Nayib Bukele claimed victory yesterday, hours before El Salvador’s electoral tribunal released official results confirming his reelection by a landslide. Bukele, characterized by direct communication by social media, tweeted that he won by 85%, just two hours after polls closed and before the electoral tribunal had released any preliminary data, reports El Faro. In fact, the electoral tribunal’s site was down for most of the night, and El Faro reports on irregularities with the tally system.
Despite irregularities, Bukele was expected to win by a real landslide, with voters eager to back his controversial security policies, despite allegations of systematic human rights violations. Provisional results showed Bukele winning 83% of votes with 31% of the ballots counted, reports Reuters.
The country’s establishment parties — the FMLN and Arena — were again punished by voters for decades of violence and corruption. It is the death knell for any hint of opposition to Bukele’s all-encompassing grip, reports El País.
“The electoral offering is null. There are no candidates” connecting with voters, Noah Bullock, director of the human rights NGO Cristosal, told El Faro English. “This campaign is not a debate of ideas or real competition. It is a coronation.”
But behind the overwhelming numbers, he argues, is a more complex phenomenon: 'Some 60 or 70 percent of the population are not committed to the ruling party. They are indifferent or more or less independent. When they see no viable options, they are disincentivized to vote, or simply say, ‘Let’s support what we have, because things are going well, more or less.’ There is no one really activating that majority of the population.”
This will be the first time there will be “a single party in a democratic system, all together the opposition was pulverized,” said Bukele last night.
Bukele’s New Ideas party is expected to win almost all of the Legislative Assembly’s 60 seats, consolidating the president’s vast power. Bukele circumvented a constitutional ban on immediate reelection via a friendly constitutional court, appointed by a loyal legislature. Experts say he could now move towards a constitutional reform that scraps term limits altogether.
“Salvadorans have given the example to the entire world that any problem can be solved if there is the will to do it,” Bukele said last night.
Bukele is best known for an iron-fist security policy, carried out under a state of emergency that has lasted nearly two years already, which entails massive detentions and has been credited with eradicating the country’s violent street gangs. Human rights organizations say the policy is built on arbitrary detentions and human rights violations.
“Salvadorans have heard some of these complaints and are aware that some innocent people have been arrested, but they put the president’s security achievements above all else. They no longer have a gang member at their doorstep extorting them, nor are they afraid to walk in certain neighborhoods,” explains El País.
Though Bukele’s massive popularity is real, his consolidation of power comes after taking control of the Supreme Court, the attorney general’s office, lower courts, and pushing the Legislative Assembly and the court to validate an unconstitutional reelection. Supreme Electoral Tribunal judges faced prison time if they opposed his candidacy, notes El Faro in an editorial.
“In the final stretch to the polls, Bukele, his vice presidential candidate, candidates for deputies and mayors of Nuevas Ideas have used state funds to campaign. From the distribution of food packages to the use of state facilities and institutional communication channels at the service of the ruling party. He illegally denied payment of political debt to the opposition and warned businessmen not to support another party,” reports El Faro.
(See last Friday’s post on three separate investigations into corruption involving the Bukele administration.)
More Bukele
In a press conference in which Salvadoran media was not permitted questions, Bukele scoffed over whether he supported his vice president’s statements to the New York Times, in which Felix Ulloa said the administration is replacing democracy with “something new.” Bukele retorted: “I don't believe anything from the New York Times” and countered that El Salvador never had democracy before. (El Faro)
Bukele and his wife cast their ballots to the tune of R.E.M.’s 1987 hit “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” (Associated Press) He later appeared on the balcony of the presidential palace to the same tune. (El País)
When Bukele “described himself as the “world’s coolest dictator”, people paid too much attention to the first part of that phrase, and not enough to the second. Whether designer stubble, expensive sunglasses and incessant boasting on social media count as “cool” is of no consequence. Whether another Latin American country is embracing dictatorship matters rather more,” notes the Economist.
“The past three decades of Latin American history are full of presidents who stretched the constitutional limits of power and extended their mandate… All were elected democratically. All modified or bent the rules to run for a second term that would not have been allowed when they were first elected. All won that first reelection due to their massive popularity. And most, but not all, left their country worse than they found it, damaging their legacy,” writes James Bosworth in World Politics Review.
El Salvador’s 2017 mining ban was hailed as a milestone environmental victory, but, encouraged by multinational companies, Bukele’s government is preparing to reverse it and reintroduce mining, artisanal and industrial, reports the Guardian.
Fires devastate central Chile
At least 112 people have been killed in massive forest fires that broke out last week in Chile’s Valparaíso region. Hundreds remain missing and the death toll could shoot up sharply. President Gabriel Boric declared declared a state of emergency and two days of national mourning.
Authorities estimate that at least 15,000 homes were destroyed in the affected region. Pictures of Viña del Mar showed scorched neighborhoods and residents rummaging through husks of burnt-out houses. Survivors report seeing bodies on the streets and watching flames engulf people.
Authorities are investigating the possibility that the fires were deliberately lit.
El Niño has exacerbated droughts and high temperatures through parts of the continent, creating conditions for forest fires that are affecting several countries in the region, including Colombia and Argentina.
(Associated Press, New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, Guardian, New York Times, AFP, EFE)
Regional Relations
Russia decided to ban some banana imports from Ecuador over the weekend, an intensification of a diplomatic rift between the two countries after the Noboa administration decided to transfer some of its old Russian military equipment to the United States, in exchange for $200 million in new military gear, reports the Associated Press.
Brazil deployed a convoy of military trucks and armored vehicles to reinforce its military presence on its northern border, in response to tensions over Venezuela's claim to Guyana's Essequibo region, reports Reuters.
“If controversies marked Brazil’s foreign policy in 2023, this year promises to be a stage for new tensions and ambiguities —a tightrope of sorts for its government,” reports Americas Quarterly.
Interpol should elect a new head from a developing nation to diversify the organisation and boost its credibility as crime becomes increasingly globalised, Brazil's candidate to head the international police agency, Valdecy Urquiza, told Reuters.
Venezuela
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said on Sunday that the "people in power" will surely win the presidential elections expected for this year. "We are the people in power... We will win one way or another," Maduro told thousands of supporters at a rally in Caracas. (AFP)
Migration
There has been a sevenfold increase in sexual attacks against people crossing the Darién Gap, according to MSF. The information is particularly concerning given a decrease in the overall number of people making the trek across the lawless stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama in December, reports the Guardian.
New data from Colombia’s government estimates that 539,949 migrants crossed through the Darien Gap in 2023. By contrast, Panama estimates 520,085 did so, reports Efecto Cocuyo. (Via Americas Migration Brief.)
Argentina
Argentina’s lower chamber of congress passed President Javier Milei’s omnibus bill of reforms, which was much reduced in negotiations. However, lawmakers will vote on specific articles this week, and many key issues of the reform, including privatization of public companies and authorization for the president to bypass Congress on a number of issues, could be voted down. (Guardian)
“Once the marathon congressional session ends (one of the longest in the history of Argentina’s democracy), the bill will go to the Senate for a vote,” reports El País.
Milei’s plan to “dollarize,” that is to say, adopt U.S. greenbacks as Argentina’s official currency, had been off the radar after his presidential victory. But economic experts say steady devaluation and Central Bank policies could pave the road for the controversial move — albeit at a significant cost to salaries, savings and pensions for residents, reports Perfil.
Colombia
Recurrent allegations of campaign finance irregularities in Colombia reflect legal vacuums, lack of control, and willful disregard of regulations, reports El País.
Peru
Peru outlawed the construction of artisanal fishing boats in 2015, in a bid to protect species like the giant squid. But illegal shipyards have proliferated, reports El País.
Carnaval
Turma da Paz de Madureira is Rio de Janeiro’s first all-women samba school. Founder Barbara Rigaud is a survivor of sexual violence in a country where a woman or girl was raped every eight minutes in the first six months of 2023. “I think women join TPM because they have freedom here, they can see their worth and how important they are,” she told the Guardian.