EL Salvador UnDER PRESIDENT BUKELE
March 23, 2025
Nayib Bukele has a 90% approval rating and is centralising his power.
He succeeded in stopping gang violence, but some other promises were not met.
El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America and a presidential republic with a population of 6 million people.
Despite its small size, there are several reasons why El Salvador is significant globally, particularly after the election of Nayib Bukele as a president in 2019:
The country’s effective national security policies are being studied and copied by other countries in Latin America.
The first country to establish a national Bitcoin reserve, setting an example for bigger global superpowers.
The country with an attractive geopolitical location in the Pacific, developing initiatives to build an alternative to the Panama Canal.
The country is a point of interest for both the US and China.
Before Bukele, the country’s politics were dominated by two major parties, the left-wing FMLN and the right-wing ARENA.
Both emerged during the Salvadoran Civil War (1979-1992) that killed 75,000 people, as US-backed Salvadoran government fought against FMLN guerrillas, supported by the Soviet Union and neighbouring communist states.
By 2019, the public was frustrated with:
Corruption
Gang crime
Economic struggles
Nayib Bukele won over presidential candidates from both mainstream parties, with 53% of the vote.
Nayib Bukele has a background in business and started his political career with the FMLN, but later founded his own party.
Former mayor: led the country’s capital city, San Salvador, in 2015-2018.
Social media: broke with traditional media in favour of direct communication style. Bukele’s Instagram following grew from 300k in 2018 to 9.7m in 2025.
His main campaign promises before 2019 elections.
Crime: reducing murder rates and bringing an end to widespread gang violence
Corruption: Investigating and fighting cases of political corruption
Foreign policy: Shift towards a pragmatic and pro-US foreign policy, away from alignment with left-wing authoritarian regimes in the region.
Education and healthcare: making social services more accessible to citizens
Financial infrastructure: modernise the banking system, promote the adoption of new tools like crypto, especially Bitcoin.
Economy and infrastructure: expanding physical and digital infrastructure, decreasing poverty, increasing foreign investments and growth
We look at how these promises were fulfilled or not fulfilled during his first term.
Crime and gangs
Bukele promised to improve national security in a country with one of the world's highest murder rates.
After five years in office, the murder rate dropped from 53.1 per 100,000 people in 2018 to 1.9 in 2024, as the government took control of the gangs.
Bukele’s security policies had a 95% support rating. Salvadorans historically are willing to accept a more authoritarian government in exchange for increased security and reduced power of criminal groups.
War against gangs began in March 2022, when Bukele's government declared a state of emergency giving it more power to arrest people without a warrant. This happened next to a radical rise in murders, with 87 people killed in 3 days, after an assumed deal between officials and criminals broke down.
State of emergency was renewed several times by 2025, allowing police to jail more than 83,000 people suspected of being in gangs (1.5% of the population) - the highest imprisonment rate in the world. Around 8,000 were eventually let go because of a lack of evidence.
Legal changes allowed prosecutors to hold mass trials of up to 900 people at once
A new 40,000-person prison was built in 2023
The approach was criticised by human rights groups and some families who believe their relatives were wrongly jailed or kept in torturous conditions.
Despite that, such a strict security model is now being studied or copied by governments in Latin America, especially in Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Honduras.
Foreign policy
Bukele’s predecessor, from the left-wing FMLN party, developed close ties with left-wing authoritarian regimes in the region – Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
In 2018, under the previous president, El Salvador cut its diplomatic ties with Taiwan and established those with China.
Since China sees Taiwan as part of its territory, most countries choose to either recognise and establish diplomatic ties with Taiwan or with China.
During Bukele’s presidency:
Venezuela: Bukele rejected Maduro’s election win in 2019, expelled Venezuelan diplomats, recognised Maduro’s opponent as legitimate president and denounced further elections as fraudulent.
Nicaragua: Bukele criticised Nicaraguan authoritarian government of Ortega, and denounced its 2021 elections as fraudulent.
China: Bukele did not cut diplomatic ties with China or reestablish those with Taiwan. Instead, he maintained a pragmatic approach, increasing El Salvador’s collaboration with China on economic and investment projects.
United States: Bukele stressed the importance of the US as El Salvador’s “natural ally number one”. He maintained and improved a strong diplomatic relationship with the US, especially under Trump. Biden’s administration criticised Bukele’s authoritarian methods and sanctioned several Salvadoran officials.
Education and Healthcare
In 2023, Bukele’s government launched a modernised medical emergency system, integrating land, air and sea ambulances with advanced medical equipment and a nationwide call center.
During the pandemic:
quickly imposed strict lockdowns and curfews
established strategic food reserves
distributed basic food packages to the population, more than 10% of whom were in critical food deprivation.
In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in Central America to become malaria-free, as a result of consistent policy implementation.
Expanding healthcare beyond people, El Salvador opened its first public veterinary hospital in 2022.
Digital and physical infrastructure
Between 2019 and 2024, the number of internet users in the country increased from 57% to nearly 72%.
The government distributed tablets and laptops to most school pupils. El Salvador partnered exclusively with Google Cloud and aims to be the first country where 100% of students use Google Classroom.
Bukele’s government invested in physical infrastructure, including large-scale road-building projects.
The "3 de Febrero"hydroelectric plant, delayed for almost a decade, was taken into the final stage by Bukele’s team, renovated and completed in 2023. It contributed to sustainable energy sourcing and decreased energy prices.
In 2023, El Salvador ranked fourth globally in tourism growth, with arrivals up 40% from 2019. Key factors:
improved security
cultural preservation
Surf City: Bukele’s surfing tourism project
Bitcoin adoption
El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as an official national currency in 2021.
Why?
Supporting underbanked communities: reaching people with no access to banks.
Reducing costs of international transfers: Over 20% of El Salvador’s GDP comes from money sent by Salvadorans from abroad; Bitcoin helps lower the fees on such transactions.
Decreasing dollar dependence: achieving currency diversification and an economic boost.
But: Around 90% of Salvadorans never used Bitcoin and only 1.1% of money transfers from abroad involved crypto.
El Salvador failed to raise significant capital from its crypto and other policies, so continuing fiscal deficit pushed officials to look for new sources of dollars.
In 2025, to get a $1.4 billion credit from the IMF, Bukele agreed to make Bitcoin use voluntary, ending its status as a mandatory national-level currency.
This compromise came after IMF’s criticism of El Salvador’s crypto policies as risky.
Despite that, El Salvador became the first country to officially establish a national Bitcoin reserve, currently at around 6,000 Bitcoins (valued $500m) which could still be used for debt management or government investments.
El Salvador’s national Bitcoin reserve approach influenced big geopolitical players like the Brazil, Japan, Russia and the US to consider similar strategies.
Economy
Reliance on food imports: food prices increased by 10.82% in El Salvador in 2022-2024, the highest among dollarised economies in the Western Hemisphere.
Contrary to Bukele’s promises, household poverty increased from 23% to 27% over 2019-2024.
During Bukele’s first term, direct foreign investment fell by 44% compared to the previous administration. Main reasons:
weak rule of law
lack of political transparency
A new airport, a railroad line and a hospital are among Bukele’s major infrastructure projects experiencing difficulties and delays.
In 2019, Bukele established a special commission to fight corruption.
It was dissolved in 2021: its activities lost relevance after repeated states of emergency were declared to fight gangs, which increased corruption fears further due to a government monopoly on information, and press freedom restrictions.
Looking into the future
Since 2021, Bukele's team and party consolidated control over all three branches of power: the parliament, the government, and the courts.
After 5 years, with strong public support and control over all three branches of power, Bukele ran in the 2024 presidential elections and won with 85% of the vote.
Bukele bypassed a constitutional ban on consecutive presidential terms, by appointing Claudia Rodríguez de Guevara as interim president for 6 months before re-election.
Scenario 1: Bukele is to hold nearly unrestricted power and extend his rule beyond 2029, changing laws to allow for unlimited presidential reelection.
Scenario 2: a growing economic crisis with persistent poverty decreases Bukele’s public support and his chances for the third term — through protests, legislative actions, or a strong new opposition leader.
Scenario 3: Bukele’s voluntary leave in 2029, choosing not to run for another re-election.
Corruption and economic difficulties remain key problems for El Salvador since Bukele’s first term. Bukele launched a “New Economic Plan” after the 2024 re-election.
The plan?
to improve food security by cutting some import taxes and fighting “business mafias” whom Bukele blames for raising prices
special support for the tech industry on its way to becoming “Latin America’s Silicon Valley“
With the new Trump administration, Bukele seeks closer even collaboration with the US, especially on crypto, migration and security policies.
Since the 2000s, China’s influence has grown in Central America. Under Bukele, El Salvador joined the Belt and Road initiative, receiving Chinese infrastructure funding.
During 2019-2024, Chinese-Salvadoran relations involved negotiating a potential free-trade agreement and China buying El Salvador’s foreign debt, though neither was finalised.
Country’s strategic Pacific port is gaining global geopolitical attention.
There is a proposal for a dry canal connecting El Salvador’s La Union port with the Atlantic coast of Honduras by land, as a Panama Canal alternative.
China showed interest in financing the port's modernisation, raising concerns from the US about its potential military use by China.
This strategic location will additionally keep its geopolitical importance as the site for the Bitcoin City, planned as a global crypto and tech hub.
Author Ostap Salovskyi
Editor Anton Kutuzov
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