The Illusion of Cool: Unmasking Nayib Bukele’s Authoritarian Rule in El Salvador
Nayib Bukele is not just a president. He is a brand, a performance, a meticulously cultivated image projected to the world through Instagram filters, viral tweets, and staged displays of power. In an age when political charisma often trumps substance, Bukele has mastered the art of self-presentation. He calls himself the “world’s coolest dictator,” a phrase delivered with a wink that blurs the line between irony and truth. But for all the jokes and digital flair, his regime represents something far darker: a systematic dismantling of democratic institutions under the guise of innovation and progress.
Bukele’s international persona is that of a millennial disruptor; one who takes bold risks, shuns traditional politics, and brings order to a chaotic country. He speaks the language of change and modernization, leveraging the anxieties of a population long battered by gang violence, corruption, and economic stagnation. He’s drawn admiration from crypto enthusiasts, tech CEOs, and populists around the world. Yet what many see as courage is often coercion. What is framed as visionary leadership is, in reality, the consolidation of unchecked power. His government detains tens of thousands without trial, surveils journalists, censors critics, rewrites the law to suit its needs, and hides public spending behind closed doors.
What Bukele offers is not a democratic alternative to dysfunction, but an authoritarian solution packaged for the digital age. He rules not only through policy but through image - carefully curated, deceptively simple, and profoundly dangerous. The rest of the world, distracted by hashtags and prison drone shots, has been slow to grasp the reality that El Salvador is sliding toward autocracy.
Bukele’s rise to power was built on a potent cocktail of charisma, savvy media manipulation, and legitimate public frustration. When he ran for president in 2019, El Salvador had spent decades in the grip of a two-party system defined by corruption and stagnation. The right-wing ARENA and the leftist FMLN, both born from the country’s civil war, had alternated in power since the 1990s, and both had lost credibility. High crime, grinding poverty, and a sense of hopelessness pushed much of the population to look for something new. Bukele provided that alternative, not through a detailed policy platform, but by tapping into national exhaustion with the status quo.
As mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán and later San Salvador, Bukele used his position to promote an image of youth, innovation, and transparency. He posted selfies instead of speeches, ran slick PR campaigns about infrastructure projects, and cast himself as a pragmatic problem-solver rather than an ideologue. He even paid for the college scholarships of students in San Salvador, offering them what he claimed the state was keeping from their reach. After being expelled from the FMLN in 2017, he doubled down on his outsider narrative, framing himself as someone who had been punished for challenging political orthodoxy.
When he launched his presidential campaign, Bukele leaned heavily on social media and digital platforms, bypassing traditional political machines. His party, New Ideas, was more of a movement than a political organization, and it capitalized on anti-elite sentiment rather than any coherent ideology. He ridiculed the press, denounced critics as corrupt, and promised to “drain the swamp.” His messaging: simple, emotional, and often combative, resonated deeply with a public that felt abandoned by its institutions.
The strategy worked. Bukele won the presidency with more than 53 percent of the vote in the first round; an unprecedented margin that eliminated the need for a runoff. It was the first time in modern Salvadoran history that a president had been elected from outside the traditional two-party system. The moment was hailed as a democratic revolution. In reality, it marked the beginning of a new form of centralized power. A power rooted in the aesthetics of rebellion but fundamentally hostile to the norms of democratic governance.
What followed was not a reinvention of politics, but a gradual dismantling of accountability. Bukele maintained high approval ratings, but he increasingly governed by decree, sidelining the legislature and vilifying the judiciary when it didn’t bend to his will. His public appearances were carefully choreographed, his speeches laced with attacks on enemies real and imagined. He styled himself as a savior in a country plagued by chaos, suggesting that only through his continued leadership could El Salvador be restored.
In 2021, he leveraged his massive popularity to secure a supermajority in the Legislative Assembly through allied parties. That victory was a turning point. With total control of the legislative branch, Bukele no longer had to negotiate or compromise. On the very day the new Assembly was sworn in, it voted to remove five constitutional court judges and the attorney general, replacing them with loyalists without even pretending to follow due process. The purge was swift, brutal, and illegal, but it was also effective. With the judiciary neutralized, Bukele gained the power to reinterpret the law as he pleased, setting the stage for his authoritarian turn.
Critics warned that these moves mirrored the playbook of other autocrats. It undermines the rule of law, removes institutional checks, and weaponizes public approval against democratic constraints. Bukele scoffed at the warnings. In his view, the people had spoken. And with no meaningful resistance from within the system, he continued his march toward absolute control.
What began as a populist promise to fix a broken system quickly became an excuse to replace it with something far more dangerous: a government in which power is concentrated in the hands of a single man, unbound by law and unchallenged by institutions.
Central to Bukele’s popularity is his highly publicized war on gangs, which he presents as nothing short of a miracle. Once dubbed the murder capital of the world, El Salvador has seen a sharp decline in homicides since Bukele assumed power, a trend his administration attributes to the state of emergency declared in March 2022. The crackdown followed a surge in gang killings and gave the government sweeping powers—suspending constitutional protections, enabling mass arrests without due process, and criminalizing any suspected association with gangs.
Source: Statista
The campaign has resulted in more than 75,000 arrests in a country of just over 6 million. Prisons are overflowing. Due process is the exception, not the rule. Individuals have been detained for everything from having tattoos to living in gang-controlled neighborhoods. Families search in vain for loved ones who disappeared into the state’s opaque detention system. Human rights organizations have documented beatings, torture, overcrowding, and dozens of custodial deaths, often without any public explanation or accountability. Those who do emerge from detention describe psychological abuse, starvation, and constant fear.
To many Salvadorans, the security crackdown feels like long-awaited justice. After decades of living under the grip of MS-13 and Barrio 18, people welcome the sudden quiet in neighborhoods once ruled by extortion and murder. Bukele’s approval ratings remain sky-high, boosted by viral drone footage of the newly constructed mega-prison and images of shirtless detainees kneeling in submission. But while the optics are powerful, the underlying strategy is built on collective punishment and the erosion of civil rights.
This kind of security theater is not new in El Salvador. The country’s post-independence history reads like a parade of caudillos and strongmen, each promising order in exchange for obedience. Military juntas ruled for much of the 20th century, often brutally. The civil war from 1980 to 1992 was marked by state violence, massacres, and death squads. For generations, Salvadorans have been told to choose between chaos and control. Bukele has simply modernized the formula: instead of boots and bayonets, he uses Twitter and TikTok.
Beneath the PR campaign lies an uncomfortable truth. Bukele has not dismantled the gangs; he has displaced and disappeared their members—some guilty, some not—into a system devoid of oversight. And while short-term drops in crime are celebrated, the long-term consequences are rarely discussed. A society that trades accountability for expediency may find it harder to recover from the institutions it destroys than from the violence it suppresses.
In Bukele’s El Salvador, people are no longer asked to pick between safety and freedom. That choice has already been made for them. And as history has shown time and again, selling liberty for protection is like buying insurance from the arsonist—your house may not burn today, but the matchbook is still in their hand.
Bukele’s most cunning trick has not been his war on gangs or his power grabs in the legislature, but his ability to rebrand authoritarianism as trendsetting. He has managed to sell the world on the idea that tyranny can wear sneakers and a backwards cap, that a dictator who jokes about being a dictator isn’t really one. His now infamous Twitter bio, “world’s coolest dictator” , is a masterstroke of rhetorical camouflage. The irony cloaks intent, allowing him to deflect criticism as outdated, humorless, or simply uncool.
This calculated persona isn’t accidental. Bukele has crafted an image that merges the aesthetics of Silicon Valley with the blunt tactics of strongman rule. He livestreams cabinet meetings, posts slick edits of his mega-prison, and calls out international journalists by name as if engaging in a rap battle. His governance is filtered through social media algorithms, where policy decisions are teased like product drops and dissent is ratioed into irrelevance.
To many outside observers, especially those tired of traditional politicians, this performance is refreshing. Here is a leader who tweets like a tech CEO, dresses like a DJ, and speaks with the confidence of a man who believes he’s already won the future. But it’s all smoke and mirrors. Behind the memes and the millennial branding lies a deeply repressive state.
Independent journalists are harassed, surveilled, and digitally spied on using Pegasus spyware; usually a tool reserved for tracking terrorists. The media environment has become so hostile that several outlets have relocated staff or shut down entirely. Civil society groups are restricted by foreign agent laws and risk prosecution if they criticize the regime. NGOs face audits, funding freezes, or outright bans. Public institutions no longer operate independently; they echo the executive’s messaging, serving as amplifiers of a single voice rather than as democratic actors.
This repression is wrapped in irony and self-awareness, making it harder to challenge. When critics accuse Bukele of behaving like a dictator, he shrugs, retweets the insult, and turns it into a T-shirt slogan. The satire disarms casual observers, creating plausible deniability that shields real abuses from scrutiny. In Bukele’s hands, authoritarianism becomes a joke that laughs back at you if you take it seriously.
But there’s nothing cool about crushing dissent. There’s nothing hip about weaponizing the state against journalists or locking away thousands without trial. Dressing autocracy in designer jackets doesn’t change its consequences. Bukele may have rebranded the dictator for the digital age, but the fundamentals remain: a regime allergic to opposition, hostile to oversight, and obsessed with control.
Irony doesn’t redeem oppression. It only masks it long enough for people to stop noticing when the cage door quietly clicks shut.
After consolidating his grip on the legislature and judiciary, Bukele no longer needed to pretend he was governing within the lines. In September 2021, El Salvador’s Constitutional Chamber (newly packed with his loyalists) issued a sudden and controversial ruling: Bukele could legally run for re-election in 2024, despite the Constitution’s clear prohibition against consecutive presidential terms. It was a legal sleight of hand, but more than that, it was a quiet coup against constitutionalism itself.
Rather than amend the Constitution through the proper channels, Bukele simply had the court reinterpret it. No need for a national debate, no public referendum, no legislative process. The Constitution didn’t change on paper—it was just hollowed out from within, its words stretched until they snapped under the weight of convenience. This was not lawmaking; it was legal laundering.
The precedent it set was chilling. If a president can serve again simply because his judges say so, what else can be rewritten in silence? What other laws can be bent around the desires of one man? The judiciary, once a check on executive overreach, has become a mirror, reflecting only Bukele’s will, never questioning it. This is not just a breach of democratic norms; it is a deliberate erasure of the mechanisms designed to prevent tyranny.
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, October 19, 2023. REUTERS/Jose
Cabezas/File Photo
Bukele and his allies dismissed the criticism, arguing that “the people should decide.” But that populist logic undermines the very purpose of constitutional limits. The reason democracies enshrine term restrictions is to protect against the slow, seductive pull of permanent power. They are meant not just to restrain bad leaders, but to discipline good ones. Bukele, by discarding this safeguard, has revealed how deeply uninterested he is in accountability beyond the ballot box.
History offers ample warning. Latin America has no shortage of elected leaders who slowly morphed into permanent rulers; often through similar judicial or constitutional gymnastics. Bukele claims he is merely following the will of the people, but so did Chávez, Ortega, and Fujimori. In each case, popular support became the excuse for dismantling the very institutions that gave democracy meaning.
Bukele's defenders argue that his continued rule is justified by his effectiveness. But democracy is not a reward system for results; it is a structure built on rules, limits, and responsibilities. The moment leaders are allowed to change the rules because they believe they're doing a good job is the moment the rules cease to matter at all.
El Salvador's Constitution wasn't defeated with tanks or coups. It was reinterpreted into irrelevance; quietly, strategically, and with a smile.
In another example of style over substance, Bukele declared Bitcoin legal tender in 2021. He portrayed the move as a bold leap into the future, aimed at financial inclusion and attracting global investment. But the rollout has been riddled with technical problems, low adoption, and allegations of corruption. Most Salvadorans continue to use cash or traditional digital payments. A significant portion of the population lacks internet access, making the promise of decentralized finance irrelevant to daily life.
While the government refuses to disclose the full scope of its Bitcoin holdings, economists warn that public money is being gambled on volatile assets without oversight. The International Monetary Fund has raised alarms. The country’s debt remains high, and the Bitcoin initiative has done little to resolve long-standing economic issues such as unemployment, poor infrastructure, and weak social safety nets.
In reality, the Bitcoin experiment serves more as political theater than policy. It is designed to attract international attention and project a narrative of innovation. But the actual beneficiaries are foreign crypto interests and Bukele’s inner circle, not the people of El Salvador.
Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador is increasingly hailed by some abroad as a blueprint for order in an age of chaos. From Silicon Valley investors to right-wing influencers, the admiration often hinges on a simple formula: clean streets, high approval ratings, and a leader who “gets things done.” But beneath that shiny exterior is a deeply compromised system, one that prioritizes power over principle, obedience over oversight, and spectacle over substance.
This is not a model for the region, it’s a warning shot.
Bukele has not solved El Salvador’s problems; he has simply rebranded them. Violence hasn’t been eradicated. It has been absorbed into the state apparatus. Corruption hasn’t been defeated. It has been centralized. Institutions haven’t been rebuilt. They’ve been emptied and repurposed to serve one man’s ambitions. What looks like efficiency is often just authoritarianism wearing the mask of modernity.
None of this is new for El Salvador. The country’s history is littered with strongmen who promised stability and delivered repression. Bukele is not the antidote to that legacy. He is its latest iteration, more stylish perhaps, but no less dangerous. The real innovation isn’t in how he governs, but in how well he hides it.
His regime deserves not admiration but scrutiny. The rule of law matters. Transparency matters. Civil liberties matter, even, and especially, when crime is high or when leaders are popular. To look at El Salvador today and see only progress is to miss the cost at which it comes. The prisons may be full, but so are the courts with silence. The streets may be calm, but the institutions are crumbling.
This article has scratched the surface of a broader and more troubling transformation. Each pillar of Salvadoran democracy: judiciary, press, civil society, constitutional limits, has been weakened in the name of a new order. In future pieces, we’ll dig deeper into the mechanics behind these shifts: the legal tricks, the economic risks, the surveillance infrastructure, and the growing list of those silenced or exiled.
For now, it's enough to say this: what’s being built in El Salvador is not a brighter future. It is a polished cage. And the world should stop applauding the man holding the keys.