Nayib Bukele

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Nayib Bukele was born on the 24th of July 1981 in San Salvador, a city he would one day govern as mayor and later reshape as president. His paternal grandparents were Palestinian Christians who emigrated from Jerusalem and Bethlehem to El Salvador in 1921. His father converted from Christianity to Islam in the 1980s and founded four mosques in the country. His mother remained Catholic. Bukele grew up at a crossroads of faiths in one of the most violent countries in the Western Hemisphere, dropped out of law school to run his father's advertising firm, and by his early thirties had become the youngest mayor in El Salvador's history.

  What followed was one of the most dramatic political rises in Latin American history. He would be expelled from his own party, found a new one, win the presidency with an absolute majority, throw soldiers into the legislative chamber to intimidate lawmakers, imprison more than 85,000 people under a state of emergency, make bitcoin legal tender, and win re-election with nearly 85 percent of the vote. The questions his presidency raises are not easy ones: How did a country with one of the world's highest murder rates cut its homicide rate to among the lowest in the Americas in just a few years? And what did it cost?

• 2. From Advertising to City Hall

  ›

  In 1999, Bukele founded the marketing company Obermet, also known as 4am Saatchi & Saatchi El Salvador, and served as its president until 2006. The firm ran political advertising for the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, including presidential campaigns for Schafik Hándal in 2004 and Mauricio Funes in 2009. He was also president of Yamaha Motors El Salvador from 2009 to 2012. During those years, he described himself as a "businessman with a great future".

  In 2011, Bukele announced he would enter politics through the FMLN to break out of what he called his "comfort zone" as a businessman. He was elected mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán in March 2012 with 51.67 percent of the vote and took office on the 1st of May 2012 as the country's youngest mayor. He donated his $2,000 monthly salary to fund a scholarship program for local youth. In August 2014, his office launched Sphere PM, a high-altitude balloon project that reached 100,000 feet and photographed El Salvador from near space, with the stated goal of steering young people toward science and away from crime.

  In March 2015, he defeated ARENA's Edwin Zamora with 50.38 percent of the vote to become mayor of San Salvador, the capital. On the day he took office, he reversed the names of two streets that his predecessor Norman Quijano had renamed, restoring them to Calle San Antonio Abad and Boulevard Venezuela. He then renamed 89 Avenida Norte in June 2016 after Colonel José Arturo Castellanos, who had provided fake Salvadoran passports to 40,000 Central European Jews to help them escape the Holocaust. In January 2016, Bukele launched a "San Salvador 100% Illuminated" campaign, completing it by May of that year. He also created the Dalton Project, a scholarship program funded entirely from his own salary, to keep San Salvador's youth from joining gangs.

• 3. Expulsion and Reinvention

  ›

  Bukele's relationship with the FMLN grew contentious almost from the moment he became mayor of San Salvador. He clashed publicly with party members on Twitter and made no secret of his contempt for FMLN president Salvador Sánchez Cerén. When the government threatened to reappoint Luis Martínez as attorney general, Bukele called Martínez "a gangster, very corrupt, and the worst of the worst" and threatened to leave the party. The FMLN relented and replaced Martínez. Bukele later admitted the threat "was a bluff".

  The breaking point came in September 2017, when San Salvador FMLN member Xóchitl Marchelli alleged that Bukele had thrown an apple at her and called her a "damn traitor" and a "witch". Bukele boycotted an FMLN ethics tribunal convened on the 7th of October 2017, calling it biased. Three days later, on the 10th of October 2017, the party expelled him for "defamatory acts", disrespect for women's rights, and "disqualifying comments" toward party members. A specialized court acquitted Bukele on the 29th of March 2019.

  Fifteen days after his expulsion, on the 25th of October 2017, Bukele announced the founding of Nuevas Ideas on social media. He eventually sought registration for the party with the Supreme Electoral Court, but when it became clear the TSE would not register Nuevas Ideas in time for the 2019 presidential nomination deadline, he joined the right-wing Grand Alliance for National Unity, known as GANA. He selected lawyer Félix Ulloa as his running mate. On election day, the 3rd of February 2019, he defeated ARENA's Carlos Calleja, the FMLN's Hugo Martínez, and Josué Alvarado of Vamos with 53.1 percent of the vote, becoming the first presidential candidate elected outside of ARENA or the FMLN since José Napoleón Duarte in 1984.

• 4. The Homicide Numbers

  ›

  El Salvador's homicide rate peaked at 107 homicides per 100,000 people in 2015, a figure that placed it among the most dangerous countries on earth. By 2019 it had fallen to 38 per 100,000 people, still one of the world's highest. Most of the violence was committed by two gangs, MS-13 and the 18th Street gang, both of which had roots in Los Angeles rather than El Salvador: MS-13 was formed by Salvadoran refugees in the 1980s, and the 18th Street gang was formed by Mexican immigrants in the 1960s. At the start of Bukele's presidency, an estimated 67,000 people belonged to gangs in El Salvador.

  On the 19th of June 2019, Bukele announced a seven-phase Territorial Control Plan. Phase one deployed security forces to 12 of the country's municipalities where gangs collected extortion money. Phase two, launched in July 2019, created scholarships, schools, and sports centers for youth at risk of gang recruitment. By government statistics, the homicide rate fell to 19.7 per 100,000 people in 2020 and continued dropping each year: 17.6 in 2021, 7.8 in 2022, 2.4 in 2023, and 1.9 in 2024, one of the lowest rates in the Americas.

  Human rights lawyer Celia Medrano has stated that it is "impossible" to verify those figures because there is "no public access" to a daily homicide registry in El Salvador. Medrano noted that deaths in custody, bodies found in mass graves, and people killed in police encounters are not included in the government's statistics. The International Crisis Group, in July 2020, suggested that "quiet, informal understandings" between the government and the gangs may explain part of the early decline. Bukele denied any negotiations. The United States Department of the Treasury accused his government in December 2021 of secretly providing "financial incentives" to MS-13 and Barrio 18 and sanctioned two officials for the alleged dealings. In June 2025, ProPublica reported that a U.S. multiagency task force had gathered evidence that USAID funds sent to El Salvador had been laundered and used to pay key MS-13 leaders.

• 5. The State of Exception

  ›

  From the 25th to the 27th of March 2022, gangs committed 87 homicides across El Salvador. Sixty-two of those deaths fell on the 26th of March alone, making it the deadliest single day in Salvadoran history since the end of the civil war in 1992. Florida International University research director José Miguel Cruz attributed the killings to a breakdown in a secret truce between the government and the gangs, a truce Bukele has always denied. On the 27th of March 2022, the Legislative Assembly declared a 30-day state of emergency, suspending constitutional rights including freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and the right to legal representation.

  The state of exception was renewed repeatedly, extended 36 times by the 4th of March 2025. Over that period, more than 85,000 people were arrested on alleged gang affiliations, including 3,319 minors according to Human Rights Watch. El Salvador's prison population grew from 37,190 in 2020 to over 105,000 by December 2023, giving the country the highest incarceration rate in the world at 1.7 percent of its population behind bars. At least 427 people died in Salvadoran prisons following the declaration of the state of emergency, with human rights organizations counting at least 367 deaths in custody by March 2025.

  Bukele announced construction of the 40,000-inmate Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, in Tecoluca in July 2022. It covers 410 acres, is staffed by 250 police officers and 600 soldiers, and had at least 14,532 inmates by June 2024. In July 2023, a law formalized the existing practice of mass trials, allowing up to 900 people to be convicted in a single proceeding without a jury. Amnesty International stated the Salvadoran government had committed "massive human rights violations", including torture. Human Rights Watch cited "mounting evidence" of arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and false confessions. By November 2024, more than 8,000 people who had been arrested had been released after the government determined they were innocent. Polls taken between May 2022 and June 2023 found that 80 to 90 percent of Salvadorans approved of the crackdown.

• 6. Bitcoin and Bolívar Jackets

  ›

  On the 5th of June 2021, at the Bitcoin 2021 conference, Bukele announced he would introduce legislation to make bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador. The Legislative Assembly approved the bill three days later. Bitcoin became legal tender on the 7th of September 2021, a first for any country, sitting alongside the U.S. dollar, which had replaced the Salvadoran colón in 2001. About 1,000 people marched in San Salvador to protest the move. The World Bank declined to help implement the policy, citing environmental and transparency concerns. Economist Steve Hanke described El Salvador as having "the most distressed sovereign debt in the world" as a result.

  In November 2021, Bukele announced plans for Bitcoin City, to be built near the Conchagua volcano in the southeastern La Unión region, powered by geothermal energy and offering zero income, property, procurement, and city taxes. As bitcoin's price rose to $44,000 in December 2023, Bukele announced that the country's investment had broken even. By March 2024, he said El Salvador had made a 50-percent profit. By the 19th of January 2025, the Salvadoran government held 6,043 bitcoins worth $611.2 million. On the 18th of December 2024, the International Monetary Fund agreed to a $1.4 billion loan with El Salvador on condition the government remove the requirement for businesses to accept bitcoin as payment. The day after that agreement was signed, the director of the National Bitcoin Office announced El Salvador would continue buying bitcoin at an "accelerated rate". On the 29th of January 2025, the Bitcoin Law was amended to remove bitcoin's legal tender status while still permitting its use as payment.

  Bukele's second inauguration on the 1st of June 2024 featured a military parade by the Armed Forces of El Salvador and Bukele wearing a Napoleonic-cut jacket with gold trim, evoking the image of Venezuelan liberator Simón Bolívar. He described the day as "the most important moment in our recent history". He had won re-election on the 4th of February 2024 with 84.65 percent of the vote, the first Salvadoran president re-elected since Maximiliano Hernández Martínez in 1944. Nuevas Ideas retained its Legislative Assembly supermajority and, with allies, won 43 of the country's 44 newly consolidated municipalities.

• 7. Power, Press, and Democratic Backsliding

  ›

  On the 6th of February 2020, Bukele invoked Article 167 of the Salvadoran constitution and called an emergency legislative session to approve a $109 million loan for the Territorial Control Plan. When a quorum was not reached on the 9th of February, he ordered 40 soldiers into the Legislative Assembly's meeting room to coerce lawmakers. Opposition politicians called the episode a "self-coup"; it is known in El Salvador as "9F" or "El Bukelazo".

  After Nuevas Ideas won a legislative supermajority in 2021, Bukele's coalition voted on the 1st of May 2021 to remove all five justices of the Supreme Court of Justice's Constitutional Chamber and replace them with his allies, and to replace Attorney General Raúl Melara with Rodolfo Delgado. Journalists and opposition politicians called the event "1M" and another "power grab", and the United States condemned it. The new court subsequently ruled in September 2021 that the president could serve two consecutive terms, overturning a 2014 precedent, which paved the way for Bukele's 2024 re-election run.

  From 2019 to 2025, El Salvador fell 61 places in the World Press Freedom Index and 24 places in the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, which now classifies El Salvador as a hybrid regime. Bukele's government blocked 91 Twitter accounts belonging to journalists, lawyers, and activists, according to Human Rights Watch's December 2021 report. The U.S. placed sanctions on seven Bukele government officials, labeling them corrupt. In July 2025, the Legislative Assembly passed a constitutional amendment enabling indefinite re-election, extending presidential terms from five to six years, and eliminating the two-round voting system. In December 2025, Bukele told a YouTuber that if it were up to him, he would stay in office for ten more years.