"The World's Coolest Dictator": Bukele's Gang Violence Crackdown in El Salvador
The Twitter/X bio of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, as of December 2025, reads “Philosopher King.” In the past, it read, “The world’s coolest dictator.” This unabashed public recognition of authoritarianism is unique. For example, even after the death of opposition politician Alexei Navalny in 2024, a spokesperson for the Kremlin in Russia referred to Russia’s democracy as “the best.”
However, Bukele’s mano dura, or iron-fisted, tactics in El Salvador have provided him a foundation for this claim. The country was roiled by the inescapable, “suffocating” shadow of gang violence for many years. Bukele moved in to quash the gang opposition and restore a relative sense of safety, but with dire consequences for civil and human rights.
Bukele’s suppression of gang violence has led to widespread acceptance of his leadership among Salvadorans, despite the damage he has caused to El Salvador's democracy and its citizens' civil and human rights. However, the possibility that he achieved this feat through backdoor deals with gangs indicates that the suspension and violation of rights was not a necessary condition to improve safety.
Background of the Gang Violence Crisis
The 1960s in El Salvador saw the birth of significant gang activity after industrialization and urbanization increased. In the 1980s and 1990s, gang activity focused on small groups that did not have control over cities at large.
El Salvador’s gang violence crisis erupted after its 12-year civil war, which was between its right-wing government (funded by the US) and guerrilla leftist groups (backed by Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Soviet Union). Many Salvadorans fled the country during the civil war; in fact, gangs Barrio 18 (also called the 18th Street gang) and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) actually originated in Los Angeles, USA. But as the US deported gang members, the groups came to El Salvador, and a rivalry exploded between them. Violence particularly spiraled after 2014, and by June 2015, El Salvador was known as the most violent country in the Western Hemisphere as well as the most dangerous country on the planet, not including war zones.
While gang violence has broadly impacted Salvadoran society, it has disproportionately affected its poor. Beyond the obvious impacts on personal safety, it has also lowered income and lessened access to education, as well as hindered the ability to move around freely. Wealthy individuals are better able to pay extortion fees to gangs—to the tune of around three percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP)—as well as live in safer circumstances, such as in luxury compounds.
El Salvador Under Bukele
When Nayib Bukele became president, he undertook a widespread crackdown on gang violence, in which about 87,000 people were detained and arrested. Starting in March 2022, El Salvador has been in a “state of exception,” or an emergency situation that allows the suspension of many constitutional rights. These rights include habeas corpus and due process. Under Bukele, the murder rate dropped from 53 per 100,000 people in 2018 to 2.4 per 100,000 in 2023. The homicide rate plummeted 57 percent between 2021 to 2022, and extortions also lowered significantly.
Due to the suspension of some rights, the detentions under Bukele often significantly lacked due process. And beyond gang members, arrests have also included those investigating collusion with gangs—for example, journalists and civil society groups. The human rights group Movement of Victims of the Regime (MOVIR) estimates that thousands of people have been unjustly detained over accusations of gang association. Aside from suspending rights, Bukele has also taken steps to weaken checks and balances. For example, in 2021, he removed executive branch oversight from the attorney general and Supreme Court justices by placing his supporters in those positions.
The significant reduction of violence under Bukele has led to his widespread popularity among citizens. He was even reelected in 2024, despite El Salvador’s constitution banning a second term. Furthermore, a 2022 poll conducted by Gallup found that 92 percent of citizens in El Salvador supported the continuation of the state of emergency.
Even if temporary suspension of rights could be justified to address the gang violence situation, it was unnecessary to imprison journalists and civil society members and erode democratic institutions. However, considering the massive overall increase in quality of life that Bukele’s crackdown on gangs provided for the average citizen, it is unsurprising that many are willing to trade democracy for security—even if the two were artificially presented as mutually exclusive.
Bukele’s Alliances with Gangs
It is a common perception that the reduction of gang violence in El Salvador was entirely due to Bukele’s crackdown. Reflecting that perception, in February 2025, President Donald Trump formed a deal with Bukele to imprison some Venezuelans deported from the United States in a Salvadoran mega-prison. Bukele has encouraged President Trump to detain people, telling him that “to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some.”
However, there is evidence that the reduction in violence was, in large part, due to other tactics. The Biden administration alleged in 2021 that Bukele’s regime actually bribed MS-13 and Barrio 18, with payoffs such as cash, sex workers, and cellphones, to keep violence low.
Similarly, the newspaper El Faro alleged in 2020 that Bukele was making deals with gangs. It used government records such as intelligence reports as well as prison records to reach these conclusions. El Faro also interviewed Barrio 18 gang leaders, who claimed that in exchange for bribes, the gang agreed to intimidate voters into supporting Bukele to become mayor of San Salvador, the country’s capital. Seven of El Faro’s journalists have warrants out for their arrests after reporting on the deals Bukele allegedly made with the gangs. The newspaper is largely run from Costa Rica to avoid retribution from inside El Salvador.
The allegations of Bukele’s backdoor dealings with MS-13 and Barrio 18 dispute the necessity of severely restricting human rights and civil liberties in El Salvador. They also call into question the praise Bukele has garnered domestically and abroad for quashing gang violence, considering his public-facing measures may not have been the main cause of the decline.
Even if the allegations were untrue, the severity of human rights infringements enacted during Bukele’s crackdown already calls his actions into doubt. But if Bukele did broker deals with these gangs, he implicitly offered the people of El Salvador a false choice between rights and liberties, or safety.
Other Methods of Dealing with Gang Violence
Instead of beginning by restricting rights and liberties, United Nations research and strategies enacted in Colombia provide alternative, or at least additional, ways that the gang violence situation could have been addressed.
More abstractly, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) points to the association between the presence of weapons and violence. It suggests improving the traceability of weapons to track them when used violently, and undertaking initiatives involving the voluntary surrender of weapons, such as buy-back programs. The International Crisis Group advises tactics such as improving the quality of investigations and addressing social issues that can make people susceptible to joining criminal groups.
As for concrete examples, Medellín, Colombia has lowered homicide rates by improving policing, social programs, and urban planning. And in 2020, Mayor Óscar Escobar of Palmira, Colombia initiated a program called “Pazos” focused on youth between 14 and 29—those most highly involved in violence. Instead of using punitive approaches, it seeks to deal with structural causes by combining international and domestic strategies to disrupt and intervene in violence. In 2021, Palmira left a list of the 50 most violent cities in the world, and in 2022, it recorded its lowest homicide rate in 17 years.
However, implementing these initiatives often requires cooperation with third parties like international organizations—unlikely for authoritarian regimes. As a result, even if one considers it justified to pivot to autocracy during such a crisis, in the long run Bukele’s autocratic turn may prove to stymie future progress and reform in El Salvador.
Despite the above, the reality is that for those living in such viscerally real violence, slower and more cumulative reforms may be unappealing when the situation is life-or-death. Regardless, instead of holding up Bukele’s crackdown as an example to emulate, increasing awareness of alternate strategies—and of the backdoor deals Bukele may have brokered—prevents the ideas of reducing violence and reducing rights from becoming too intertwined in public consciousness.