Lawfare Archive: El Salvador’s President Cracks Down on Gangs—and Democracy

Summary

The Lawfare Podcast: El Salvador’s President Cracks Down on Gangs—and Democracy

Release Date: June 21, 2025
Host/Author: The Lawfare Institute
Episode Title: Lawfare Archive: El Salvador’s President Cracks Down on Gangs—and Democracy

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Introduction and Background

In this episode of The Lawfare Podcast, released on June 21, 2025, Mary Ford sets the stage by highlighting recent events in Los Angeles that have reignited national debates over President Donald Trump's immigration policies. Central to this discussion is the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador and subsequently held without trial in a notorious maximum-security confinement center. Garcia’s return to the United States on June 6, after nearly three months, underscores the strained partnership between Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and the Trump administration.

Mary Ford explains, “Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States on June 6, nearly three months after being deported to El Salvador. But during that time, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele made headlines in the United States over his partnership with the Trump administration” ([01:45]).

El Salvador’s Security Crisis and Bukele’s Response

The heart of the episode delves into El Salvador’s tumultuous journey under President Nayib Bukele, focusing on his aggressive crackdown on powerful gangs. Mary Ford introduces the archival episode from May 9, 2023, featuring Manuel Melendez Sanchez, a PhD candidate in political science at Harvard University. Together, they explore Bukele's strategies to dismantle gang influence and the broader implications for democracy in El Salvador.

Bukele’s Crackdown Strategy:
At [04:36], Melendez provides an overview: “Since March of 2022, El Salvador's criminal groups, street gangs known as maras, went on a sudden and very violent killing spree. In its aftermath, Nayib Bukele, the Salvadoran president, and his allies declared a state of emergency, which basically gave the government widespread powers to carry out mass arrests and to imprison those suspected of being gang members since then. So in the 12 months since, El Salvador has conducted a massive number of arrests, nearing 70,000.”

This massive crackdown has led to approximately one in every 100 Salvadorans being incarcerated, significantly reducing gang-related violence. Melendez notes the apparent success: “The sort of headline development in the past five or six months is that as far as we can tell, this crackdown has succeeded in defeating these massive violent criminal groups, at least for now” ([06:02]).

History and Evolution of Gangs in El Salvador

Formation and Rise of the Maras:
Melendez traces the origins of El Salvador's gangs back to the 1990s, post-civil war era. The dismantling of the war left the country vulnerable, with thousands of refugees returning, often forcibly, creating fertile ground for gang recruitment. By the early 2000s, these gangs had grown into powerful, violent organizations that exerted control over entire neighborhoods.

He explains, “The gangs have a long history, but the modern history of these groups really starts in the 1990s... these groups begin to recruit their members and they begin to grow” ([06:21]).

Bukele’s Leadership Style and Use of Social Media

Charismatic and Modern Leadership:
Bukele emerges as a charismatic and youthful leader, breaking the mold of El Salvador’s traditional political figures. His adept use of social media, particularly Twitter, allows him to communicate directly with the populace and international observers. Melendez highlights Bukele’s savvy PR strategies: “Bukele is a little bit of a PR genius... lacks transparency around data... allows the government to turn around and basically cherry pick what's being presented” ([13:49]).

He further elaborates on Bukele's appeal: “Bukele is selling that, oh, I'm not like this old system that's failed everyone. I truly am different. And Salvadorans love that. They respond to that” ([17:05]).

Human Rights Implications of the Crackdown

Severe Human Rights Concerns:
Despite the reduction in violence, Bukele’s methods raise significant human rights concerns. The state of emergency has led to widespread arrests without due process, with estimates ranging from 2,000 to 25,000 wrongful arrests. Additionally, reports indicate dire conditions within overcrowded prisons, with numerous accounts of inmates dying under suspicious circumstances.

Melendez states, “Under the state of emergency... there have been reports from both local and international organizations of many wrongful arrests... conditions inside of these prisons must be extremely dire” ([35:16]).

Popular Support Despite Human Rights Violations

Public Perception and Security Trade-offs:
A paradox emerges where, despite knowing someone who has been wrongfully arrested, Bukele enjoys approval ratings soaring above 80%. Melendez attributes this to the palpable increase in public safety: “88.2% of Salvadorians... say they currently feel very safe in the place where they live... 95% of them tell you that it has something to do with Bukele's crackdown” ([41:23]).

This suggests that many Salvadorans are willing to accept severe sacrifices in personal freedoms and human rights in exchange for enhanced security and reduced gang violence.

Comparison to Peru’s Political Crisis and Future Implications

Lessons from Peru:
Melendez draws a cautionary parallel between El Salvador’s current trajectory and Peru’s experience in the 1990s under President Alberto Fujimori. Both leaders emerged amid security crises, consolidated power by undermining democratic institutions, and maintained high approval despite human rights abuses.

He warns, “what happens in Peru is before long, after a couple of years, Fujimori really, for all intents and purposes has... completely undermine all checks and balances... Bukele is running for reelection in 2024... it's very easy to imagine a scenario where Bukele stays in power not only for a second term, but also a third term” ([64:11]).

Conclusion and Future Outlook

Sustainability of the Crackdown:
While Bukele’s crackdown has achieved short-term success in curtailing gang violence, Melendez remains skeptical about its long-term viability. He highlights several concerns:

1. Re-emergence of Criminal Groups: Persistent underlying issues such as poverty and lack of opportunities may give rise to new or resurgent gangs.
2. Influx of External Criminal Organizations: Absence of major cartels has so far shielded El Salvador, but differing power dynamics could attract foreign criminal enterprises.
3. Reintegration of Formerly Incarcerated Individuals: Massive releases could lead to instability and potential reorganization of gang structures.

Melendez concludes, “This is yet another example of a bug with democracy that we sort of know about and that we've seen before” ([46:47]).

Notable Quotes

• Mary Ford ([01:45]): “Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States on June 6, nearly three months after being deported to El Salvador.”

• Manuel Melendez Sanchez ([06:02]): “The crackdown has succeeded in defeating these massive violent criminal groups, at least for now.”

• Melendez ([13:49]): “There isn't really a lot of transparency around data... allows the government to turn around and basically cherry pick what's being presented.”

• Melendez ([17:05]): “He's selling that, oh, I'm not like this old system that's failed everyone. I truly am different. And Salvadorans love that.”

• Melendez ([35:16]): “Conditions inside of these prisons must be extremely dire.”

• Melendez ([41:23]): “Many Salvadorans have evaluated this trade-off between... we'll take security and safety.”

• Melendez ([64:11]): “It's very easy to imagine a scenario where Bukele stays in power not only for a second term, but also a third term.”

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Final Thoughts

This episode provides a comprehensive examination of Nayib Bukele’s administration in El Salvador, highlighting the delicate balance between achieving security and preserving democratic principles. Through insightful discussions with political science expert Manuel Melendez Sanchez, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the complexities and potential long-term consequences of Bukele’s approach.

Transcript

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

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[Quinta Jurecik]

An ad free version of the Lawfare Podcast.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Become a material supporter of [e-mail] lawfare that's patreon.com Lawfair also check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security, Chatter, Lawfare, no Bull and the Aftermath.

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[Mary Ford]

We meet patients wherever they live.

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During a house call, she found Jack had an issue.

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Jack's blood pressure was dangerously high.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

It was 217 over 110.

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So they got Jack to the hospital and got him the help he needed.

[Mary Ford]

He had had a stent placed in his heart preventing a massive heart attack.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

If it wasn't for my guardian angel, I wouldn't be here.

[Heather]

Hear more stories like Jack's at unitedhealthcare. Benefits, features and or devices vary by plan. Area limitation and exclusions apply.

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[Mary Ford]

I'm Mary Ford, intern at Lawfare, with an episode for the Lawfare Archive for June 21, 2025. Protests in LA last week spread sparked national conversation surrounding President Trump's immigration policies. The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador and held without trial in the notorious Salvadoran maximum security confinement center, has been particularly fraught. Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States on June 6, nearly three months after being deported to El Salvador. But during that time, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele made headlines the United States over his partnership with the Trump administration. What is Bukele, who has referred to himself as the world's coolest dictator, getting out of this partnership? And what do things look like inside El Salvador? For today's Archive episode, I selected an episode for May 9, 2023, in which Quinta Jurassic sat down with Manuel Melendez Sanchez, a PhD candidate in political science at Harvard University, to discuss President Bukele's attacks on Salvadoran democratic institutions. They talked about the security situation in El Salvador, the current state of exception. Why President Bukele's crackdown on Gangs seems to be working and more.

[Unknown Speaker]

Quinta I'm.

Quinta Jurecik, a senior editor at Lawfair, and this is The Lawfare Podcast May 9, 2023. Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of exception as its president, Nayib Bukele, seeks to crack down on the country's powerful gangs.

Bukele, who once described himself on Twitter.

As the world's coolest dictator, has engaged in a prolonged attack on El Salvador's democratic institutions, and the crackdown has resulted in a range of human rights abuses. At the same time, Bukele really does seem to have been successful in curbing gang violence, and his popularity is sky high. To understand the situation in El Salvador, I spoke with Manuel Melendez Sanchez, a PhD candidate in political science at Harvard University, who has written about Bukele on Lawfare. Manuel and I discussed why Bukele's crackdown on the gangs seems to be working, why it may fall apart in the long term, and what Bukele's rise means for democracy in El Salvador and around the world. It's The Lawfare Podcast, May 9. El Salvador's President Cracks down on Gangs and Democracy.

El Salvador has had a chaotic year. There's been a massive spike of violence in the spring of 2022, and then there was a dramatic and extremely effective but in other ways very troubling crackdown on gangs by President Nayib Bukele. Can you give us an overview of what's been happening?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah. So as you said, about a year ago, In March of 2022, El Salvador's criminal groups, street gangs known as maras, they went on a sudden and very violent killing spree. In its aftermath, Nayub Bukele, the Salvadoran president, and his allies declared a state of emergency, which basically gave the government widespread powers to carry out mass arrests and to imprison those suspected of being gang members since then. So in the 12 months since, El Salvador has conducted a massive number of arrests, nearing 70,000. This is in a country of 7 million people, which means that about one in every 100 Salvadorans is currently behind bars. The sort of headline development in the past five or six months is that as far as we can tell, this crackdown has succeeded in defeating these massive violent criminal groups, at least for now.

[Unknown Speaker]

So let's talk a little bit about the gangs and what kind of role they have played in El Salvador until this recent crackdown. How is it that they became so powerful in El Salvador such that the country Got to this point. And you know, what's kind of the everyday person's interaction with them?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Sure. So the gangs have a long history, but sort of the modern history of these groups really starts in the 1990s. So this is a decade when el salvador is coming out of a long civil war. That war had created thousands upon thousands of refugees. And after the end of the war, many of these refugees started returning, not always out of their own volition. Thousands of them were forcibly returned from the united states. And what this created, if you think about it, is you have this war torn country that is still recovering, a fairly weak government, a fairly weak state, and suddenly you have this massive influx of sort of young men who are returning home, Often for the first time since they were toddlers. And this population, as well as people who had been in el salvador, who had been displaced by war internally, who had suffered from the war, they basically become a place where these gangs, these street gangs, begin to recruit their members. And so what happens in the 90s is that these groups that used to be very small, very neighborhood based, they begin to recruit more members and they begin to grow. The sort of second turning point happens in the early 2000s. At this point, these groups are starting to become a problem. They're starting to become a little bit more violent. Politicians are starting to worry, and so they institute the first of many crackdowns. What happens is that this backfires. The government begins rounding up these mostly young men who were members of these gangs, and they begin to throw them in prisons. Now, interestingly, what happens is that although these people have been captured from across the country, they meet each other in these prisons, they begin to form networks, they begin to organize within the prisons. And so suddenly, what had been a number of still relatively small local criminal groups, they form into these national organizations that have the power to coordinate and have the power to really wield quite a lot of violence and influence. So coming out of that process and fast forwarding a little bit, what el salvador ends up with is basically three large. We call them street gangs. Really, they're criminal organizations. And these are the Mara Salvatrucha Ramach 13, which I think american listeners will be quite familiar with, and two factions of the barrio de xiocho gang, the revolutionaries and the sudanos. So in terms of the everyday life of sort of everyday salvadorans, these gangs become a very big deal. In particular, these gangs grow to exercise authority and control over entire neighborhoods. And so what that means is that if the neighborhood you're living in is controlled by One of these gangs, they can restrict basically anything you do. You know, if you want to open a small business, they will charge you, quote, unquote, protection taxes. In some cases, if you want to enter and leave the gang turf, they will ask for id, for example, or they might simply not let you enter rival gang turf. And above all, they become very violent. So they use violence to settle scores. They use violence to intimidate. They use violence to these violence to exercise this control. So for a long time, really starting around 2010, maybe a little earlier, for thousands of salvadorans, these gangs were really sort of the ultimate authority. Right. It wasn't the state, it wasn't the police. It wasn't the military. It wasn't politicians. It was these street gangs. And this is sort of the situation that naive Bukele, the president, sort of inherits and encounters when he gets elected in 2019.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I mean, in some ways, it sounds like what you're describing is really. And collapse may be too strong, but an existential crisis for the Salvadorian state, insofar as traditionally, one of the ways that we describe a state is the entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. And what you're describing is an environment where there isn't a monopoly on the use of force, and gangs are able to kind of control people's lives and regulate them in the way that we typically think of governments doing. Is that fair?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

I think that's fair. And not only that, but as time goes on and as the state is actually able to become a little bit more capable and they start to try to exercise that power, try to control the gangs and take back some of this power and control, it ends up backfiring. It ends up making the gangs stronger and more organized. But, yeah, I think that's a fair characterization, especially during the 1990s. So during those early years, right after the civil war ends in 1992, when the gangs really sort of start to start to develop.

[Unknown Speaker]

And so what is it exactly that Bukele has done over the past year to crack down on the gangs?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Right. So the really, the biggest part of this crackdown strategy has been conducting mass arrests. Actually, I should pause here to say that for reasons we'll probably get into, a lot of what's going on here is really shrouded in secrecy and sort of by design. There isn't really a lot of transparency around data. But as far as we can tell, over the past 12 months, the government has conducted about 70,000 arrests. That has been possible for a couple of Reasons, the biggest being that during this state of emergency, which now has been ongoing for almost 13 months, the state of emergency basically suspends a whole host of constitutional rights and allows police and the military to conduct these arrests. This has had many effects. One is that it has resulted in a lot of these gang members ending up behind bars. And that's a. That's a massive blow to these organizations. Another aspect of bugya's policies is that it's changed conviction guidelines for crime related crimes, for gang related crimes, and they've also lowered the age of criminal responsibility. And so what that means is that it's not only easier than ever before for the Salvadoran government to arrest people, it's also a lot easier for them to keep them behind bars for longer than before.

[Unknown Speaker]

So you mentioned that there's been a real secrecy and a lack of transparency here. Talk a little bit more about how that's played into all of this.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, so I think to really answer that question, you have to understand that this president Nayibukele, is a little bit of a PR genius. And so he is by far the most popular president in Latin America, arguably the most popular president in the world. And there are many reasons for that. One reason is that he is a master at essentially hiding the ugly bits of policies and promoting the popular or the appealing bits of policy. And so, in this case, for example, what that means is we don't really have access to many court files. We don't really have access to information about what's happening inside of prisons. We don't really have statistics on, well, exactly how many people have been arrested here. And so that lack of information then allows the government to turn around and basically cherry pick what's being presented. So if you were to scroll through Nayib Bukele's Twitter account or through the Twitter accounts of any number of Salvadoran government agencies, you'll see exclusively pictures of people who look very scary and very dangerous being held behind bars. You'll see graphs and charts that show that there are basically zero homicides and zero crimes in the country. That ability to manage the image of this policy is really important because this crackdown can only be sustained for as long as it's been sustained if it remains popular. This idea of very carefully managing the information that's being filtered out not only to Salvadorans, but to the international community has been really important in terms of sustaining. Sustaining this crackdown policy, which I think is important to emphasize. Crackdowns against criminal groups are fairly common in Latin America. This is as far As I know, by almost any reasonable measure, this is the most intensive and getting close to the longest crackdown the region has seen, certainly in the past 20 or 30 years against criminal organizations. And one reason why I think it's been so sustainable is because of the way its image has been managed. And that in turn relies on basically blocking off access to information.

[Unknown Speaker]

So I want to go back to the mechanics of the crackdown, its popularity, and the really troubling human rights implications. But before we do that, I want to make sure that we talk a little bit about Bukele himself, because as you say, you know, he is really the figure at the center of this, and his, let's call it, unique communication style has really shaped how people see and understand it. So just to start off, who is Bukele? You know, there's. There's been a lot of critiques that he's moved El Salvador toward authoritarianism. What has his presidency been like so far?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Sure. So Nayib Bukele is elected in 2019, and the first thing to know about him is that he is the first president from outside of El Salvador's two major parties to be elected in over 20 years. So he frames himself as an anti establishment candidate. He sounds and talks like a populist, and he's really able to position himself as sort of the antidote to a system that many Salvadorans saw as having failed them and as being very resistant to change. It helped that Bukele is very young. At the time of his election, he was either 38 or 39. And as you mentioned, it also helped that he has a very unique and really very youthful communication strategy. So social media is his. Go to Twitter is how he communicates with the world and with actually the people who work for him. He's known for wearing backwards baseball caps, hating ties. He posts memes, he chimes in on popular culture. He tags and retweets Elon Musk quite frequently. And so I think this sort of useful Persona that he's able to communicate really reinforces this sort of idea. He's selling that, oh, I'm not like this old system that's failed everyone. I truly am different. And Salvadorans love that. They respond to that. They elect them with 52% of the vote, which may not sound like that much, but remember, this is essentially a third party candidate, and the runner up perhaps ends up with 32% of the vote. So Bukele beats the runner up by 20 percentage points. Now, from the time he's elected, I think it's Easiest to sort of think about Bukele's presidency so far in two stages. So when Bukele first gets elected in 2019, he doesn't have control of Congress. And so Congress is still in hands of the opposition. And for those first two years, basically, Bukele isn't able to accomplish much by way of policy. So there aren't really any blockbuster policy changes like we'll see later. But what happens is that he basically enters in this near constant conflict with the other branches of the state, with the courts, but especially with the congress, with the legislative assembly. And there's this sort of famous episode in February of 2020 when he marches into the Congress surrounded by the military, and he sits at the chair of. At the chair that is generally reserved for the president of Congress. And he sort of says words to the extent of, you know, I wonder if I should just shut you guys down right now, but I'm going to pray for a moment and see what happens. And so he does, you know, this is all being televised. And he closes his eyes, and he apparently prays for a few minutes, and then he opens his eyes and he says, well, you know what? It's your lucky day because God has asked me for patience. So I give you one week to see the light and to. And to start supporting, supporting what I want to do. And he leaves. This sort of becomes emblematic of those first two years of his presidency. Sort of constant conflict, constant concerns that he's angling for some sort of power grab. Eventually, we sort of reach the second chapter of the Bukele presidency, where he is basically able to sweep midterm elections, and he ends up with a super majority in the legislature, and he also ends up with a majority of local governors. And within hours of the new legislators being sworn in, he fires El Salvador's highest court, he fires the attorney general, and he packs both of those institutions with his loyalists. And so what that means is that by May 2021, Bukele has suddenly gone from being a very popular president with no support in the other branches of government to being a very popular president who now essentially controls all three branches of government. And this is when we start to see him roll out these sort of blockbuster policies. One of the most famous is the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender. Many listeners will be familiar with this happened in September of 2021. And then really, this sort of crackdown has become his signature policy. So that's kind of an abridged version of where Bukil came from and sort of what his presidency has been like so far.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And there's also. Recently, he sort of secured a Supreme court ruling that allowed him to run for reelection in 2024, despite the fact that that had previously been unconstitutional under the Salvadorian constitution. I will say that I was on a bus in D.C. the other day and I saw a guy wearing a Bukele 2024 hat. So make of that. But I mean, that, that suggests to me that there's, you know, there's a certain amount of control he has over the Supreme Court as well. Is that fair?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, no, I think that's totally fair. As you mentioned, the. The. The Supreme Court that he, you know, essentially put in power ruled that he could run for reelection. This happened in September of 2021. So about four months after. After Bukele fired the old court. I think it would be fair to say that at this point in time, Bukele has either co, opted, undermined, or shackled basically every major institution that was designed to hold the Salvadoran presidency accountable. So this is many things. This is blatantly anti democratic, but it also gives him a lot of power. And that has played a crucial role now during this crack them.

[Unknown Speaker]

So let's talk about the PR aspect of this a little bit. As you mentioned, Bukele often tweets in English, and a lot of his comments seem directed toward an international audience as well as, or perhaps instead of his own constituents. So I was looking at his Twitter this morning, and on April 16, he tweeted, Strong men create good times. At one point, he changed his Twitter bio to read coolest dictator in the world. So how should we understand his approach to communications? Not only as, you know, a way of communicating with people within El Salvador, but also around the world, and particularly, you know, an American, English speaking audience.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, there's. There's a lot that we can say, as you mentioned, there's a lot that we can say about how his communication style impacts the way Salvadorans feel about him. But even putting all of that to the side, it's very clearly also kind of an exercise in international relations. I think the place to start is to remember that we're talking about a country that is both relatively small and very interconnected. So this is a country of just under 7 million people, an area about that of the state of Massachusetts, but a huge chunk of its population. Estimates vary wildly on this, but anywhere around 40% of Salvadorians actually live abroad. They don't live in El Salvador, and many of them live in The United States, this is also a country that's dollarized. And so the fates of El Salvador and the United States are intricately linked. So I think Bukele has recognized from very early on that being able to manage his relationship with the rest of the world and especially with the United States was going to be extremely important. Now, if we remember that he is an anti establishment leader, he is, I think, genuinely incredibly skeptical of international organizations and many governments, certainly the Biden administration. I think he sees Twitter as a way of bypassing what someone might call the institutions of globalization and speaking directly to the people, speaking directly to Salvadoran immigrants who are outside, speaking directly to opinion makers and leaders in opposition parties such as the Republican party in the U.S. and overall, what he's been able to do really is to frame himself as a head of state that's very modern, very forward looking, very hip, very active, and for lack of a better word, I think people sort of look at his tweeter feed and they think, hey, this guy is really cool. And that's what in sort of international relations we might call self power. Right. People sort of looking at Bukele and thinking, either hey, I kind of want to be him, or hey, I kind of want to have a president or a leader like him. And that has been incredibly effective for his standing and his reputation internationally, certainly across Latin America, certainly in the US and beyond.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I mean, the way you describe his Twitter use as a way of kind of cutting through institutions and speaking directly to people, it. I don't want to fall into the trap of comparing everyone to Donald Trump, but it does sound a lot like Donald Trump. And I wonder how you think about Bukele in the context of this kind of broader populist authoritarian movement that we've seen around the world recently. Does he sort of fit into that?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, I think so. And that's funny that you bring up Donald Trump. I remember, you know, at some point reading the headline, Donald Trump is the Twitter president. And I remember thinking, oh, just you, there's a way to meet this guy. So yeah, I mean, certainly I think Bukele is part of this wave of populist, anti establishment leaders. I think what sets him apart is it's Donald Trump in terms of, hey, let's use Twitter to cut through these institutions, to cut through the noise, to reach people directly. But he's young and he's cool and he gets it. Right. This is sort of his native environment. Right. He understands memes, he understands trends, he understands hashtags, he understands what goes viral. And he has a whole team of people who also understand this. And so it's a little bit as if, you know, there are many leaders out there who try to use social media more or less in this way. I think Bukele is a case of the tools and sort of the personal qualities of the man. Using them are really sort of a match made in heaven and they really do complement each other very well. Now what is going to be really interesting moving forward is are we going to start seeing other leaders actually learn from Bukele? And already in pretty much every Latin American country from Mexico to Argentina, you can find leaders in these places. In some cases people who are running for president, in some cases important party leaders who have, especially in the past few months, started to say, hey, look, this guy Bukele, he's great. He's the role model, he's the person we should follow. And so over the next year, maybe a couple of years, we might start to see Bukele as being sort of less, as a symptom or another instance of this wave of anti establishment populists and actually almost more of a contributor, more of a cause, more of an inspiration for future leaders. So that's definitely something to keep an eye on.

[Unknown Speaker]

It seems like he's also become kind of a source of inspiration for American politicians and right wing commentators. So Senator Marco Rubio report, Republican of Florida, has spoken with great admiration of Bukele and the gang crackdown. You see figures like Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk talking about how great Bukele is. I'm curious what you make of, of the love for him within the the U.S. right, right.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

You're totally right. And I would sort of say this comes down to three things. Let's start with kind of the, the more obvious ones. So the first thing is this is a president whose approval rating never seems to dip under 80%. Right. That is incredible. That is almost unprecedented. Right. Sometimes you'll see presidents or prime ministers reach those approval ratings maybe for a week or a month or maybe a couple of months, usually in the aftermath of some sort of event that rallies people. But this is a man who's been able to maintain 80% approval rating since at least 2019. And so I think that alone would make almost any politician in the world look at Bukele and go, what does this guy have? How can we get some of it? How can we become more like him and be closer to him? So that's number one. But number two, and especially for the Republican party, I think there's what I would call a clear kind of ideological affinity between especially the sort of right flank of the Republican party and Bukele. So we were just talking about social media. Consider sort of three hashtags that we might associate with kind of the way, again, the right wing of the Republican party thinks days, right? It's like, hashtag make America great again, hashtag America first, and hashtag blue Lives Matter. Those three ideas, those three hashtags are in the Salvadoran context with its own idiosyncrasies and quirks, perfectly exemplified by Bukele. Right. So this narrative of, hey, look, this country has been taken over by a corrupt cabal of political and economic elites, and we need to wrestle power back and give it to the people. That is make El Salvador great again. This idea of, hey, the rule of law needs to be enforced no matter the cost, no matter the human rights violations. This is not that different from law and order Republicans. And this third idea, Bukele often says in different ways, Bukele will often say, look, I don't care how big or virtuous of an NGO you are. I don't care how big or virtuous of a government you are. You have absolutely no right to tell me or my fellow Salvadorans how to. How to run our country. Our first and only responsibility is to ourselves. This is El Salvador first. This is America first. And so there is a very clear affinity between some of the underlying ideas that motivate the right wing of the Republican party and the things that Bukele seems to believe in and push and tweet. The third part of this is that as far as we can tell, there has been sort of an active strategy of Bukele's where he has invested quite a few resources into sort of creating networks and ties and relationships with the Republican party. Appearing on Tucker Carlson, for example, hiring lobbyists to talk to Republican lawmakers. So if you combine these three things, right here is an extremely popular politician. We all kind of want to be him. Not only that, he seems to believe in a lot of the underlying things we believe in. And he's over here actually trying to talk to us and befriend us. It's sort of a match made in heaven when you think about it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

Which is really concerning. And I think, you know, the. The United States obviously has been having some Democratic backsliding recently in large part because of the Republican Party. And if you say, you know, that there's an ideological affinity, part of what there's an affinity with is, as you Say, this sort of extreme law and order around rhetoric that has led to really astonishing and egregious human rights violations that have led to a lot of condemnation from around the world. There's a lot of reporting about sort of mega prison that the government is building or has built that, you know, would be incarcerating people in very close proximities and sometimes in extreme darkness. Can you talk a little bit more about the sort of human rights abuses that have taken place as part of Bukele's crackdown?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah. So under the state of emergency, basically what the state of emergency does is that it gives the government a blank check to arrest anyone, basically for any reason. From the very beginning of the state of emergencies, since March of last year, there have been reports from both local and international organizations of many wrongful arrests. And it's very difficult to put a number on that. As we were mentioning earlier, basically there's no data transparency here. So the number could be anywhere between 2,000 or so wrongful arrests, all the way up to 20 or 25,000 wrongful arrests. In addition to these wrongful arrests, there is mounting evidence of violence inside of these prisons. So the number of reports of people dying inside these prisons, apparently being murdered inside of these prisons, those keep going up. And just to point you to one of the few sort of data points we actually have in September of last year. So this was around the height of the state of emergency. This is when the. This is when arrests were happening at a pretty breakneck speed at that point. According to a survey, three in 10 Salvadorans said they knew of someone that they knew, someone who had been wrongfully arrested in the past three months. So when you think about that, that's pretty astounding almost by any measure. And you know, those are major human rights violations. And the follow up question is, okay, well, thousands of people have been wrongfully arrested. What is happening to those people and to people who were gang members who've been arrested? What is happening to them inside of these prisons? So we know for a fact that these prisons are massively overcrowded. They already were overcrowded before Bukele went and arrested 70,000 people. We can only imagine, because we can't. We're not allowed to actually see inside them, but we can only imagine that the conditions inside of these prisons must be extremely dire. Truly dire.

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Yeah, I mean, I have to say, one of the things I've been puzzling over when it comes to Bukele's popularity is the amount of people who have potentially been wrongly arrested. You said three in 10 Salvadorians say they know someone who is wrongly arrested, and yet his. His popularity ratings are sky high. I mean, they're in like that, the high 80s, low 90s. So what explains that? Like, how does that math work? Do people approve of him even though they know people who have been wrong, really arrested? Do people who don't approve? Are they just not answering in these, these polls? What explains that?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, I think that's a. That's a big puzzle. That's a big question that we should all sort of look into. And there's a couple of possible explanations or theories out there. One of them comes down to a different data point that shows up in these surveys, and it's the following. 88.2% of Salvadorians, so almost 9 in 10 Zavagoins, say they currently feel very safe in the place where they live. This is up from about 6 in 10 Salvadorans before the state of exception. And of those 8 to 9 in 10 Salvadorans who say they feel safe or very safe, when you ask them, hey, why do you think you feel so safe? What happened? What changed? 95% of them tell you that it has something to do with Bukele's crackdown. And so when you put all of those data points together, I think the picture that emerges is it looks like many salvadorans have kind of evaluated this trade off between, hey, there might be some wrongful arrests, there might be some human rights violations, but we get security and we get safety. And it sounds like when presented with that trade off, a majority of salvadorans have said, yeah, we'll take it, we'll take it and we'll like it. And, you know, that has all sorts of implications, certainly for democracy and for human rights. But as far as I can tell, again, and acknowledging that our access to data and information is really limited, but as far as I can tell, based on these sort of surveys, that seems to be what's going on.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important and really troubling. And I mean, it's worth underlining. You know, it's not just. Or my understanding is that it's not just, you know, Salvadorians who might have approved of Bukele ahead of time who feel this way. Alfaro, which is a publication that has really harshly criticized Bukele, has been targeted by Bukele in numerous ways, published a long article saying that Bukele dismantled the gang presence in El Salvador and doing a lot of reporting to. To that effect. And I mean, I. I will say I have struggled with this because as you know, someone who is in favor of democracy and human rights, seeing that someone can, you know, actually make people accept the trade off between liberty and security and say, yes, I want security, and that it seems to have actually worked is like profoundly troubling on, not only on a human rights, but on kind of an intellectual level for.

For what it means for El Salvador.

For what it means for democracy generally.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, I think that's right. And, you know, one thing to keep in mind, and we sort of point this out in the piece, is that this isn't really a new story. There are plenty of examples, certainly in Latin America, of moments when a country faces some sort of crisis, usually some sort of security crisis, and people appear more than willing to kind of give up their democratic institutions, in some cases their human rights. They appear willing to give up those things so that this crisis can be addressed effectively and sort of. I think the clearest example of this is Peru in the 1990s, which happy to talk about and get into. But this is not unprecedented, right. This is sort of a. This is sort of, for lack of a better term, a bug with democracy that we. That we sort of know about and that we've seen before. When, when security is at stake, when crisis is happening, people maybe, understandably, people seem, at least in some cases, willing to kind of put those democratic institutions, put those checks and balances, put those human rights on the back burner and say, please go take care of this. Make it safe again. Now, the problem with this is, yeah, I mean, that tends to be popular in the short run, that in some cases helps governments deal with crisis. But once you've thrown out your democratic institutions, once you've done away with your checks and balances, those things are very hard to get back. And so the crisis might pass and the enemy might be defeated and the smoke clears and you look around and. And you no longer have a crisis, but you also no longer have a democracy. And at that point, people might change the way they feel.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I definitely want to go back to the Peru comparison because I think it's really striking and thought provoking. But before we get there, I mean, so let's talk about why you think that at least in the short term, this crackdown has worked when others haven't. And then we can go on to discuss why it is that that might break down.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Sure. So as we mentioned earlier, Latin America is a region that, especially over the past 20 or 30 years, has seen a lot of organized crime. And with that have come a lot of exercises in really tough anti crime policies. The sort of shorthand for these policies in the region is manolura, which literally means stronger, heavy hand. Now, what the region history teaches us is that these criminal crackdowns, they almost always fail, and in many cases they actually backfire. And this can happen for a number of reasons, and no two cases are exactly the same. But the story that most clearly applies to the Salvadoran case, or I should say should have applied to the Salvadorian case, is that when the state cracks down on criminal groups, when it declares all out war on criminal groups like Bukele did, it creates really powerful incentives for these criminal groups to fight back. To fight back not only to protect themselves and their members and their assets, but also to sort of turn the heat up on the government and the state to take a step back and go, whoa, okay, okay. And not only that, it sometimes actually motivates criminal groups to do things like recruit more members, diversify their sources of income, gain more income, even form alliances. And you put all that together, and basically what sometimes happens when you put crack down on these criminal groups is they become more violent and they also become stronger. That is, if you had asked any number of political scientists, any number of people who study organized crime in Latin America, if on the day before the state of exception was declared, on the day before Bukele declares war on these groups, if you had asked any number of political scientists, hey, how do you think this is going to play out? That's the story they probably would have told you, oh, the criminal groups are going to fight back quite violently. They might even end up becoming stronger. And eventually the government is probably going to have to make a u turn and criminal groups are going to fight to see another day. That is sort of how this shift should have played Out. It isn't how it played out.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And so why not? What did Bukele do differently?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

So I should start by saying that there are, you know, there are several theories about this. What I argue in this piece is that the key to understanding what's different here has really nothing to do with the crackdown itself. It has to do with what happens before the crackdown, which is a covert non aggression pact between the Bukele government and the three major criminal groups. So we know both from really great, really brave investigative reporting, but also by some indictments that have been handed out in the U.S. actually, we know that as early as 2019, when he's first elected, Bukele begins to negotiate with these criminal groups. And the way these negotiations happen, by the way, which ends up being really important, these negotiations happen behind bars. A sort of interesting quirk of El Salvador's criminal groups is that its leaders have long operated from behind bars. So even from behind bars, they've sort of been able to kind of control what happens on the outside. But anyway, from at least the moment he's elected, if not earlier, Bukele or Bukele's representatives basically begin to negotiate a pact with the leaders of these three criminal organizations. And the general idea of the pact, as far as you can tell, is, look, the government says, hey, we need to keep violence down. Violence is not good for us politically and violence is not good in general. So, you know, stop using it, stop killing people, stop, quote, unquote, disappearing people. And in exchange, the government, among other things, basically also agrees to kind of hold back on its use of violence. Right. So we're not gonna, we're not gonna go hunt down gang members. But it also agrees to a number of concessions that are especially good for gang members and gang leaders who are in prison. So everything from relaxing security conditions in prison to in some cases actually letting gang leaders leave prison well before their sentences were completed. So between 2019, when Bukele becomes president, and really until everything kind of implodes in March of last year, this was really the centerpiece of Bukele's security policy. Bukele's government negotiated a non aggression pact, a non violence pact with the leaders of these three gangs. Now, to understand how that then shapes the way the crackdown plays out, it's important to understand two things about how this pact worked and what it did to the criminal groups. So the first is that it trained the criminal groups to think as follows. As long as we, the criminal groups don't use any violence, the Government is not going to come after us. And if we do use violence, the government is going to come after us the briefly, but as long as we sort of hold back, we don't fight back, we don't shoot back, the smoke is going to clear and we can go back to the negotiating table. Now, this happened a couple of times. So for example, In April of 2020, these criminal groups suddenly went on this violent killing spree. They killed about 80 people over a couple of days back then Bukele sort of came out and said, we are going to end these criminal groups, we're going to pursue them with everything. We have conducted some arrests. But then a few days later, everything was back to normal, the pact was back in place. This happened again in November of 2021. These criminal groups suddenly went out and they killed upwards of 40 people in the space of a couple of days. Bukele comes out and he says, we are going to end these criminal groups, we're going to come after them with everything we have. He conducts some mass arrests. He puts this cruise on some of the gang members who are in prison. But then a couple of days later, the smoke clears, everything is back to normal, the pact is back in place. So this pact really taught these criminal groups that that's how this worked. In March of 2022, when the criminal groups once again went on this violent killing spree, they had every reason to believe that history would repeat itself. And sure enough, Bukele came out again for the third time and said, hey, we are going to end these criminal groups. We're going to come after them with everything we buy. But the criminal groups had been taught by this process of the pact, they had been taught that, hey, this is exactly the way the government reacts. We just need to hold tight for a couple of days and then everything will be back to normal. Of course this time was different, but by the time the criminal groups are able to realize, hey, government isn't backing down this time, it's been a week, it's been two weeks, they're arresting us by the thousands. By that point, it's too late for these criminal groups to really respond, to really wage a war, to really defend themselves. So that's the first thing that the pact does. The second thing the pact does is that it drives a wedge between the criminal leaders and what you might call the rank and file. So if you think about the way the pact was set up, the big benefits of the pact were really going to these gang leaders. So here we're talking primarily about Prison conditions were better. Little things like visitation rights, little things like, do I now have access to cell phones? But also big things like, hey, I might be able to leave prison 20 or 30 years early. So the pact in that sense is really good for criminal leaders, but it's the rank and file who actually have to pay the price. The rank and file are in a straight jacket. They're not allowed to go about their normal business. They're not allowed to use violence to settle scores. They're not allowed to use violence to extract rents. They're not allowed to use violence to establish their authority. They're paying a pretty high price for benefits that seem to be going mostly to their leadership. This presents a problem for these leaders. Right. How do you enforce a pact that benefits you at the expense of your rank and file? And how do you enforce it from behind bars? That's no easy task. The evidence suggests that what these leaders did is that they made moves to centralize as much power as possible over the criminal groups in their own hands. So they either removed or refused to appoint sort of surrogates. Surrogates or second seconds in command. And a very small number of gang leaders, probably a handful, suddenly accumulated pretty much complete sort of organizational power over these criminal groups. This becomes crucial once the Salvadoran state decides to fully crack down on the gangs in March, because, remember, these gang leaders are imprisoned. And so it's suddenly very easy for the government, as soon as the crackdown starts, to cut off the leaders from the rest of the gang. And because the leaders had opted not to appoint any surrogates, not to appoint anyone who could fill that vacuum, suddenly the gangs were at war and headless. A lot of the things that you would do if you're a criminal organization to respond to a crackdown, they require leadership. They require organization. Coming up with strategies, coordinating with gang members and gang cliques that are in other regions, increasing your income, forming alliances, all these things require leadership. And because of what the pact had done to the leaders of the gangs, because of what the pact had done to sort of the organizational chart of the gangs, suddenly they were leaderless. There was no one who could kind of do this job of essentially serving as a wartime commander or time leader. And this gave the Salvadoran government a decisive upper hand. So if you put all that together, my explanation for why this crackdown seems to have succeeded when so many like it backfire. The explanation seems to be it seems to be in this pack.

[Unknown Speaker]

So so far, this has been quite successful. At the same time, you know, You. You indicated that there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical, that it will hold in the long term, and we've talked about that at a high level. But are there any particular things that you'll be keeping your eye on to see if this is all going to fall apart?

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Yeah, for sure. So there's a couple of things that I think it's important to keep an eye on. One concern is, is, you know, criminal organizations, they never emerge in a vacuum. So in the Salvadoran case, there were a number of conditions that motivated and enabled young people to join these criminal organizations. Right? Lack of opportunities, poverty, a lack of protection, a lack of security. One concern is that those underlying conditions haven't really changed. It seems possible that this is still a context in which criminal groups, maybe the same criminal groups, maybe different criminal groups, could emerge or reemerge. Now, if that begins to happen, it's likely that the way we would know this, the sort of signs of this would be spurts of violence. So right now, if you believe the Salvadoran authorities, the daily homicide rate is anywhere between 0 and 1. If we suddenly start to see days where that spikes a little bit, days with four or five homicides, that could be a sign of, hey, there's something happening in sort of El Salvador's criminal landscape. Someone appears to be shooting here. Someone appears to be organizing. So that's one concern. Another concern that some people have put forward has to do with new groups moving in. And so, in particular, the region's big drug cartels, and I'm thinking here primarily of Mexican tells, they've always been conspicuously absent from El Salvador, even as they. Even as they sort of stretched. Stretched into. Into Guatemala and Honduras right next door. Now, kind of the conventional wisdom among people who. People who study this case has always been that, you know, the gangs had a. Basically a monopoly over El Salvador, but the cartels didn't really see them as reliable business partners. And so if cartels had a choice between sort of getting into business with these gangs or conquering these gangs so that they can set up shop in El Salvador, cartels basically just decided to go set up shop elsewhere. There are some concerns, particularly among international observers and diplomatic corps, that this is now an opportunity. If the gangs truly have been wiped off the map, this is now an opportunity for cartels and from other criminal organizations in the region to start moving in. So that's a second concern. That's something to keep an eye on. The third thing is, if it is true, and it appears to be true, that there have been thousands of unlawful arrests. What is going to happen if and when these thousands of people who were all arrested at around the same time, what is going to happen when they come back into society that is not too different a scenario from the 1990s when suddenly El Salvador had this huge influx of young men who are coming back from wartime exile. And there was. There really wasn't much for them to do. There really wasn't. There really weren't many places for them to go. And so criminal groups and criminal enterprises presented one option. So is it possible that whenever we start to see kind of a massive flow of people leaving prison, is it possible that the Salvadoran government is going to have a similar situation? Hands, that's another thing to keep an eye on.

[Unknown Speaker]

So I want to close by turning back to Peru, which you mentioned earlier, that what happened in PERU in the 1990s and then over the course of the last two decades is sort of a cautionary tale for what might happen to El Salvador under Bukele and after. Bukele and I found this particularly striking because Peru is currently in the midst of a protracted political crisis. They've had five presidents in the last seven years. The current president's weathering a serious legitimacy crisis after directing the military and police to violently attack protesters after the last president was impeached. It's not stable by any means. Walk me through that comparison a little bit and how you kind of see and what happened in Peru, a possible dark future for El Salvador.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Right? Yeah. So again, you know, no country is like any other country, but I do think there are some truly striking parallels between these two cases. So Alberto Fujimoni, much like Bukele, was a president who was elected on an anti establishment populist platform, vowing to do away with sort of this decrepit establishment to address many of the issues that frustrated Peruvians. And much like Bukele, he comes into power, he comes into office and he's hit with a pretty significant security crisis. In the Peruvian case, this was really a guerrilla insurgency. A Maoist guerrilla known as the Sendero Luminoso was starting to wage a really pretty brutal and scary war war in Peru. And Fujimori turns around and he shuts down Congress, he shuts down the court. He essentially concentrates as much power as possible under the presidency, in part under the guise of, listen, we have a security crisis. This is getting out of hand. I am the president and I need to do whatever I have to do to keep Peruvians safe. All of that has some striking parallels to Bukele's situation in El Salvador. Here's another striking parallel. Most Peruvians supported this. Fujimori's sort of power grab in order to fight the security crisis was extremely popular. It got him reelected. Even as evidence of widespread human rights abuses began to mount, a vast majority of Peruvians continued to support him. And again, that is very much analogous to what's happening in El Salvador now. What happens in Peru is before long, after a couple of years, Fujimori really, for all intents and purposes has more or less defeated these guerrillas. The insurgency is clearly not going to succeed. Safety is for the most part restored. But Fuhimori is still around. And not only that, Fujimori has really been able to completely undermine all checks and balances. He has an iron grip on the state. He gets himself reelected for a second time. So he gets a third term and he ends up staying in power until 2000 when he's, when he's forced to resign in the middle, in the middle of a corruption scam. Now, one concern is that something similar might end up happening in this case, right? So it's possible that Bukele seems to have defeated the gangs by concentrating power, by getting rid of checks and balances, by walking over human rights. It's possible that these fears that it's crime coming back, it's possible that's not going to happen. But El Salvador now finds itself in a situation where it no longer has democratic institutions, it no longer has checks and balances that can hold the presidency accountable. Bukele is running for re election in 2024. He will almost certainly win that election simply because of his popularity rating. He can play completely fair and still win that election. I don't know that he will play completely fair, but he could play completely fair and still win that election. The question then is what happens next? You still have a president, much like Fudimarian Peru, who is extremely powerful. Security crisis is long gone. The power is still there. You know, you could. It's very easy to imagine a scenario where Bukele stays in power not only for a second term, but also a third term, which would put his tenure at about 15 years. And if Peru is any indication what's likely, what we're likely to see is widespread corruption. At the time Fuhimori steps down, he sort of famously made Forbes list of the 10 most corrupt leaders of all time. Now, I will say it's now been over 20 years since Fuhimori stepped down. I don't think it's fair or accurate to see in Fuhimori the root of Peru's current problem. I do think it's a factor. I do think reasonable, very well informed people might disagree with this. I would argue that Peruvian institutions, even now, they never fully recovered from the Fuhimori experience. So again, I think if there's a lesson to gain from Peru, it's that democratic institutions are very easy to throw away when there's a crisis, but then they're very, very difficult to get back once that crisis is passed.

[Unknown Speaker]

Let's leave it there. Manuel, thank you so much for joining us.

[Manuel Melendez Sanchez]

Sure. Thank you.

[Unknown Speaker]

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