There is growing tension between the administration of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and the United States following what the Biden Administration and human rights advocates have called a power grab.
Bukele’s newly elected allies in the Salvadoran congress took further steps to concentrate power into the hands of the country’s young president. In the legislative body’s first session on May 1, the newly elected members of Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party voted to remove the five members of the country’s highest court as well as the country’s attorney general.
“It was practically a coup against the democratic institution,” Saul Baños, the director of Fundación de Estudios para la Aplicación del Derecho, tells The Progressive. “There have been a series of acts that we consider to be unconstitutional. Now here in the country there is a consolidation of power that breaks with the democratic and republican regime. As of today, we do not have a check on powers.”
“We are seeing a re-politicization of both the military and police in El Salvador.”
The purge of the justices follows the February 28, 2019, municipal and congressional elections in which President Bukele’s party won by a landslide, gaining fifty-five of the eighty-four seats in the country’s congress. Another allied party, GANA, gained one seat, giving the young president a solid majority in the congress. The traditional left and right parties of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the Nationalist Republican Alliance won four and fourteen seats, respectively.
Following the unconstitutional move against El Salvador’s highest court, U.S. Congressmember Norma Torres, Democrat of California, issued a list of officials accused of corruption in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Among those listed were several of Bukele’s top allies.
Bukele hit back at the Torres, telling Latinx folks in California to not vote for her. Torres has said she’s received threats from Bukele supporters.
As concerns grow over Bukele’s increasingly authoritarian actions, the U.S. House of Representatives on May 17 passed H.Res. 408, which called on the Bukele administration to respect the country’s democratic institutions. Days later, on May 21, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced that it would be redirecting aid to the Central American country from the government to civil society groups.
Bukele, who took power in June 2019, hit back at the decision on Twitter stating that the organizations would not receive financial aid from the Salvadoran people and decrying lack of aid for security, tying it to increased migration.
On June 4, El Salvador pulled out of the International Commission against Impunity, an anti-corruption and impunity body backed by the Organization of American States (OAS), further angering the United States. Days later, on June 8, El Salvador’s congress approved legislation that established Bitcoin as a legal currency.
The action against the court is the latest in a series of increasingly authoritarian actions Bukele has been accused of taking since taking office two years ago.
In February 2020, months after assuming power, Bukele used the country’s military to intimidate congress into passing a $109 million security plan. In spite of these authoritarian actions, Bukele has maintained a high approval rating, with most recent polling from the Salvadoran daily newspaper, La Prensa Grafica, placing the president’s approval rating at 86.5 percent of the population.
Authoritarianism has a horrifying amount of support in El Salvador. A 2020 poll by the Jesuit-run Central American University found that nearly 50 percent of the population agreed that an authoritarian government would be ideal in some circumstances. The same poll also found that more than 75 percent believed leaders should govern with a heavy hand, and nearly 65 percent of the population felt threats to society should be eliminated.
During the Bukele administration, gang violence in El Salvador has seen a significant decline. According to the International Crisis Group, “the reasons for success might lie in quiet, informal understandings between gangs and the government.”
Bukele’s consolidation of power has drawn widespread condemnation from both Democrats and Republicans in the United States, the European Union, and groups on both the left and right in El Salvador. Amid the international outcry, the Chinese embassy in El Salvador issued a statement on Twitter, stating that they respected the sovereignty of El Salvador in their internal affairs.
“This message from China was a response to the international community, as well as a backing of President Bukele,” says Baños, of Fundación de Estudios para la Aplicación del Derecho.
El Salvador opened relations with China in August 2018 during the administration of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, breaking with long time ally Taiwan as part of the agreement for an investment of $150 million for development projects. The move was condemned by Republicans in the United States, including Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who threatened to remove El Salvador from the Alliance for Prosperity, a project of the Inter-American Development Bank.
Bukele initially positioned himself against China, but quickly sought to grow closer with Chinese investments, making visits to Beijing. During the pandemic, China has assisted El Salvador with medical equipment and vaccines.
“Bukele has been breaking his good relationship with the United States,” Baños says. “In his first year of the administration he had a good relationship with the Trump Administration and the United States ambassador to El Salvador.”
As the Biden Administration pushes for new anti-corruption efforts in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the region has increasingly looked to China for economic infrastructure development, loans, and COVID-19 vaccines.
Neighboring Honduras has expressed interest in approaching China for vaccines. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández condemned the global west for “hoarding vaccines,” according to Reuters. He suggested that his government would move to open a business center to promote Honduran businesses in China, a first step to opening direct diplomatic relations with Beijing.
“Guatemala and Honduras may continue flirting with the idea of stronger relations to China,” Margaret Meyers, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue, tells The Progressive. “If only to mitigate U.S. anti-corruption efforts.”
While Guatemalan Foreign Minister Pedro Brolo initially expressed interest in approaching China for access to their vaccines, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei has voiced his distrust of China and their vaccines. The Guatemalan president told Reuters that the Central American country would not open relations with China out of loyalty to Taiwan.
Since assuming office, Bukele’s administration has been marked by attacks on the press, on critics, human rights activists, and by an increase in violence.
“There is an increasing level of personal persecution of people who speak up publicly against anything that the administration is doing, or who act as a whistle blower,” Alexis Stoumbelis, an organizer with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, tells The Progressive. “This is especially affecting women in terms of the levels of misogynist threats of violence and sexual violence that being unleashed upon women in public or political roles.”
In one case, Commissioner Liduvina Escobar of the Institute for the Access of Public Information was removed from her position by Bukele publicly on Twitter after she denounced abuses and called out the state institution for not fulfilling its role of providing information. She was later attacked by other commissioners and by supporters of Bukele in person and on social media.
“This has happened over and over again,” Stoumbelis says.
In another case, ahead of the February 28 election, two activists from the FMLN were killed when assailants opened fire on a campaign caravan. Five others were left wounded. The attack is blamed on supporters of Bukele.
Added to this, the Bukele administration has allowed for the creeping of security forces back into politics, which the 1992 Peace Accords had prohibited. According to Stoumbelis, this was one of the most important aspects of the accords.
“We are seeing a re-politicization of both the military and police in El Salvador,” Stoumbelis says. “What we are seeing now, and very intentionally on the part of Bukele, is that the police and military are creeping their way back into public life, and upholding decisions and edicts that Bukele is making, that may be unconstitutional. He has the police and military telling the public that what the president says goes.”