Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Latin America, visiting several countries and meeting with world leaders. I followed Rubio's travels closely, but the meeting that stood out the most — to me anyway — was the one with Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador. The big news that came out of that meeting was, of course, that Bukele offered to house violent criminals of any nationality in his jails, but I felt like there was more to it than that.
Admittedly the aesthetic initially drew me in — these two powerful men, casually dressed and smiling as they talked and walked among the lush palm trees that surround Bukele's gorgeous home along Lake Coatepeque. (What can I say — I'm a sucker for the beauty of Central America? Our editor, Chris Queen, said it looked like a scene from "Miami Vice.")
But there was much more to this meeting than a few smiles and the Salvadoran landscape. It felt like a glimpse into the future, or what the future could be — the strengthening of the Americas, a strengthening of relationships among sovereign yet allied nations that could go a long way in ensuring national security, economic prosperity for all of us, and a united front against Communist China and other enemies of the Western hemisphere.
When I was covering the meeting for PJ Media last week, I realized — and am embarrassed to admit — that I didn't know much about Bukele, even though he's been a bit of a rising star in conservative circles in recent years. So I set out to learn more.
Related: 'Unprecedented': El Salvador Makes the U.S. an Offer We Can't Refuse
When I glanced at his X profile, I was a little shocked to see that it could have easily been the profile of any one of my favorite political accounts that I check each day for news. Bukele is unapologetically pro-United States, proud of the work he's done to clean up El Salvador, and unafraid to call out the evils in this world that threaten our freedoms, whether it's globalism, taxes, and the propaganda spewed by the mainstream media or satanic gang members, misspent USAID funds, and idiotic politicians.
.@nayibbukele is a shining example of the young leaders we need not just in the US but across the globe. https://t.co/gydMMleLCw
— Anna Paulina Luna (@realannapaulina) February 8, 2025
He even spoke at CPAC last year, warning the United States of its fate should we refuse to change our ways. As one commenter on the video said, "This guy knows more about America than 75% of American voters."
He also has an extremely high approval rating — the highest of any world leader — but how did he get there?
The Associated Press describes Bukele, who was born in 1981, as a "millennial of the we-have-to-break-things mentality," adding, "...he shuns ideology. He is a populist in a long line of Latin American populists but with a mastery of social media, communication, and publicity seldom seen before." (They say this like it's a bad thing, but I already like this guy.)
He has a unique background. His paternal grandparents were Christian Palestinians from Jerusalem and Bethlehem who immigrated to El Salvador in the 1920s. His maternal grandparents were Catholic and Greek Orthodox. In the 1980s, his late father converted to Islam, became an imam, and created a Muslim community in the Central American country.
Of his own faith, Bukele has said that he respects people from all walks of life, and in a 2019 Facebook post, he stated, "I believe that no one is saved in groups, but salvation is obtained individually. That's why I've accepted Jesus Christ, that's why I read the word of God written in the Bible when I feel confused or need guidance, that's why I ask Yahweh for the wisdom he gave Solomon, even though I know I'll never be as wise. That's why I believe deeply in God and his kingdom..."
He also recently told Tucker Carlson that he prayed to God for guidance during cabinet meetings.
Politically, Bukele "came up in a left-wing party," as Time Magazine puts it, and many like to point this out as a reason not to like him. I'd like to point out that some of the greatest minds in history followed a similar journey. Our own president was once a registered Democrat. And I think if your political views do not ebb and flow a bit throughout your lifetime, you probably live in a bubble. But Bukele, who now considers himself mostly independent, has said, "The left has lost its way across the world. It has a serious identity crisis, and the right is at least setting a course." Amen to that.
Professionally, Bukele reportedly had dreams of becoming a lawyer but went into advertising instead, first working for his father and eventually starting his own marketing company. His journey into politics began in 2012 when he served as the mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán. In 2015, he became the mayor of San Salvador, the country's capital, and by 2019, he was serving his first term as el presidente.
In 2024, he won re-election by an extremely large margin, to the tune of something like 84%. "El Salvador went from being the most unsafe (country) to the safest. Now in these next five years, wait to see what we are going to do," he told a group of enthusiastic supporters from the balcony of the National Palace during his acceptance speech.
And that leads us to how Bukele, the man who calls himself "Philosopher King," became so popular in his home country and abroad. In 2015, El Salvador had a murder rate of 106.3 per 100,000 people with a total of 6,656 murders that year. In 2019, when Bukele took office, that number had dropped but was still in the thousands.
By 2022, when Bukele issued a state of emergency and began his infamous guerra contra las pandillas or "war against the gangs," the murder rate in El Salvador dropped to 7.8 per 100,000 people or 495 murders per year. In 2024, it was 1.9 per 100,000 people or 114 murders per year. El Salvador went from being the murder capital of the world to one of the countries with the lowest crime rates, thanks to Bukele and his government allies.
After decades of political violence, gangs like Mara 18 and MS-13 had largely taken over the country, leaving many citizens fearing for their lives. It's the reason why many Salvadorans dreamed of crossing our border and often even separated themselves from their children in hopes of establishing a better life for them. As a matter of fact, in 2015, the Migration Policy Institute reported that immigrants came to the U.S. from El Salvador more than any other country in Central America, and it was the second-largest source of illegal immigration into the United States.
On March 27, 2022, Bukele, who campaigned on ending gang violence, reached his tipping point. Gang members had killed 87 people in a 48-hour span, and he knew he had to do something. The president told Carlson that he was up against an "impossible task" at this point, and this is when he admitted that he and his cabinet members prayed. They prayed for wisdom, to win the war against these gangs, and to keep the number of civilian casualties low.
At this point, the government approved a state of exception, which allowed it to suspend certain constitutional rights and begin doing what was necessary to arrest these gang members who were hidden among the general population. As of January of this year, that state of exception has been extended 35 times and at least 84,200 have been arrested.
Flashback: El Salvador Cracked Down on Gang Activity and Crime, so How Did the Biden Administration Respond?
Even the Associated Press concedes that this has been largely popular with the people of El Salvador. "The crackdown has been tough, but people have reclaimed their neighborhoods. Small businesses are no longer extorted into oblivion. People can safely seek jobs in neighborhoods formerly controlled by rival gangs. Children can walk to school without fear of forced gang recruitment," it wrote last year.
I want to stop here and say that I've been working on this article for several days. I wanted to do thorough research, and there is so much out there to read. At first glance, I was impressed. I also heard from people who live in El Salvador and nearby Costa Rica, and they all had positive things to say about him.
But when I started digging a little deeper, I began to read the negative. He's too authoritarian. He's using too much force. When will the state of exception end? How are these prisoners being treated? Is Bukele returning El Salvador to its past? I'll concede that these could be legitimate concerns, but I also realized a trend: All of these headlines came from the mainstream media and various liberal "human rights" groups that often like to poke their noses in where it doesn't belong.
If I've learned anything in my lifetime, it's that these types will swim through a sea of positives to point out the minor negatives. If the mainstream media is telling you something is bad, it's usually not. And as someone who has spent a lot of time in Central America in recent years, I've noticed that far too many people from the United States (and Canada and Europe) are far too determined to try to change other societies and cultures to match their own values.
Turning one of the most dangerous countries in the world into a desirable place to live during one five-year presidential term is no small feat. Sometimes, you do have to break things to fix them. Sometimes, unfortunately, you have to declare war. Sometimes, a grown-up has to come into the room and take over. Governing a nation is not a black-and-white issue, and, with some exceptions, it's not for the people outside of that nation to try to work out the gray area.
Anyway, the people of El Salvador seem to be okay with what's happening, and that's what matters.
Bukele doesn't do many interviews with the press, and who can blame him? At some point in my research, I decided to stop reading those negative articles and actually listen to the man himself. The picture the media paints isn't quite what you get when you listen to him speak.
To be honest, he could probably run circles around most members of the media in an intelligence contest. And after reading those articles, I expected someone callous, pompous, and bombastic. What I saw instead was someone who is thoughtful and insightful and who thinks critically, as well as someone who seems to care about improving the lives of the people in his country.
"You cannot do anything if you do not have peace...you need to be able to move freely, to be able to have your basic rights respected, starting with the right to live, the right to move, the right to have property... That's the first thing a society will struggle to achieve. And once you achieve peace, then you can struggle for all the other things, like infrastructure, well-being, quality of life — but you have to start with peace," Bukele told Carlson last summer.
He also admitted that he knows he's been criticized by certain groups, including human rights organizations, but his response to that is that the people who aren't committing violence have rights too. "What about the human right of a woman not to be raped? What about the human right of kids to play or to be free or to go to the park? What about the human right to live, to walk in the street?" Makes sense to me. Where outsiders cry "authoritarianism," Bukele — and many people in his country — see liberation.
Bukele goes on to say that he believes that even these criminals have human rights, but basically, when you have murder and crime rates higher than any other country in the world, you have to prioritize the rights of the honest, hard-working people over those of the rapists and murderers. You have to get things under control. He had to secure his country before he could focus on anything else.
And that's what he did. People who left the country years ago are actually moving back to El Salvador. United States citizens are moving there as well — it has a small expat community. Other countries with similar crime problems have asked Bukele for advice. Many others have praised the work he's done.
While his first term was focused on security, he hopes to make the second one about building the country's economy, which also came up during Rubio's trip to the nation last week. Both countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Strategic Civil Nuclear Cooperation (NCMOU) with the aim of, among other things, "promoting mutual prosperity through expanded economic cooperation."
The United States and El Salvador have been allies since 1863. In 2006, it became the "first Central American country to implement a regional free trade agreement with the U.S." According to Rubio's Department of State, our goals for the relationship have been to "promote inclusive growth, support human rights, strengthen democracy, and reduce irregular migration." El Salvador also receives humanitarian assistance from the United States, through the federal government and largely via the private sector through the Central America Forward initiative.
Last week, Bukele made an unprecedented offer to not only take back "Salvadoran MS-13 gang members who are in the United States unlawfully," but also "violent illegal immigrants, including members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, but also criminal illegal migrants from any country," proving that both countries remain focused on these issues and building our relationship maybe now more than ever.
If nothing else, he's more of an ally to the United States than many of our Democrat leaders are these days.
Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up.
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 2, 2025
While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs… pic.twitter.com/bXpdK29zH5
Today, the entire local opposition called for a massive demonstration against mining.
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) February 9, 2025
Every political party joined the call, along with 90% of all NGOs, universities, churches, and activist groups. They ran a month-long mainstream media and social media campaign, had the backing… pic.twitter.com/y6UJrtWF19
It will be interesting to see how Bukele proceeds in El Salvador and on the world stage, how the relationship between our two countries grows, and how it all might influence other nations in Latin America. While I'm not one to put politicians on a pedestal, I'm a Bukele fan so far. He's quick, intelligent, and confident like our own president, but with more youth and charisma on his side. With any luck, he'll be the face of a new generation of world leaders.
Or, to paraphrase an X post I just read, he'll either morph into a tyrant or continue on this path toward becoming the GOAT. Let's hope it's the latter.
I'll leave you with his CPAC speech and the Carlson interview I've referenced. Both are interesting and left me understanding why Bukele calls himself a "philosopher king." He has a strong understanding of the way the world works and common sense ideas on how to make it work better.
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