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Sunday, April 20, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Editor’s note: “Behind the News“ is the product of the Sun staff assisted by the Sun’s AI lab, which includes a variety of tools such as Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity AI, Google Gemini and ChatGPT.
Nayib Bukele has emerged as one of Latin America’s most polarizing yet domestically popular leaders.
The self-styled “world’s coolest dictator” and “philosopher king” has transformed El Salvador through his uncompromising approach to gang violence, drastically reducing crime rates while raising serious human rights concerns.
His recent cooperation with the Trump administration on migration has further thrust him into the international spotlight, particularly with the controversial case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Bukele’s journey from privileged businessman to populist president represents a significant break from El Salvador’s traditional political establishment, achieving notable security improvements at a considerable cost to civil liberties.
Early life
Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez was born July 24, 1981, in San Salvador, El Salvador, into a family with remarkably diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds[1].
His father, Armando Bukele Kattán, was a successful businessman and industrial chemist who later converted from Christianity to Islam, becoming an influential imam who founded four mosques in El Salvador[1]. His mother, Olga Marina Ortez, is Catholic, creating a household with multiple religious influences[8].
His diverse heritage gave him a unique multicultural perspective uncommon in Salvadoran politics. As the first of four brothers (the others being Karim, Yusef and Ibrajim), Bukele also has several half-siblings from his father’s other relationships[8].
He completed his secondary education at the Escuela Panamericana in 1999 at age 18 and briefly enrolled at Central American University to study law before dropping out to join the family business[7].
From business to politics
Bukele’s professional life began in the advertising industry, where he worked at his father’s company, Nölck, which created political campaigns for the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)[7].
In 1999, at just 18, he founded his own marketing company, Obermet (also known as 4am Saatchi & Saatchi El Salvador), which also provides advertising services for FMLN presidential campaigns[17]. His business portfolio expanded when he became president of Yamaha Motors El Salvador from 2009 to 2012[9].
His political career began in earnest in 2011, and by 2012, he had joined the FMLN and was elected mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán, a small town about 15 minutes from San Salvador[7].
Even as a small-town mayor representing the FMLN, he frequently criticized the party as outdated and incompetent, creating tension with party leadership[9].
His political trajectory continued upward when he was elected mayor of San Salvador, the nation’s capital, in 2015[8].
Rise to national power
Bukele’s relationship with the FMLN deteriorated as his presidential ambitions grew. When the party balked at nominating him as its presidential candidate for the 2019 election, citing his youth, the then-37-year-old mayor lost patience and launched a campaign to discredit the party[7]. This resulted in his expulsion from the FMLN in 2017, prompting him to found his own political party, Nuevas Ideas[10].
However, when the Supreme Electoral Court refused to register his new party in time for the 2019 presidential election, Bukele pragmatically aligned with the Grand Alliance for National Unity to secure a place on the ballot[11]. This strategic move paid off, as he won the presidency, breaking the two-party system that had dominated Salvadoran politics since the end of the civil war in 1992[6].
Bukele took office as El Salvador’s 81st president June 1, 2019, at age 37, positioning himself as an outsider ready to challenge the establishment[6]. He first came to power promising to tackle corruption and the endemic gang violence that had plagued El Salvador for decades[6].
The war on gangs
The defining moment of Bukele’s presidency came in March 2022, when a gang killing spree left 87 people dead in a single weekend[2]. Bukele responded with what he called an “iron fist” approach, declaring a state of exception that limited certain constitutional rights, deploying the military and empowering police to arrest suspected gang members without warrants[2].
The crackdown was unprecedented in its scope and intensity. According to one police officer whose identity was protected, law enforcement personnel were given arrest quotas — at one point requiring five arrests per day[2].
The officer admitted that when they could no longer find gang members to arrest, they began detaining innocent people:
“Given that we had arrest goals, when we no longer found gang members, we began arresting people who had nothing to do with gangs. ... They are detained, and we charge them with the crime of unlawful association. A lot of innocent people are still in prison, and we have participated in that, because we thought they’d be released soon. And that has not been the case.”[2]
This mass incarceration strategy has resulted in approximately 108,000 detainees — a staggering 1.7% of El Salvador’s total population — being imprisoned in facilities designed to hold only 70,000 people[3].
Despite these concerning methods, the government reports significant success in reducing crime rates and breaking the power of notorious gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18[3].
Prison system and human rights concerns
While Bukele publicly promotes his prisons as “the best in the world,” human rights organizations paint a drastically different picture[3]. Organizations like Cristosal have documented thousands of arbitrary arrests during the state of exception, as well as widespread abuse and deaths inside prisons[2].
Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal, described the situation: “The majority of them, upon being detained, basically disappeared into the prison system. Family members don’t know if they’re alive, don’t know where they are, aren’t able to contact them.”[2]
The conditions within these facilities are reported to be dire. Detainees are cut off from the outside world and denied meaningful legal recourse[3]. Former prisoners have described systematic abuse, including severe beatings by both guards and other inmates[3].
One 18-year-old construction worker reported that police beat prison newcomers with batons for an hour upon arrival, and when he denied being a gang member, he was sent to a dark basement cell with 320 other detainees, where he was beaten daily[3].
The overcrowding is extreme, with prisoners forced to sleep on the floor or even standing up[3]. Medical professionals who have visited these facilities report widespread tuberculosis, fungal infections, scabies, severe malnutrition and chronic digestive issues[3]. The U.S. State Department itself in 2023 characterized these conditions as “life-threatening”[3].
Despite these troubling reports, Bukele’s approach enjoys broad support within El Salvador, where many citizens had lived in fear of gang violence for decades before his crackdown[6]. This popularity has allowed him to consolidate power and pursue what critics describe as increasingly authoritarian governance, earning him the self-applied nickname of the “world’s coolest dictator”[6].
Bukele and Trump: A strategic alliance
Bukele has strategically cultivated a relationship with President Donald Trump and his administration. Even before El Salvador accepted hundreds of migrants accused of being members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang in March, Bukele worked diligently to curry favor with Trump’s circle and establish himself as a “MAGA darling”[4].
His efforts included inviting Trump’s children and key allies, including former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, to attend his inauguration for what critics called a “constitutionally dubious second term.” He also made a primetime address to the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference[4].
The relationship has not been without complications.
During the 2024 Republican National Convention, Trump criticized Bukele for solving his country’s security challenges by “sending murderers to the United States of America”[4]. However, this tension appears to have been resolved through Bukele’s willingness to cooperate with Trump’s aggressive deportation policies.
Under a new arrangement, El Salvador is being paid to hold deportees from the U.S.[4]. Trump publicly thanked Bukele for his “understanding of this horrible situation, which was allowed to happen to the United States because of incompetent Democrat leadership,” adding, “We will not forget!”[4]
This alliance provides multiple benefits for Bukele. In addition to receiving payment — he described as “a very low fee” — for holding deportees, El Salvador also received 22 members of the notorious Salvadoran MS-13 gang as prisoners along with the Venezuelan deportees, including two top MS-13 leaders[4].
Bukele stated that receiving these MS-13 members would help El Salvador “finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants” of the gang[4].
The Abrego Garcia case
The deportation agreement between Trump and Bukele came under intense scrutiny with the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. On March 15, Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador despite having a 2019 court order that specifically barred his deportation to that country[5].
Abrego Garcia, who had escaped political violence in El Salvador in 2011, was sent to the country’s notorious CECOT prison, where he is being held along with hundreds of other alleged migrant gang members[5]. Trump administration officials claim he is a member of the criminal gang MS-13, but to date, they have provided little evidence of this assertion in court[5].
The Department of Homeland Security later admitted that Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador was the result of a “clerical error.” Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin stated, “He should have been sent to a detention center in Mexico, Nicaragua, Egypt,”[5] suggesting that while deportation was intended, sending him to El Salvador specifically violated the court order.
A federal judge ordered Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, but following an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Bukele in mid-April, the Salvadoran president stated he would not return Abrego Garcia[5]. Abrego Garcia has been in the El Salvador mega-prison for more than a month, caught in an international diplomatic standoff[5].
This case exemplifies the human consequences of the deportation arrangement between the two countries, which involves the Trump administration paying El Salvador $6 million to house migrants deported from the U.S. as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown[5].
Sources
[2]https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/thousands-of-innocent-people-jailed-in-el-salvadors-gang-crackdown
[3]https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/03/13/el-salvadors-prisons-are-no-place-us-deportees
[6]https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nayib-Bukele
[7]https://elfaro.net/en/202006/el_salvador/24542/The-Bukele-Clan-that-Rules-with-Nayib.htm
[8]https://www.cidob.org/en/lider-politico/nayib-bukele-ortez
[9]https://elfaro.net/es/201408/noticias/15839/El-FMLN-abre-la-puerta-grande-a-Nayib-Bukele.htm
[11]https://www.axios.com/2025/04/14/trump-bukele-visit-el-salvador-gang-deportations
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