When Flávio Bolsonaro was contemplating a run for president of Brazil, he flew to one in all Latin America’s tiniest nations, in search of concepts. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador had turned what was as soon as the world’s deadliest nation into one in all its most secure, largely by rounding up tens of 1000’s of younger males and sentencing them to jail in mass trials.
Mr. Bolsonaro, the son of Brazil’s right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro, was impressed. He introduced his marketing campaign a number of weeks later, in December, and adopted a platform that known as for 5 new maximum-security prisons, eight-year jail sentences for cellphone thieves and chemical castration for rapists and pedophiles. At a current rally, he informed voters: “I’m beginning to suppose El Salvador isn’t sufficient.”
He then received the primary spherical of Brazil’s election, and in Sunday’s runoff, he’s the favourite to win the presidency. That might make Mr. Bolsonaro the eighth consecutive right-wing president elected in Latin America over the previous 18 months, all of whom have praised or adopted Mr. Bukele’s hard-line techniques.
Many of those new leaders are constructing megaprisons and undermining civil liberties to incarcerate extra folks, whereas turning to social media to advertise their work and demonize the younger males they aim.
Mr. Bukele’s affect is evident. The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica are finishing up crackdowns featured in slickly produced movies resembling his. In Lima, propaganda traces a freeway selling a politician who declares himself the “Peruvian Bukele.” Dozens of Latin American officers have toured Mr. Bukele’s 40,000-capacity jail to attempt to burnish their crime-fighting credentials. And eight nations have their very own maximum-security prisons within the works.
All of this comes with the backing of probably the most highly effective nation within the hemisphere. President Trump is one in all Mr. Bukele’s largest followers and has lifted him up as a mannequin for the area.
Name it the Bukeleization of Latin America.
El Salvador’s very on-line strongman has taken the archetype of the Latin American populist dictator, recognized within the area because the caudillo, and introduced it into the twenty first century with exceptional outcomes. Homicides in El Salvador are, in line with official statistics, down 95 % since he took workplace in 2019. And, in line with polls, his approval score hovers round 90 %.
“He’s pulled off a miracle,” stated Steven Levitsky, a Harvard professor of presidency who research authoritarian leaders. “So politicians are replicating his discourse, his type, his most safety prisons,” he added.
However the open query is: What they will actually accomplish and the way it will change Latin America? “I’m fairly positive this can finish badly,” Mr. Levitsky stated.
The Bukele mannequin
Mr. Bukele is constructing on long-running developments in Latin America.
Brutal drug wars have been fought for many years. Because the Nineteen Eighties, the USA principally backed technocratic governments to take down drug kingpins and disrupt provide chains. In Mexico and Colombia, governments introduced bombs and helicopters to the struggle, and tens of 1000’s of individuals died.
Strongman presidents aren’t new, both. There have been dozens within the area’s historical past, spanning an ideological spectrum from Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean basic who crushed communist opponents, to the charismatic Venezuelan left-wing populist Hugo Chávez, who mobilized the plenty with lengthy speeches at rallies on the street.
El Salvador’s president, nevertheless, has innovated. As a substitute of looking kingpins, he has targeted on mass detentions. As a substitute of political rallies to win help, he vilifies his targets on social media. And he has executed a scientific authoritarian takeover, together with by suspending rights, consolidating energy, purging judges, eliminating time period limits, and chasing off critics and journalists.
Absolute management has been important to imprisoning so many. His dismantling of El Salvador’s democracy allowed him to push ahead with an unfettered crackdown. His authorities suspended some constitutional rights underneath an indefinite state of emergency, so the authorities not wanted arrest warrants and detainees may very well be imprisoned with out prices.
He then reworked the justice system to maintain them there, in line with human rights teams. A whole bunch of defendants are tried directly. Nameless witnesses testify in opposition to dozens of the identical folks. Gang membership, which Mr. Bukele has recommended may be confirmed by tattoos, can carry decades-long sentences. He even amended the Structure to permit life sentences for 12-year-olds.
The result’s that El Salvador now has the best incarceration fee on this planet.
Manuel Meléndez-Sánchez, a Salvadoran researcher who research the Bukele mannequin on the College of Notre Dame, stated that 20 years in the past, the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, carried out what was broadly considered one of many area’s most intense crackdowns, arresting roughly one in 1,000 Mexicans. Within the first two years of Mr. Bukele’s marketing campaign, Mr. Meléndez-Sánchez stated, the Salvadoran chief arrested almost one in each 80 Salvadorans.
Maybe much more gorgeous are the outcomes. Homicides have fallen to lower than two per 100,000 folks, from about 50 when Mr. Bukele was elected and 100 a decade in the past. That has made El Salvador safer than the USA. Many Salvadorans say they will now lastly exit at night time. Vacationers are flowing in. And even some moms with imprisoned sons say there have been advantages.
Because of this, Mr. Bukele has change into Latin America’s hottest chief, if not the world’s. With time, he has additionally more and more performed the a part of a Nineteenth-century caudillo, swapping his baseball cap for a gold-trimmed uniform of types and even digging up the stays of a previous chief to create a nationwide mausoleum.
However on-line, he continues to behave just like the 45-year-old Bitcoin devotee he’s. He trolls leftists and posts slickly produced movies, together with photographs of inmates in boxer shorts cowering underneath the watch of jail guards. When working for re-election, he modified his social media bio from the “world’s coolest dictator” to “Thinker King.”
That on-line persona has been vital to constructing his profile overseas. He often posts in English, and he now has greater than twice as many followers on TikTok (13.5 million) than there are folks in El Salvador (six million).
To many politicians throughout Latin America, it has made imitation irresistible.
The Bukele imitators
Final week, President Laura Fernández of Costa Rica gave native officers and influencers a tour of her authorities’s new maximum-security jail, displaying off the big caged cells that may maintain 50 prisoners every.
Mr. Bukele was not solely an inspiration, she stated, but additionally a hands-on adviser. “Expensive President Bukele,” she stated at an occasion inaugurating the 5,000-inmate penitentiary. “I ship you a giant, robust hug, together with the appreciation and respect of the whole inhabitants of Costa Rica.”
There isn’t a chief who has pursued the Bukele mannequin extra aggressively than President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador. In January 2024, he suspended many constitutional rights underneath a state of emergency and deployed 22,000 troops in opposition to gangs. He’s constructing a number of new prisons that he stated have been positive to please the “Bukele lovers.” And he has launched Bukele-style pictures of shaved prisoners bowing their heads to guards.
But the technique has not precisely labored. In 2025, homicides in Ecuador surged 30 % to a report 9,200. The homicide fee has since fallen by 10 %, however general it’s nonetheless barely greater than when he took workplace.
One distinction from El Salvador: Mr. Noboa bumped into checks on his energy. His authorities has carried out almost 58,000 arrests this yr, however Ecuador’s incarceration fee has not grown almost as quick, as judges have launched lots of them pending trial.
Mr. Bukele performs by a unique algorithm. “What actually defines his mannequin and what explains the outcomes is that justice doesn’t exist,” stated Laura Chinchilla, a former president of Costa Rica. Mr. Bukele, not the regulation, “decides who’s arrested and who’s stored in jail.”
Which means, she stated, few presidents will actually be capable of observe the Bukele mannequin.
Even recreating Mr. Bukele’s success underneath a full authoritarian state could be tough, Mr. Meléndez-Sánchez stated. For one, El Salvador is the dimensions of Massachusetts, making it a lot simpler to police than a continent-spanning nation like Brazil — or perhaps a nation solely reasonably larger, like Ecuador.
Most necessary, Mr. Bukele annihilated the gangs as a result of he caught them off guard, Mr. Meléndez-Sánchez stated. U.S. prosecutors discovered important proof years in the past that Mr. Bukele’s authorities made a pact with the gangs to scale back violence, after which out of the blue reversed course and went after them.
And whereas his social-media movies are simply imitated, that doesn’t imply their effectiveness may be replicated. In her video from Costa Rica’s new mega-prison, Ms. Fernández confirmed not one of the winking attraction or darkish charisma of the standard Bukele TikTok.
Mr. Meléndez-Sánchez, the Notre Dame researcher, stated there are two doubtless paths for Latin America’s new leaders: perform an assault on democracy like Mr. Bukele did and probably crush the gangs because of this — or undertake solely points of the Bukele mannequin and undermine democracy with out truly lowering crime.
“Both manner you slice it, I feel this has actually unhealthy implications for legal violence, actually unhealthy implications for human rights and actually unhealthy implications for democratic establishments,” he stated.
The Bukeleization of Latin America arrives on the identical time that Mr. Trump has intensified U.S. aggression within the area and tried to cement the USA’ management over the Western Hemisphere. He has rewarded Mr. Bukele and cheered him on, joking that he ought to construct extra megaprisons, and is now pushing different Latin American leaders to take a no-holds-barred method in opposition to the drug cartels, together with by permitting the U.S. army to hitch the struggle.
Probably the most important change Mr. Bukele has wrought could also be on the worldwide stage. By offering a mannequin that’s overwhelmingly fashionable with voters in crime-stricken nations, he has helped reshape the Latin American map, serving to speed up a lurch to the suitable. If Brazilians elect Mr. Bolsonaro on Sunday, at the moment’s strongest holdout within the area will be part of the right-wing ranks.