moment. So El Salvador, as we well know, had an, uh, an absolutely dreadful history. to the Maras, you know, I would say the deportation of gangs started in the 1980s from the Los Angeles area back down. And of course, they come back fully intact and, you know, with their own sort of command system. We don't need to get into that too much. But the Maras, the Salvatrucha and the 18 essentially had the country on its knees in terms of security and so on. Nayib Bukele comes in, He says there's 70,000 free. You tweeted this all. put on X. There are 70,000 free gang members in El Salvador. We're going to jail them all. He has arrested arbitrarily 70,000 people. And he now says, and this was, you know, this is in September 2023, that there are still 43,000 free gang members out there. It's peculiar to me obviously these figures, this is, I mean. He is popular because he has created security. Let's not lie. The situation was dreadful. You couldn't cross the road. People couldn't manage their own sort of, you know, business. And you're not even a corner shop without paying some sort of extortion or protection fee. Murders sky high. I'm sure it was the murder capital of the world for a while. Obviously, there's popularity to this thing. And it's far from it. Far be it for me to pontificate from the security of my home. You know, it's like, well, this is this is against human rights. This is so on and so forth. But we know it is. So so tell us about the security policies. Tell us what is going on now.
Speaker #2
All right. So there was you just said many, many interesting and insightful things. But so let me just say as a side note before we. before we dive into it, that these numbers that you quoted, in fact, all numbers related to this policy should be treated with extreme caution. The point is that if you take Nayib Bukele and representatives of his government at their word and assume these numbers are correct, the numbers don't really add up. And we can talk about what that might mean in a second. I just sort of wanted to... to put that out there. I don't want anyone to accuse you or us of spreading fake news. So I just want to clarify. So what's going on? As usual, I would like to just take a step back first and point out a couple of things. So there is a lot of talk about the Nayib Bukele model. And right now, the Nayib Bukele model is an extremely repressive model. It is the most dramatic, sustained crackdown against criminal organizations. Certainly in recent...
Speaker #0
years, potentially in Latin American history. It's really important that we understand, and not for kind of political reasons, but just so that we can understand how this works. It's really important that we remember that for two years before this war against gangs, the policy was completely different. This was a policy of negotiating with the same gangs, of striking a deal. to keep homicides down in exchange for a number of benefits. This is very crucial. And the reason why is the following. Basically, every experience we've had with crackdowns like these in Latin America, there are some exceptions, but basically every experience we've had like this teaches us that these crackdowns backfire. They backfire in the sense that they lead to more violence. And this is usually, I'm simplifying here. But this is usually because criminal groups fight back. This is about as close as we can get to kind of an iron law of anti-crime policy. The most fascinating aspect of Nayib Bukele crackdown is that this didn't happen. There was no moment after the crackdown when the gangs gave any sign of fighting back. And I would suggest that if we want to understand what's really going on, we need to be able to understand why that was the case. Now, my own argument, I'll give you a couple of suggestions, all of which I think are important for understanding the present. My own argument is that the effectiveness of the crackdown has a lot to do with the pact that came before it. And so what you need to know about the pact is that. The pact generally lowered homicide rates. There were a couple of blips along the way when the gangs did go on short killing sprees. After every blip, the government would come out and say, we're declaring war on you. We're pressed for a day or two, but then things would go back to normal and everyone would come back to the negotiating table. So the pact, in a sense, sort of taught gangs that this is how things work. So in March 2022, when there is a new blip, what does the government do? The government comes out and says, we're declaring war on you. And then it starts repressing. I think at this point, the dynamic of this pact has taught the gangs that what they should do now is to just lay low. And in a couple of days, just as we have in the past, we're going to be back at the negotiating table. Of course, that's not what happens. And now we know that this crackdown has been going on. for a year and a half. There are some other theories about it. So one theory is that in reality, the pact never really ended. One theory is, look, Nayib Bukele might... be repressing sort of primarily kind of like the grunts and the foot soldiers of these gangs and also a lot of amazing people but you know it does seem like he's still giving benefits and maybe negotiating with some of the higher levels this by the way is is the people who believe in this argument but look at these numbers that we learned about last week to say there's still 43,000 gang members out there and say ah there you go i told you the gangs are still out there they're not fighting back. because they're still getting some sort of benefit. And there's another set of theories. There's any number of theories we could discuss about this. But let's talk about what's happening right now and more importantly, what's coming up. The current situation appears to be one in which the Salvadoran government... has arrested more people than it can really handle. And so just for context, this is about 2% of the population is currently in prison. Before the state of exception, Salvadoran prisons were already terribly overcrowded. I think we can all imagine what they must look like now. And when I talk to... officials in the Mugella government, what they say is we've sort of backed ourselves into a corner. On one hand, we can't really, we don't really have the capacity to keep these many people in the prisons, particularly if we're still going to go out there and arrest another 43,000 gang members. But on the other hand, how do we release them? Assuming that they truly are mostly gang members, as Nayib Bukele says. obviously can't put them back into the streets, assuming that there really are a lot of non-gang members among those who have been arrested, as many organizations say, then, you know, even the idea of potentially suddenly releasing 20,000 people like this can lead to massive disruptions in sort of the social fabric of this country. And so I know because they told me.
Speaker #1
that some of the people in charge of looking at this are terrified they don't really know what to do it's an incredibly concerning moment and perhaps we wind back a little bit as you say the pat was already so let's say yielding results prior to Nayib Bukele it's a suggestion here so Nayib Bukele what kind of relationship does he have with these these top level uh uh would we say officials no these top level leaders in the gangs themselves are you asking me about Nayib Bukele personally or Nayib Bukele government ah well either way which one's more interesting sure i think Nayib Bukele government so uh as
Speaker #0
far as i know and i could be wrong about this as far as i know uh we actually don't have any evidence of Nayib Bukele himself sort of ever even having met any any top uh the top gang leaders again i could be wrong about that and i'm not saying it hasn't happened i just don't know if it never did the the relationship between uh his government and the top gang leaders actually begins before he even becomes mayor of san salvo so during that campaign members of his inner circle start to basically reach out to gang leaders from san salvo And what this allows them to do basically is to run a campaign, to enter Ganturf and run a campaign. Once Nayib Bukele is mayor, that relationship allows them to actually implement some public works. As far as we can tell, and this is basically coming out of investigative reporting by El Fado, as a side note, absolute treasure of Latin American journalism. Everyone should go read El Fado, please.
Speaker #1
The best.
Speaker #0
Absolutely. But anyway. So this relationship then basically seems to translate as Nayib Bukele becomes president, this relationship sort of becomes broader. There is evidence, for instance, that many high level gang leaders were released from prison before their time was up. And not only that, there is some evidence that at least one of them was. actually aided by the government in leaving El Salvador and reaching safety, I believe, in Mexico. And so as is often the case with these relationships between public officials and criminals, we are not able to see almost any of the actual information, the actual data. We can only see the tip of the iceberg. But I think that sort of gives you a flavor of what may or may not be going on here so in other words to summarize this has been a relationship between Nayib Bukele inner circle and and gang leaders that has been developing for a while the big open question is whether that relationship is still alive today or whether there truly has been a break since since the since the crackdown for what it's worth my sense is that there probably has been a break But the truth is, we can't say for sure. And that's going to be a really important question for how things develop moving forward.
Speaker #1
Well, I mean, as we always know, sooner or later, the truth will out. But for now, as you say, it's a tip of an iceberg. I see. I think we need to wind this down. But we could take hours discussing this. But I want to I want to just ask because, of course, you know, Latin America, people. and governments and people coming up to elections are looking at the Nayib Bukele model. You know, there's the cost of living issue, rising crime, or the perception of insecurity in a great deal of countries, not least where I am here in Colombia. And I know in other Central American countries, they're all calling out for the Nayib Bukele model of, you know, no tolerance, total security. is Is this model, is El Salvador really the safest place in Latin America, as Nayib Bukele says?
Speaker #0
I think it very much depends on who you ask. And so for the average person, the evidence that we have suggests that, yes, right now El Salvador is a very safe place. That's what all signs point to. I don't know if it's the safest place or not in America, but it's a fairly safe place. But for example, if you are a young man living in an underprivileged community, if you happen to have a tattoo on you, and if you happen to, I don't know, maybe have some neighbors who don't like you, or a next girlfriend or ex-boyfriend who doesn't like you. Then El Salvador is really not at all a safe place. There is nothing protecting you from the police or the military showing up in the middle of the night and taking you away. So my point, I think, is, yes, when we measure it by kind of these traditional indicators, are there murders, are there extortions, are there thefts? Yes, this plan has worked. It really has. But it's come at a pretty high cost. And I think everyone needs to think about those costs very seriously. By the way, you know, I know we don't really have the time to get into this, but I would like to remind anyone listening that there is a strong case to be made that the only reason the crackdown worked is because Nayib Bukele spent two years negotiating with the criminal groups, and that allowed him to take them by surprise. So if you want it. to really implement the Nayib Bukele model, that's what the Nayib Bukele model is. The Nayib Bukele model is extensive negotiations during which you essentially lull the criminal groups into sleep. And by the way, during which you concentrate as much power as you can politely, followed by a crackdown. So if anyone wants to give that a try, try that speech out in a political campaign, I'd love to watch.
Speaker #1
two-year run-in of negotiations and of course therefore identifying all the people you need to jail to therefore concentrate power as well and then of course the crackdown seen as popularity it's been fascinating manuel it really has uh my knowledge of el salvador was very much superficial but much more related to the civil war period and then you know post-Civil War. And then, of course, just what I've read in the press recently. So to have you talking about this in such depth and with such authority has been a real pleasure. And I know that the listeners of The LatinNews Podcast will have enjoyed this. We have been talking to Manuel Meléndez Sánchez, who is a PhD candidate in political science at Harvard. Manuel, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker #0
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Speaker #1
It's been absolutely great. This has been The LatinNews Podcast. We will be back in a fortnight with further information about the region. But thank you again to our interviewee. That's it, Manuel Meléndez Sánchez, PhD candidate in political science at Harvard University. Check out his writings. He is, of course, on X Twitter and elsewhere. Thank you for listening to me, your host, Richard McColl, here in Bogotá, Colombia. This has been The LatinNews Podcast, and goodbye.
Speaker #2
You've been listening to The LatinNews Podcast. For more news and analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean, visit www.latinnews.com.

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