El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has been reelected. While the official results aren’t yet in, with 70% of the ballots counted, Bukele has received an astounding 83% of the votes. He declared victory on Sunday night over X (formerly Twitter).
Under the Shadow host Michael Fox was on the ground for the election. He takes us there, and sits down for an in-depth conversation with Dartmouth assistant professor of Latin American Studies Jorge Cuellar.
They look at the vote. Concerns for the country’s democracy. Bukele’s reelection, his image, plans, and what it all means going forward.
Under the Shadow is a new investigative narrative podcast series that walks back in time, to tell the story of the past by visiting momentous places in the present.
In each episode, host Michael Fox takes us to a location where something historic happened—a landmark of revolutionary struggle or foreign intervention. Today, it might look like a random street corner, a church, a mall, a monument or a museum. But every place he takes us was once the site of history-making events that shook countries, impacted lives, and left deep marks on the world.
Hosted by Latin America-based journalist Michael Fox.
Recorded in San Salvador, El Salvador.
This podcast is produced in partnership between The Real News Network and NACLA.
Guests: Jorge Cuellar.
Sound design by Gustavo Türck.
Theme music by Monte Perdido. Other music from Blue Dot Sessions.
Follow and support journalist Michael Fox or Under the Shadow at https://www.patreon.com/mfox
Use of Michael’s election day report courtesy of The World.
Transcript
Michael Fox: Hi, I’m your host, Michael Fox.
So, like last week when we went to Guatemala for an update on the inauguration of that country’s new president, this week is also going to be a little different. I’ve been covering the elections in El Salvador. The country’s president, Nayib Bukele, was re-elected on Sunday, Feb. 4. And there is so much to say.
I want to start by just diving right in. I’m first going to play for you a radio story I filed for The World. It ran on Monday, Feb. 5, the day after the vote. I then sit down in El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, with Dartmouth assistant professor of Latin American studies Jorge Cuellar. If you’ve been listening to this podcast, you’ll remember him from episodes 4 and 5, which looked at the civil war in El Salvador and Radio Venceremos.
Finally, at the very end of the episode, I also have a bit of an update on rather concerning news from El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Court and the vote count.
OK. Here’s the show…
[THE WORLD STORY BEGINS]
Supporters of Nayib Bukele danced and cheered last night in El Salvador’s main plaza.
Among them was Teresa Vazquez. She wears a scarf with a slick cartoon image of 42-year-old Bukele in sunglasses.
Teresa Vazquez: I am happy because we are enjoying true freedom. I’m 67 years old, and we’ve never had a president like we have today.
Michael Fox: Bukele has amassed an almost fanatical fan base. And they turned out for him on election day.
The vote itself was relatively without incident. People made their choice for president and Legislative Assembly.
But there were issues. Political campaigning is usually prohibited on the day of the vote. But on Sunday, billboards and banners of Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas, New Ideas, draped across roadsides and filled the streets in front of voting centers.
Outside polling stations, Bukele supporters cheered for their president, and even directed some voters how to vote for Bukele or New Ideas candidates. During his first term, Bukele’s party in congress ousted five Supreme Court justices and appointed a new court. The new justices re-interpreted the constitution, enabling Bukele to run for an unprecedented 2nd term.
“This election is unconstitutional,” one voter told me — He declined to give his name for fear of reprisals. “As citizens, we have the right to come and vote, but that doesn’t mean that it’s constitutional,” he said.
But that was not an issue for most at the polls. For every other Salvadoran I spoke with on election day, one thing shined above all the rest: security.
Vilma Perez is a retiree. She wears a blue Bukele hat with the image of the president: Slicked-back hair, manicured beard, leather jacket, and aviators.
Vilma Perez: Now, we have so much security. We can go anywhere in the country without being afraid.
Michael Fox: That has been Bukele’s greatest achievement. Two years ago, he instituted a state of emergency, suspending habeas corpus and the rule of law. It’s enabled state security forces to detain and jail 70,000 alleged gang members indefinitely.
But family members of the detained say tens of thousands of those jailed are innocent. And they want their loved ones returned.
Last Friday, dozens of mothers and sisters of the detained rallied outside the country’s attorney general’s office. The attorney general had closed the investigations into 142 deaths of detainees.
Crowd: Enough Bukele!
Michael Fox: They say they’re afraid for their loved ones on the inside, and they want the investigations re-opened. Reina Hernandez carries a large pink sign, which reads “Freedom for my son.”
Reina Hernandez: They captured my son on May 4, 2022. He’s not involved in gangs, he hasn’t done anything wrong. He has no criminal record. And that’s why I’m here.
Michael Fox: Analysts say Bukele will likely double down on the harsh measures that have won him so much popularity — And he’s inspiring others abroad.
Outside the main voting center in San Salvador, a group of Peruvians watch a mass of Bukele supporters celebrate the impending victory. They’re here on the invitation of Bukele’s party.
Armando Mendoza is the president of Peru’s municipal police force.
Armando Mendoza: We are here to copy this very successful security model of President Nayib Bukele, which has shown the world that it can work. Ecuador has already started to copy it, Costa Rica wants to copy it. Guatemala. Colombia. In Latin America, everyone wants a Bukele model because it has shown results.
Michael Fox: During a press conference yesterday, Bukele said he was already exchanging ideas with Argentina’s new libertarian president, Javier Milei.
Bukele says he’s creating a new democracy, though to outside observers it looks a lot like autocracy. And the majority of the country seems on board.
Marcos Lopez has been selling political party t-shirts and flags every election for years outside the voting center where Bukele cast his ballot.
Marcos Lopez: A long time ago, we used to sell shirts from the other parties when they were around. But now that there’s the official party, that’s what we sell. We don’t need to sell any other shirts, because people only ask for the official party shirt.
Michael Fox: It’s a telling sign of the uncertain road ahead in El Salvador. Though one thing is for sure: Bukele is in charge, and he has a mandate.
For The World, I’m Michael Fox, San Salvador, El Salvador
[THE WORLD STORY ENDS]
That ran on Monday, Feb 5. Now, on to my conversation with professor Jorge Cuellar. We look at the vote, concerns for the country’s democracy, Bukele’s re-election, his image, plans, and what it all means going forward.
[CONVERSATION WITH JORGE CUELLAR BEGINS]
Jorge Cuéllar: What’s up, Mike?
Michael Fox: What’s up, Jorge? This is so cool. OK, so. We are, right now, in the courtyard of the Museum of Word and Image. It’s fitting that we’re having our little conversation right here in San Salvador. I’m honored to be in your presence, Jorge. This is fantastic. Thank you so much. Super cool.
So, Jorge and I have been in San Salvador for the last week. We’ve been running around town, we’ve been interviewing a lot of people. We’ve been seeing a lot of things. Obviously, we were on the ground for the elections on Sunday.
And so I wanted to have this little conversation with you to bring people up to speed with where we are now, connect it to the past, and take a look at where we’re headed into the future.
And I guess I’ll just start with, how are you feeling?
Jorge Cuéllar: Well, first off, thanks, Mike. It’s really good to be here with you at the Museum of the Word and Image, which has been such an important place for safekeeping of the country’s historical memory, for reminding people of the Salvadoran past in order to forge a better Salvador future. And they’re the memory keepers, institutionally, at least. And so it’s fitting right to be here and to be having this conversation with you.
And so, how do I feel? It’s a complex one. I’m Salvadoran. I actually went to vote myself with my mom, and it was a weird, weird experience. There was, right now I’m feeling a bit… In a suspended period. Like I’m suspended in time, in the sense that I don’t know where this is going because we’re in a totally new political moment that the Salvadoran people haven’t experienced, and I myself, in my lifetime, have never experienced.
There’s dictatorships that have happened in the past, authoritarianism’s past, military coups in the past, but this is something totally, totally new. And so, my feelings around it aren’t fully cemented or articulated, but I do feel suspended. Because I’m not sure where this is going to end up.
And even after exercising the vote yesterday, and seeing folks really euphoric about this victory, but at the same time, there’s a lot of people who have remained silent and quiet around this moment. We’re still really unclear about the vote count at this point, so we don’t know what’s happening there. But there’s a sense that we lie in wait as to what’s going to happen, and I really share that sentiment with my co-nationals.
Michael Fox: Just as context, elections were Sunday. Yesterday, now. Over 1,500 voting centers around the country. Salvadorans hit the polls everywhere. And obviously the big person on the ballot is President Nayib Bukele, who’s been in power for five years. He’s running for re-election.
Re-election is unconstitutional according to the constitution. But he was able to remove the Supreme Court, put in another Supreme Court, and then they approved it, and that opened the door for his re-election.
There was also a shift in the Congress, the Legislative Assembly. They changed the number of Legislative Assembly members, and so now they were voting yesterday for 60 new members of legislature.
Also the foreign vote, like the US vote, out of the country, the diaspora, this is the first time they’ve been able to vote. Which, there were some complications. Online voting started at 7:00 AM and ended at 5:00 PM.
What we know until now is that Bukele had said that a couple hours later he would declare his victory. And that’s what he did over Twitter. We still don’t have the full results from the tribunal, the Supreme Electoral Court, and we don’t know when we will get them. But Bukele, a couple hours later said, I’ve won with 85% of the vote, and I’ve won 58 of 60 congressional representatives.
And then after the vote, we went to downtown San Salvador, and Jorge was there to watch his speech. I was busy working. I missed it [crosstalk].
Anyway, so that’s the big, really quick context. Did I miss anything in terms of understanding what the date was like — Getting to the specifics in a second?
Jorge Cuéllar: No, no, no. I think the context is right. I think that’s precisely what this election has been about. I think it’s been five years of Bukele, and it’s a reality that has, for some people, really paid off in the sense that they feel security. And this is what Salvadorans were voting on.
Bukele as a steward of country security, this is the main reason Salvadorans took to the ballot box. And, as you said, gave Bukele an overwhelming amount of the popular vote, 85%. It’s not clear yet even though Sid Gallup had also a similar result. But the official results from the tribunal aren’t in yet, so we can’t we can’t be certain that that’s the exact figure yet.
Michael Fox: I’m excited to walk through election day and look at our takeaways, and what did you see, and what were some of the highlights. But before we get into that, could you give me a really quick overview of the Bukele administration? I think it’s important for people that don’t know that much to understand what these last five years have meant for El Salvador.
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah. So when Bukele comes into power in 2019, this is a breakthrough moment. It’s a watershed moment in Salvadoran politics. He’s a political outsider, he’s unknown on the political scene nationally. His previous roles have been as mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán as well as mayor of San Salvador.
And you see the people in a situation where gang criminality is such a norm in the country, where people have accumulated hurt around gang criminality. Many people have migrated. And Bukele comes in as a messianic figure that is going to rectify all this country’s problems, do away with them, and build the new El Salvador. You see that on some ads, actually.
And what you see is, in fact, the way that he approaches this problem is not that dissimilar from politicians before, other presidents. He gets this really important opportunity of the pandemic to basically unleash the military and police apparatus all throughout El Salvador in order to deal with the sanitary emergency of the pandemic — But as well stationing police officers in strategic locations in order to deal with the gang problem. And so it’s a double move that he’s afforded during the early pandemic.
And through that, he calls this thing the Territorial Control Plan, which is his approach to combating gangs. It works. And what he does is he asks the Legislative Assembly at that moment to give him exceptional powers, emergency powers, not only to deal with the pandemic but also to deal with the profound structural problem of gangs, by giving him… What is it? It’s a defense bill. It’s a defense bill where he actually occupies the Legislative Assembly with military in tow in order to pressure the Legislative Assembly to support the passing of this bill. So there’s all these moves that he’s making in order to ensure that he has the resources to combat these gangs.
And that has been scaling up year after year across these four-and-a-half years of Bukele, to deepen the repression and the security apparatus with continual funds, with the upgrading of military equipment, with the buying of tanks — Which some Salvadorans were taking pictures with at the celebration yesterday.
But it’s this fetish around security that Bukele has really seized upon and has made the hallmark of his administration. And that’s what the last four-and-a-half years have been about.
But in order to achieve that, there’s been this democratic erosion. The occupying of the Legislative Assembly, the stacking of the constitutional court, as you mentioned, with people that would later favorably interpret the constitution to allow for his re-election. As well as putting Nuevas Ideas, his party’s officials, throughout El Salvador.
And so this is what has happened over the last four-and-a-half years. And people have been taken by that. They’ve been really convinced by this. They’re enthused about it. They continue to be euphoric, because there’s been concrete results.
And those concrete results have come from these gang sweeps that they’ve done throughout the country that has led to the overwhelming, like 70,000 people being detained in Salvadoran prisons — But also with the building of new ones like the terrorism containment center and these others, which has led to huge abuses in human rights. But nonetheless, people overlook that because the problem of insecurity was so deep rooted and was such an issue in everyday life.
Michael Fox: We’re going to dive into a bunch of this stuff.
But I want to start on a dive into election day yesterday. You were on the ground. What did you see? What were some of your takeaways from yesterday?
Jorge Cuéllar: I saw the Salvadoran people in different contexts. I saw them in a rural, semi-rural context, and also in San Salvador in an urban context, take to the voting centers. It was somber in many ways. The election results were a foregone conclusion. It was already known that Bukele was going to win, it just was a matter of by how much.
And really the struggle of the election was in the Legislative Assembly. So much of what I heard from the people that I spoke to, from taxi drivers to people on the street to standing in line to buy food, is this idea that Bukele has done a magnificent, magnificent job in securing the country.
But at the same time, they don’t want him to have full power by complicating the Legislative Assembly and not giving that fully over to Nuevas Ideas, his party. And that’s one of the main nuances that I caught when I was speaking to people.
But I think, despite that, what was clear is that people were were still willing to give Bukele and his party, which is is an extension of him, another chance to rectify not only keeping the gang members in the prisons — Which they really did run a fear a fear campaign in order to ensure that was the dominant issue on the ballot — But also to address economic problems that have been lingering since the the pandemic. And the spending on security and the spending on the emergency itself that is still really impacting Salvadoran families.
Michael Fox: I was really shocked and taken aback by the amount of government propaganda at so many of the polling stations, like in front, inside, people’s colors, people voting with that.
We talked a little bit about this the last couple days. I was an election observer 20 years ago, and it was really key to make sure that there was this independence, that people couldn’t be flyering the day of the vote.
Obviously, there’s other countries, they have different realities. But in El Salvador that was really, really clear. You can’t just be promoting people’s vote outside, you can’t be directing people from a specific party. You can’t go inside. And you couldn’t vote with a specific color shirt.
And yesterday, I go to the main voting center, I was there right before they opened, and there’s this huge Nuevas Ideas banner right out front. This is the spot that was downtown in front of the stadium. This is where Bukile ended up voting at the very end of the day. But the big banner.
And then there’s these little like… What do you call them? Not booths, but these little tables with these little tents. Canopy tents. And those are all Nuevas Ideas, with the people sitting down beneath them.
And I talked to some of them, and I said, oh, so you guys are getting the vote. They said, no, no, no. We’re here to just help guide people if they need help. So they would guide them, but they would be with a Nuevas Ideas flier with the face of the candidate. And then here’s your table. And this was all in the way of Nuevas Ideas. It wasn’t anybody else.
And even inside, the colors, in the past, you had the vigilantes, the people from the different parties who had to be there to watch the vote. And then you would have the president of the table who would be independent.
And this time, there were a couple of other parties in there, but especially in that main voting center, it was all the sky blue and the white, the Bukele colors. That was it, everywhere. And if there was any other color, it was the orange. The Gana, which is the party that Bukele won, came to power in five years ago. So it was shocking, the amount.
And even that other main voting station that I just mentioned, then on the other side, you had this whole crew of people with Bukele shirts cheering and yelling and setting off fireworks. And this was all institutional, it was all crazy. I was shocked at the level of that, I just didn’t even realize.
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah, it was. It was really similar in the voting centers that I was in. There was a four-to-one ratio in terms of the cyan and blue people and then the rest of the other parties, that’s what I more or less calculated as I was walking through them. There was an overwhelming presence of that. And yeah, you’re right there. Everybody was wearing their party’s colors. And because of Nuevas Ideas’s popularity, most of what you saw was cyan and white.
And so it’s exactly right. I think that wasn’t the case in other elections past, where you couldn’t campaign inside a voting center. You couldn’t be wearing these overwhelming, very visible colors. I remember people would wear pins of their party, but that was subtle. There wasn’t this block of color that singled you out as being a sympathizer of one party or the other. And so you had that.
Michael Fox: And that was a legacy coming out of the Civil War, right? To ensure that this democratic system was going to work for everybody, and nobody was going to try and step on other people.
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah, exactly. So that people wouldn’t be influenced, unduly influenced, the day of the election. This is why the representation of a party right outside, chanting or yelling slogans and things like that. It was to ensure the integrity of the vote, that it wasn’t cast in a manipulative way.
But now it’s a free-for-all. It’s a free-for-all. And because of the resources of the state and the re-election, this is why you have, like you mentioned, the fliers that were supposed to be guiding people and helping them to their ballot box.
But there’s a Nuevas Ideas monogram on the piece of paper. And so, this is something new. Before, those papers that guided people to their polling place and to their ballot box were actually Tribunal Supremo Electoral. They’re tribunal papers. They weren’t party. And so even at that level you can see that the image of Nuevas Ideas and of Bukele’s party and its people move through the electoral process in a way that we haven’t seen before.
Michael Fox: Right, right. And when you say party, it’s not any party, it is only Nuevas Ideas. I think it’s also important to remember that they, the other parties, didn’t get any of the financial state funding, right?
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah. They weren’t funded to a degree that they could have representation at the voting centers in the way that Nuevas Ideas did. And so I wasn’t at a place that had a municipality that may have been one, let’s say by the FMLN, and I don’t know what that looked like, maybe it was slightly different.
But I’m almost sure that it wasn’t because the resources that were given for the tabling activity outside of the voting centers was coming straight from the party. And since the party has a large amount of representation within all bodies of government, clearly the state purse was used for that activity.
Michael Fox: So I guess the question, Jorge, is why are we talking about this so much? Why is that important?
Jorge Cuéllar: The reason why it’s so important is because let’s say you’re plugged out of politics in El Salvador and you’re going to the ballot box that day. You would think that it’s only Nuevas Ideas running, that only Bukele is running, and that the other politicians are non entities, are a weak opposition. This is the experience that you have as a voter when you’re going to a voting center, because all you see is cyan and blue. That light, blue sky, blue and white. That’s all you see.
Cyan, that’s the name of it — In fact, they call themselves Bancada Cyan, which is like the cyan bloc. Within the Legislative Assembly, they call themselves the Cyan Bloc.
And they use that, and they had a hashtag and the whole thing. And they use that as a way to show the collectivity, the power of that voting bloc against the other representatives in the Legislative Assembly.
And so they use that as a tool to galvanize people to support them. So yeah, they definitely love the color, Mike [both laugh].
Michael Fox: They love the color. And we saw it everywhere yesterday.
Jorge Cuéllar: Saw it everywhere. Another thing is that, even beyond the perimeters of the voting center, you rarely saw any political advertisements, flags, political graffiti on light posts. You didn’t see that. And that was a characteristic of Salvadoran elections past that is no longer.
And this may be because of the state of exception. People are voting in a state of exception where that political graffiti could be possibly misconstrued as a violation of public property or something and could be a reason for arbitrary detention or whatever. Or just being harassed by police or military.
So it’s important not only because we’re going into a different political terrain that Salvadorans have never been in, or never entered into, but because this was all happening under already exceptional conditions with this state of exception, which is basically an emergency moment, a political emergency moment that Bukele has continually prolonged.
Michael Fox: One of these days, last week, I went up to Cabañas. It’s a state nearby. And in San Salvador, you barely see any of those billboards with the pictures of different candidates. Once you get outside there, I started to see some. They were almost all from Nuevas Ideas, almost all, and there was none from the traditional Frente, ARENA parties, obviously.
But I thought that was interesting. Once you got outside of San Salvador, Bukele is still important, but here’s the importance of these other candidates [crosstalk].
Jorge Cuéllar: When I was over in San Martin, going towards Suchitoto, in those areas, you see some of the smaller billboards with Legislative Assembly members’ faces on them, as well as the mayor’s — El Salvador is going into a mayoral election in March as well. And so you saw some of that, but it wasn’t to the level that it was before.
It was everywhere. Any wall that had nothing on it had the flag of a political party, had something on it. It was in a color that would make you think of a political party. But that’s no longer the case.
Michael Fox: I think the context, we mentioned at the beginning, this goes back to 2019, Bukele comes in and completely breaks — There was this two-party system. There were other parties, but it was always back and forth from Frente and ARENA, which is the right-wing party. And then in 2019, Bukele breaks this, and just rolls in, and continues to steamroll till today.
There was something that I thought was interesting interviewing a ton of people at the different voting centers yesterday. Every single person, like we talked about, like you mentioned, that I spoke with, said security was their top thing. And it’s true, because it’s changed people’s lives.
This is, I think, really important context that we might be concerned about what Bukele has done or is doing with authoritarianism. What is he creating? The gutting of democratic systems, the taking over of the different branches of government. But he has changed people’s lives like they have never seen before. Literally, suddenly people can walk the street at night. How many people have repeated this to me so many different times?
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah. That’s exactly right, Mike. When you live 20 or so years of gang violence, extortion, having to, for the sake of survival, having to deal with the presence of gang members, with high homicide rates, with bodies showing up in the middle of roads. This is the reality that Salvadorans were living for such a long time.
So if someone comes to you and says, hey, Mike, we’re going to clear that up for you, that’s a compelling argument. People have totally bought into that because the guy has delivered. And we can’t discount that. We can’t discount the material shift that has happened in the popular, vulnerable, and poor, marginalized Salvadoran community. People are really living that safety.
And so one of the things that I heard often was, we now can breathe tranquility. Puemos respirar tranquilidade. And that, to me, is such a powerful formulation of that. It’s a political emotion. It’s a political emotion that people are communicating through this sense of now being able to, like you said, walk the street, go to the store, not be looked at in a certain way that might be suspicious or whatever. So it’s this that people are really drawn to, because that has been delivered.
But alongside that, you have this, like you’re mentioning, the dismantling of democracy, the abuse of human rights, the mass detention and mass incarceration emerging as an industry in El Salvador as well. And so you have this other stuff happening. You have a one-party state at this point.
But this reality, those are abstractions for the regular Salvadoran, because the regular Salvadoran only cares about whether or not they’re going to make it to the next day, which was the problem before Bukele.
And that is what, for Salvadorans, was the result of the two-party system that predates him. It was shared blame amongst Frente and ARENA as being two sides of the same coin. And the two sides of the same coin that also utilized, in their own way, the gang problem as a fear tactic to garner votes.
Michael Fox: Walk me through. I want to walk. Polls close, and then people start to make their way downtown. We were there together, but walk me through what you saw and the feeling on the ground, being there in the minutes and the hours before Bukele is about to speak.
Jorge Cuéllar: So, first of all, I would like to see the photographs to compare the size of the crowds, because I’m not sure if they were the same. But people were in a celebratory mood, they were really happy. They were crowded in the sense that they were being funneled through a checkpoint, a security checkpoint with military, with high caliber weapons and police as well.
But in general, it was an orderly performance of civic duty. They were walking through and gathering in front of the prepared stage by Bukele that was set up really early that morning — So the guy knew he was going to win.
There was joy, that’s important. It’s tough to be critical of it. But what you see is that folks were really excited about this. They were very happy about this. There were people with flags. There were people with masks on of Bukele. There were all sorts of pirated shirts with Bukele, his face on it. All this stuff was there.
And the sense was that this is something that they felt was actually, even if some people didn’t vote for Bukele, was something that they were doing for their fellow Salvadorans. So there was a sense of compromiso, of commitment from the Salvadoran that’s pro-Bukele to the one that isn’t, because, in the end, they feel that they’re doing the right thing. They’re on the right side of history, in a sense.
And so that sense of the people as a historical actor was felt in that crowd. And especially as we inched closer and closer to Bukele coming to the stage to speak. So that, to me, was one of the swelling emotions of the crowd again.
But they were very much primed for it. They entered the discotheque. All the music was playing, you know, Daft Punk “One More Time”. All this stuff in order to prime people to accept what was going to be presented before then.
Michael Fox: I think it was really interesting. For me, I’ve covered a lot of elections. And there were major, major similarities between, almost word for word, what I heard from some of the folks last night and what I heard from a lot of Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil 2018, 2019 — You know, this is the first time I feel like I voted. You know, I feel like this is like the first time we actually have a president, like we are free now. There are all these layers of feelings and ecstasy. So much ecstasy. Not the drug but the excitement, because it was on fire.
And I want to get into a little bit the Bukele image, the Bukele marketing. Because I think this is so important to understand in terms of understanding what is the most important thing? How did Bukele win? We talk about security, but the other thing that he is so good at is the image, it’s the story, it’s the social media, it’s the selfie. What is his spin?
But it’s not a spin. He is a market in the same way that, like you said, the music’s playing, it’s excitement. We want to bring people in in the same way Evangelical churches oftentimes play music that’s going to get people excited and youth excited to be part of something. And there was so much of that happening.
Jorge Cuéllar: I think the Evangelical comparison is so apt. There’s a cult-like experience of Bukele. When Bukele speaks, it seems like the anointed one, the enlightened leader is speaking to you directly as a vessel, as a vessel of God.
And you can feel it in the crowd too, especially the way he was moving different sectors to cheer when he was saying one thing versus another. So he has those constituencies really, really well defined and articulated in his discourse, in the way that he speaks to crowds. So that’s one way.
But this pleasure of belonging, which I think is really critical to the Bukele phenomenon, is not one that just happens in the crowd phenomenon, but it’s one that has been cultivated for the last five years. And this is where you have the social media, this is where you have the newspaper, the audio El Salvador. This is where the propaganda machine has done its work. It’s primed people for these moments.
It’s leading you up to these climactic or the climax moments, of which the elections really are that peak. But for many people, they’ve been hearing these things for such a long time in different ways, packaged through YouTube, packaged through the newspapers, packaged through clips of Bukele, packaged through his tweets. And that ensemble of stuff is the marketing plan, but one that people have been drip fed for the last five years. And even before that, as a candidate, Bukele.
Michael Fox: Yeah. So I want to bring in two things that I noticed over the last week, and then dive into his speech. Because you were there. I had to leave. You were there.
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah. I endured it, Mike.
Michael Fox: But I want to dive into bringing two things that I thought were fascinating over the last week. One of the things we did not see, as we mentioned, in the lead up to the elections, was people in the streets getting the vote out, oftentimes, we’d see the past. In this election or in other elections elsewhere, you’re used to seeing people with flags and banners, whatever. The only time I saw that was right before. In El Salvador, there’s a specific time two or three days beforehand when there’s no campaigning after that.
And it was that afternoon when this group called Poder Popular, which is a Bukele group, Popular Power. But it has a whole left progressive discourse. And they came out, they came in from different areas, and they bust in, and they did an hour-and-a-half right in front of Metro Centro in San Salvador, this big mall. And they had this huge banner up for Bukele, and they were handing out calendars, and they’ve got flags and stuff.
What was really fascinating, though, is they weren’t necessarily there to engage the people that were around there. They were there for the social media TikTok videos that they were shooting really fast. And the director was just taking one after another after another. He must have taken maybe 20 or 25. And then he said he was sending them all to Bukele and to social media so they could spread them out through their networks. So the idea is to show this…
Jorge Cuéllar: Organic popularity.
Michael Fox: This organic popularity of all these people in the streets. And they’re all there, but it wasn’t necessarily for the people that were there. It’s this image over social media.
It’s the same thing that Bukele talks about: I don’t have to go out and knock on doors and campaign. I’m going to send some tweets, man. That’s just the way it is. And we saw that also, actually, during the day of the vote with this crew that was outside of the main voting center, where the director of these guys is…
At one point I was there filming, and there’s this whole line of Bukele supporters in the shade. And he’s like, you guys, I’m sorry, I know the sun’s hot, but you guys can’t be there because it doesn’t look like there’s enough of you guys. You guys go to the other side where it shows that we have a mass of people. And, we got it. So it was all about the image. How are we going to lift this image through social media? ‘Cause that’s all it’s about.
And then, of course, that was right after that they pulled out these… Obviously they shot off the fireworks, but they actually had the smok fire. So you light it, and it sends off this blue smoke. You see this in protests a lot of times. This is one of the first times I’ve ever seen this during an electoral campaign for a really positive thing.
And they had an entire box and everybody had these little smoke firework things that were firing off, and they’re all in rows, and they weren’t sure exactly what to do with it. They were holding it up, like, this is really cool, but there was no real chanting because it’s all about the pictures and the image.
And it’s not just about their own pictures and image, but they know that by doing that, they’re attracting the attention of the press and the international press. And all the international press was at this specific spot because they knew Bukele was going to vote there.
So part of this is like, oh, wow, there’s people doing stuff. Oh, wow, there’s people cheering. Oh, wow, there’s drums playing. Oh, there’s smoke going on. Sweet. And so the press, including myself, goes there, ’cause it’s the money shot.
And so this is just a couple of examples of how we saw it over the last couple days. But this is, I think, so important to understanding the image that Bukele is, and how important that is for his administration, his government, and his persona.
Jorge Cuéllar: I think that’s exactly right, Mike. One of the things that I do want to mention here because I think it’s part of the media image that Bukele is and the illusion of being a generous leader is also that he offered free transportation to many people to go to their voting centers. The Nuevas Ideas party paid for Ubers and taxis to take people from places to voting centers.
All that stuff was branded. So there was a piece of paper that said [speaking Spanish]. And Gobierno de El Salvador, government of El Salvador, is also part of the rebranding.
One of the things that he first did when he came into power in 2019 was rebrand all the imagery of the government. So even Gobierno de El Salvador is a new formulation, that dark blue with the silver text, that’s a Bukele invention.
And so there’s all these ways that his image, the persona around the image, appears in different places. And to the Salvadoran who’s using that public transportation to get to the voting center, there’s influence there: Oh wow, how generous of the president to help me get to the voting center to vote for him. So this is part of that brand that Bukele has cultivated not only through Nuevas Ideas, but through the image of the government itself.
Michael Fox: Not even to mention the food baskets that were handed out in recent weeks.
Jorge Cuéllar: Right, exactly. And those food baskets had the brand too. [Speaking Spanish], and that’s only possible because he has all the state apparatus to do that stuff, to go to every door, go to every neighborhood and touch people with this box and deliver it. So that in itself is part of the inequality.
And, I think, one of the reasons why having an incumbent run in El Salvador was also disallowed. Because that allows for an overwhelming amount of influence and presence that would not be afforded another candidate.
Michael Fox: I want to get into his speech, but just a second. There’s an amazing podcast I’ve been listening to, everybody has been listening to recently… Bukele, what is it? Senor de Los Sueños, by Radio Ambulante and El Hilo and their joint podcasting company. The first one from them is El Central. So it’s a Spanish language podcast, 6 episodes that walks from the very beginning of Bukele up till now. It’s fantastic. It’s amazing. If you speak Spanish, you should be listening to it.
Jorge Cuéllar: Check it out.
Michael Fox: But I mention that because part of what they get into is his marketing and his image around saying yes, building hope, committing to stuff, promising lots of things, but then not necessarily fulfilling. And that’s what we’ve seen when he was at Nuevo Cuscatlán, then later on the mayor. And then obviously I was interviewing folks just a few days ago, and there’s been all these promises to redo all these parks. And in many parks around the city of San Salvador, it’s halfway done.
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah, they’re boarded up.
Michael Fox: And so how does that fit within all these promises, all this image, getting everybody super hyped up, getting really excited about, but not necessarily following through — Except, of course, in cases like, for instance, security, which is so huge.
Jorge Cuéllar: I think there are other things. Another thing that I think he delivered on that people are grateful for are, for example, some improvements in roads, Surf City. All these kinds of things.
But if one looks really closely at those things, they’re not geared for the ordinary Salvadorans. They’re not focused on them — They’re focused on tourists. They’re focused on income coming from abroad. Those things have been also part of what he’s been successful at and what he’s delivered on.
Michael Fox: I’m sorry to cut you off, but all that has also been the image. Because I did a story last year on what was supposed to be Bitcoin, what was it? Bitcoin City, which is down… Oh, God. I don’t remember the name of the town, but it’s right along the coast. And it was the first spot where there was supposed to be the pilot project, and it was going to be amazing, and it was going to bring all this Bitcoin money.
And you go down there now and you talk to so many people and they’re like, look, yeah, there are places that accept it, and it’s brought in some tourism because there’s people that come in from abroad that like this, but it hasn’t done almost anything for us, and we don’t even use it.
So that’s part of the marketing. Not necessarily has it even really worked or not necessarily do people use Bitcoin all over the place. But that’s a marketing tool, more, like you said, for folks from abroad. ’Cause now El Salvador is ground zero for the libertarian dream or goal of a libertarian paradise.
Jorge Cuéllar: Exactly. I think Bitcoin is a perfect example of the promise of transformation that these new ideas will bring to the country, but the lukewarm effect that they have on society. I think it’s really clear with the Bitcoin thing.
But going back to these other things that he’s clearly done, part of the marketing effect of Bukele, has also been the media machine that lets you see these things from perspectives that you don’t usually. This is the drone imagery. This is the very curated shots of the development and the bustling activity at them. Very manicured images that, again, just add to the mystique of how Bukele can get these things done. This is what he’s doing with those projects.
And there are many unfulfilled promises. Sure, there are many. But when you talk to people, when you approach them about this, they’re like, I don’t care. What I care about is the fact that I’m feeling safe now. Because they also see the unfulfilled promises part, which is a problem because there’s so many of them. And that, in some ways, it’s a really unsustainable rate at which he’s promising these things. Salvadorans actually see that as very similar to what other governments did.
So in that sense, he’s not that different. Because there’s always promises that governments past have given people: Fix this bridge. Help with the sewer system. Increase the water pressure in our home so that we actually can get some out of our tap. All these kinds of things that are still a problem, and Bukele has simply promised them again.
Michael Fox: Plus, he’s so cool.
Jorge Cuéllar: So cool.
Michael Fox: Aviator glasses, and his hat backwards. And so, that’s part of the mystique, that he’s young, he’s hip, he’s religious. He checks all the boxes.
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah. He’s super cool. Why wouldn’t you like him? You want to be his friend. You want to hang out with him. You want to go to the club with him. You want to have a beer with the guy. He’s got that effect on people.
And another thing that he’s also been deliberate in doing is presenting his family as the model family, as the model Salvadoran family. Like you said: Christian. Young. Innovative. Dynamic. Brave. This kind of family. And where the woman is playing a very supportive role to his leadership. The way that he’s also used that familial narrative that he’s cultivated through social media is also part of this.
And that’s how he’s able to reach older folks. That’s how he’s able to reach people with more traditional sensibilities, with religious backgrounds. This is the way, through the family. The family is just another instrument in the media toolkit of the Bukele project.
Michael Fox: And informality too. Every one of his ads, his lives, he’s sitting on his couch with pictures of his family in the background, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, just as if you’re looking into his house.
When you get off the international airport and you walk out of the main gate.
Jorge Cuéllar: It’s so weird.
Michael Fox: You walk into this, you’re in their living room, and there’s a big seat for Bukele on one side, and then there’s a big seat with his wife on the other, and it’s the presidential family. And you can almost feel like you’d walk up there and sit down with him.
Jorge Cuéllar: Exactly. And I think that intimacy that they’re trying to curate around the family is also part of what people are drawn to. I feel like that’s part of the populist approach that Bukele has taken to reach people where they are.
Even though it’s an empty thing. The ordinary folks aren’t going to Casa Presidencial to make claims on the state and ask for things. That’s not happening. But he’s cultivating that proximity to people, which people have really fallen for.
Michael Fox: OK. We’re gonna have to wrap things up here. Jorge, walk us to when Bukele arrives. What’s the scene on the ground? And talk about his speech.
Jorge Cuéllar: So Bukele really milks the crowd for a long time. The reports are coming in that he’s gonna pop out at 10:00, that he’s gonna walk down the red carpet to this balcony at the National Palace to speak to the crowd at 10:00. He milks it a little bit and he makes people wait, so it crescendos a little bit.
Michael Fox: Just like he did with the elections. He didn’t vote. Most presidents vote first thing in the morning [crosstalk] He does it 20 minutes beforehand, and people are waiting for him all day long.
Jorge Cuéllar: And so he does this right to the last moment, just to juice it, to juice it a bit. And when he comes out, that’s when you have the smoke machines going nuts, you got the spotlights going on a crazy erratic pattern, and the crowd is going wild: Bu-ke-le, Bu-ke-le, Bu-ke-le. This is what you hear people saying.
I think the sound is really important at this thing in the sense that his microphone is so loud you can’t ignore it. I’m wearing noise canceling headphones trying to protect my ear drums, and I could still hear the guy crystal clear. It’s just so intense, the level of sound.
But the people, they’ve been waiting for this. He pops out with Gabriella, his wife, and he’s waving at the crowd, giving a thumbs up, pretending that he knows somebody in the crowd: Hey, I see you, doing all these kinds of things.
And the people are just soaking it up. This is the moment, this is the climax. This is what we’ve campaigned for. This is what we want. And it’s really, really clear.
And so what I will say, too, about the way that Bukele begins his speech, the crowd goes quiet. It’s really still. And he begins his speech, which is really a rehashing of many of his tweets that are against the opposition, against the journalists such as yourself, Mike. Against these people who are the naysayers of the Bukele project.
And it’s almost as if the guy hasn’t won. He’s a sore winner, and it’s super clear in the way he’s going after these people even before he begins to talk about the positive things about his government that the people voted him in for.
And so it’s strange that it begins in the negative. So you have a good 15 minutes of him just railing against the different oppositions who doubted him, who said that he’s a human rights abuser, journalists that are coming to the country only to criticize and misunderstand and misrepresent.
As well as even drawing in these weird concepts about colonialism and imperialism, which is part of the thing that he does and why he’s so savvy and dangerous in many ways. In pulling metaphors, mixing metaphors from different political traditions and ideas and synthesizing them in a way that gets the crowd going and makes the crowd feel like they’re the protagonist in all of this.
Michael Fox: Talk about what he said about democracy, because he brings it up several times. He brought it up during his press conference, and then he brought it up again because, obviously, there have been a huge number of critiques and major concerns about weakening democracy in El Salvador. And he takes it and spins it, which I think is really important for us to understand the way that he’s seeing it and the way that he’s trying to connect with the Salvadoran population about what this means.
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah, he spends a good amount of time breaking down the concept of democracy in the speech by actually splitting the word to a Greek origin: Demos and Kratos. And he says that Demos is the people and Kratos is power. So power to the people.
And this is where he again doubles down and that messianic millenarian thing where he’s that vessel of God, and the people illuminated by God as well are pushing him to do these wonderful things to El Salvador.
And so he’s actually splitting the democracy conversation and putting it upside down in a way where, if this is a dictatorship, I think this is the continuation of the subtext of what he said: If this is a dictatorship, as the journalists will say, then it’s a dictatorship of the people.
And even that has a Marxian thing there, but he’s using it as a way to justify what he’s doing, and also to dismiss the critiques that have been happening and have been taking place, and the ones that are to come.
He’s trying to anticipate where the conversation will go and trying to nip it right at the beginning. He’s using these terms like democracy and imploding them and rebuilding them and recomposing them in a way that suits what he’s doing.
Michael Fox: I thought it was really interesting, I think in his speech he’s talking about how he was responding to a Spanish journalist who had said, why are you trying to destroy democracy in El Salvador? And that’s the point at which he says, no, no, no. The democracy that we’ve had is actually a colonial-like implantation. It’s failed. What we’re building is our own from below, Salvadoran democracy. And it’s going to be different, but it’s ours.
And he’s able to play with that, exactly what we were just talking about, Jorge. He’s able to play with that because he comes back to this, oh, power to the people. Well, look, you guys just voted me in with 85-freaking-% of the vote. The country with the highest vote percentage ever in the history of the world, according to him, so far. We don’t know the final results, but we know that he had a huge amount of support.
And so that is obviously a major mandate for us to do it ourselves — Of course, when he says us, he really means him [both laugh].
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Michael Fox: And then people are gonna support him because, hey, look what I’ve done with security. But I think it is this fascinating twist on how he’s trying to, in a way, co-opt the language of democracy in a different way for his own means.
Jorge Cuéllar: Not only does he do the Spanish, but he also does the Americans. He says that the Americans were part of the way that this democracy unfolded, and that led to the last 20 years of ARENA and FMLN. So he does that as well. He goes back to the colonial period with the Spanish and the Spanish journalist.
But then he ends up saying we love these guys. They’re great. We appreciate them. And so he moves back and forth: the harsh critique and then this present stuff.
At the end of it, what you said, that he’s trying to assemble in the discourse a Salvadoran democracy from below. And the way that he sells that is by saying that this is a path that we’ve never been allowed to take. A path that we’ve been never allowed to take because of the NGOs, because of the US, because of all these legal systems, of which democracy is a part, have encumbered the true El Salvador from coming through.
And so now being that he is this vessel of transformation, he’s going to be the one that breaks through this.
And that is such a seductive thing. And that seduction is so clear in the way that people respond to that. That’s when you have Bu-ke-le, Bu-ke-le again and again and again. When those lines are delivered in this really incredible cadence that the guy has, this rhythm by which he speaks where the repetitions line up as if there’s an underlying beat, music, to the speech that he’s making, and leads to the line where people just go nuts.
And so this is really powerful stuff. And also in the way that getting those powerful lines actually are addressing the problem of the Salvadoran self-esteem.
That’s the reason why it’s also seductive. It’s not only because it’s really well presented, it’s really well curated. You got the light show and the drone show and the fireworks that are forthcoming. No, it’s also because Salvadoran self-esteem has been historically low because of the way they’ve been presented in world media, gang members caged and things like this, that he’s offering this new vision.
And that new vision is obviously engineered and manufactured, but it’s nonetheless very compelling, and remains compelling.
Michael Fox: And dangerous.
Jorge Cuéllar: And dangerous.
Michael Fox: Let’s look at the future. Where are we at now? That was yesterday. We still don’t have where we are at now, but then where we headed, because where is this going? We still don’t have the full results. So we don’t know in particular about Congress, Legislative Assembly, but where do you see this taking his second administration?
Jorge Cuéllar: I always tell people that I’m not in the business of predicting the future [Fox laughs], or even really talking about the future, because you never know, and it’s not safe to do so.
But what we can see from this moment right now is that we know for certain, actually, where we’re going: five years of Bukele. That means more state of exception, that means more presence of the military and police. That might also mean the construction boom that El Salvador has been going through, which might mean more prisons. It might mean other kinds of experimental projects like Bitcoin, things like this.
So you might have more of that quasi innovative populism that he’s prototyped in his first five years. So we’ll have a continuation of that. We’ll have more promises that are likely to be unfulfilled, but this is unsustainable.
So I think the breaking point may come in the next five years. I don’t want to say for certain, but I do have sincere hope that there is an increasing awareness that the dismantling of the democratic state is a problem that needs to be addressed, and that a one-party state is not a solution to these really deeply rooted and historical problems with this country. That no single politician on his own, even with loyalists all over the state, will really be able to fully address.
So that’s what I see in the next five years. But you saw Félix Ulloa speaking in The New York Times saying that maybe there’s five more after that, maybe there’s five more after that.
Michael Fox: Félix Ulloa, vice president.
Jorge Cuéllar: Félix Ulloa, vice president. And so maybe we’re going to an Ortega situation where you have perpetual re-election with phony Mickey Mouse opposition that he’s going to knock down every time. And maybe the FMLN, as I think they were 7% the last time I checked in the presidential tallies, might be the only real opposition left.
And even ARENA and some of these other parties were already doing this. They actually represented this weak opposition that Bukele will very easily tumble down. But it maintains the image, the semblance of a democratic system because an opposition is allowed to exist.
And so that is precisely what for sure is going to be the case moving forward. But I think people and social movements will emerge in response as well, as we saw with some of these crazy memes that were circulating on the Internet.
Michael Fox: Jorje, I want to just go really fast to the bigger international perspective thing.
I was fascinated that I was out near one of the polling stations where Bukele was about to vote, and these guys come up to me and are like, oh you’re press. We’re from Peru. One guy’s a right-wing politician, another guy’s the head of the municipal police — 50,000 police officers — And they’re like, we’re here to learn the Bukele model, and we want to bring it back to Peru.
And it’s going to be happening more and more around the country. Bukele even mentioned yesterday he’s been in conversations to help Javier Milei in Argentina learn the Bukele model, or the state of exception model, maybe around economic stuff, maybe not so much security but around other layers of this stuff.
So he is an inspiration for many right-wing leaders, and will probably be increasingly so.
Jorge Cuéllar: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. It’s not just now, as well, after the state of exception. Even before, Bukele’s team was doing delegations to places like the Dominican Republic, to places like Colombia, to think about security policy in those specific contexts.
So this has been an ongoing thing, missions, these punitive missions that this government has taken to spread some of the ideas that they’ve prototyped and field tested in El Salvador. So, I think that’s part of it, part of the seduction for other leaders that are also experiencing high levels of crime, narcotrafficking, all these kinds of issues, human rights abuses as well. So that’s part of the seduction.
And the other one being, going back to him being so cool, is that: How do we craft a figure within our national context that has the staying power, and this incredible amount of popularity, that will then allow us to do these other technical changes in constitutions and legal frameworks, that then will make possible, even will open up new vistas for far-right politics?
And so that is part of the danger of Bukele. And he leans into this too, even in the speech. He highlights Argentina. He highlights Ecuador. Ecuador is the first country that he mentions in the string of countries that he speaks about, and that’s Noboa state of exception. And also Honduras, as well, with a state of exception next door. And so he’s really savvy in that as well, in the way he’s recognizing the folks who are also paying him some level of adoration from abroad.
Michael Fox: Anything else to add, Jorge?
Jorge Cuéllar: You always ask me this, and I never know what to say [both laugh] because I feel like we’ve covered everything. I think that part of the challenge moving forward with all of this is what is an opposition in a perpetual state of exception, in an authoritarian, consolidated political reality? What is an opposition? And that’s a question that we don’t have an answer for yet.
I don’t have an answer for that. Because of the exhaustion of other political experiments past and the residues of political errors of the past that still cast a really long shadow on politics in El Salvador and on social movements. And so that is really the question. If an opposition, a real opposition, is even possible in this new political reality. We don’t know, because we’ve never been here. And that’s, I hope, an answer that we find by experiencing what these next five years will bring.
Michael Fox: Jorge Cuéllar, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Fantastic.
Jorge Cuéllar: Let’s do it, Mike.
Michael Fox: It’s been a pleasure.
[Music]
I just have one more thing to say before I go…
All of that was the situation the day after the election — Monday, Feb. 5th. And as of right now, there is still no official result from the Supreme Electoral Court, which oversees the elections. On the court’s website, the presidential vote count is stuck at 70% of the ballots counted.
On Monday afternoon, members of the court held a press conference to announce that there was a problem with the uploading of the data of the remaining votes and that they were going to have to double check everything manually. I’m seeing reports that that could take at least a week.
Opposition parties and electoral experts have denounced the situation. It is not normal. We’ve also heard many stories of problems with the vote abroad.
All of that said, however, Bukele did clearly win the election. With 70% of the ballots counted so far, he has a resounding lead with 83%. But, there is an even more concerning situation with the Legislative Assembly: Only 5% of those votes have been counted so far.
And it’s an important battleground. Remember, all 60 seats are up for grabs. Bukele says he’s picked up most of them. But several people I spoke with in San Salvador over the last week said they were going to vote for Bukele, but not for his party in Congress. Like this taxi driver I met a few days before the vote.
Taxi Driver: Never in history have you seen one person with all the power and do everything well. We need a counterweight.
Michael Fox: We won’t know until those votes are counted.
[Music]
That is all for Under the Shadow. Next week, we go to 1980s Honduras, to the center of US operations in Central America, and the people fighting brutal repression.
That’s next on Under the Shadow.
If you like what you hear, you can check out my Patreon page. That’s patreon.com/mfox. There, you can also support my work, become a monthly sustainer, or sign up to stay abreast of the latest on this podcast and my other reporting across Latin America.
This is Michael Fox. Many thanks.
See you next time.
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