Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced his own reelection on Sunday, ahead of any official results. International congratulations quickly rained in from neighboring countries and farther afield. “The Bukele tweet effect showed how influential the president is now, not only in El Salvador but in the hemisphere. And how far behind Salvadoran institutions have fallen,” according to El Faro.
Americas Quarterly editor Brian Winter ponders about what Bukele’s reelection says about people’s right to vote away democracy. “Perhaps no country, is capable of resisting that rarest of things: the competent authoritarian. Because Bukele is clearly brilliant, capable, effective. He has skills other aspiring strongmen only dream of.”
Juan Elman writes for Cenital from San Salvador, reporting on the Bukele party on Sunday and on Bukele’s armor of popularity, “built both by his security results and by his powerful digital communication machinery, the true national treasure. But the fantasy may also be broken in this second term. It is an idea that has been assaulting me for a few days: that from now on everything begins to decline, that this monumental festival will be the last, the maximum peak of Bukelism.”
El Salvador’s eroded opposition parties, “pulverised” in Sunday’s vote, mean it will be hard for credible opposition to emerge, but inflation, poverty and unemployment could be a threat to Bukele’s popularity moving forward, experts told Americas Quarterly.
“Showmanship is no substitute for governance, and the second term will inevitably increase pressure on Bukele to address the state of the economy,” Christine Wade said in AQ. “With food insecurity on the rise and exports in decline, Bukele will have to have to address the country’s socioeconomic ailments with policies that prove more effective than his stalled Bitcoin initiative.”
Regional
Bukele has been a regional influencer ever since his crackdown on gangs, carried out under an ongoing state of exception, effectively eradicated street gang territorial control in El Salvador. While Bukele has not done significant diplomatic outreach in the region, his sophisticated social network communication juggernaut reaches residents of Latin America directly, Carlos Dada told Sylvia Colombo on MyNews.
“Bukele’s success at the polls has elevated him to a beacon of the Latin American far right. From Chile to Mexico, voices are asking to follow his example to achieve power. It is an attractive and easy rhetoric, which offers a supposedly quick solution to one of the continent’s greatest scourges, although in reality it neither ends the problems of misery and lack of opportunities that are at the origin of crime, nor are its methods acceptable to a democracy unless one is willing to enter a permanent state of emergency,” warns El País in an editorial.
On Sunday, Bukele said he had offered Argentina’s Milei administration “collaboration,” while recognizing that the countries’ security challenges differ greatly. (Infobae)
Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bukele expressed interest in adapting the “Bukele Model,” yesterday. (Infobae) But, numerous experts have stressed that El Salvador’s particularities — Bukele’s broad government control combined with his popularity, the relative poverty of its criminal groups, and political parties lacking in credibility, among others — limit the exportability of his security policies. (Cenital)
Argentina
The Milei administration’s new anti-protest policies will be challenged in court. (Ámbito)
Haiti
Protesters in Haiti forced the closure of schools, banks and public offices yesterday, the first of a planned three days of demonstrations aimed at removing Prime Minister Ariel Henry from office, reports the Miami Herald. Police fired tear gas into a crowd staging a sit in, led by former Prime Minister Claude Joseph.
Protestes hope to force Henry to resign by Feb. 7, a date with national significance: in 1986 former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier fled for France on Feb. 7, and in 1991 it was the day that Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, was sworn in. (Associated Press)
Regional Relations
“The U.S. government is increasing its urgent military assistance to Guyana, officials said Monday, as neighboring Venezuela threatens to seize a large part of the country’s territory it has long claimed,” reports El País.
Chile
Fires in Chile’s Valparaiso region devastated Viña del Mar and the surrounding area. The official death tally yesterday was 123, but officials say hundreds of people are still unaccounted for and the number could shoot up sharply. Witnesses describe the ravages as akin to a war zone. (El País, New York Times, Reuters, CBS, see yesterday’s post.)
Honduras
“More than six months after Latin America’s deadliest female prison massacre, the Honduran government is slowly moving forward in its investigation into the atrocity. But the country still lacks comprehensive security reforms,” reports InSight Crime.
Colombia
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused the country’s attorney general of mounting a plan to oust him from office. It is the latest in a series of disputes between the executive and judicial branches of government in the Petro administration. (El País)
Colombia and the ELN announced an agreement Monday to extend the current ceasefire for six months, minutes before the previous one was due to end, reports EFE.
Mexico
Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador a package of constitutional reforms that includes”controversial changes to the pension system, an increase in minimum wages, the election by popular vote of the judges of the Supreme Court and the elimination of autonomous regulators,” reports Efe.
The proposals include full-wage pensions, but may respond more to electoral concerns ahead of this year’s presidential elections than realistic reforms, reports the Associated Press.
The proposal would also put the National Guard back under the aegis of Mexico’s National Defense Secretary, a move that has been previously shot down by the Supreme Court, reports El País.
Brazil
“Generations of women of the Amazon and Cerrado have split the coconuts of the babaçu tree for the oil. As the forests are cleared and electric fences put up, they must fight to secure rights to their beloved trees,” reports the Guardian.
Critter Corner
A new species of frog discovered on a remote Brazilian island changes color between night and day, reports the Miami Herald.