Abstract
El Salvador’s young president uses Twitter to crush freedom, and Covid-19 has made his work easier, writes
A year on, much of that excitement has faded and El Salvador seems resigned to deal yet again with a strongman in power (a caudillo) in the best Latin American tradition.
Make no mistake, Bukele still enjoys the support of the vast majority of his countrymen, who see in him something completely different from the discredited political leadership which ruled the country since the end of the war.
But behind the applause, journalists and human rights activists are sounding the alarm.
“I am the victim of a real hate campaign,” said Nelson Rauda, a reporter at investigative portal El Faro, based in San Salvador. Rauda says that while covering a press conference in the presidential palace, Bukele first disputed his questions, then mocked him in public. After the press conference, one of the president’s supporters created a meme of him bullying the journalist. After Bukele retweeted it, Rauda started receiving hundreds of hate messages on Twitter and other social media. The journalist says two fake accounts using his name were created to discredit him, and members of his family have been verbally attacked.
While the campaign never escalated to physical violence, Rauda’s is far from the only example of such behaviour.
“This tells you about the atmosphere here,” Rauda told Index. “There are so many cases [of online abuse]. At El Faro we showed how a former official account related to Bukele’s campaign has evolved into a real trolling account used to smear and attack his opponents.”
Like many other macho leaders around the world, Bukele is all over Twitter. He has an audience of two million followers (El Salvador has a population of 6.5 million) and often launches official policies through social media.
“I think he’s the only president in the world that doesn’t show his face to explain his policies. He just tweets,” said Juan Carlos Quintero, a Salvadoran freelance photographer.
One episode is particularly indicative. On a Friday night during the coronavirus outbreak, a video showing people going out and about in La Libertad, a harbour city on the Pacific coast, went viral on social media. Seeing the video, Bukele tweeted that the city was under a total lockdown, and instructed the defence minister to enforce the new measure. The minister responded “as you order” in another tweet, and armoured vehicles started rolling into La Libertad. Only the following day did the government formally announce the measure.
Latin America has produced a variety of colourful leaders, but none of them has embraced social media the way Bukele has. He has been compared to a military dictator from the 1970s, but Bukele also seems to be from the future.
“He’s the caudillo 2.0 – like the old ones, but with the software updated,” said Rauda.
The coronavirus crisis has only cemented Bukele’s grip on power. El Salvador was one of the first countries in the Americas to enforce a quarantine, even before any cases were registered.
While countries in Europe and America were scrambling with how to confront the virus, the Salvadoran president seemed to know what to do.
From his Twitter account, Bukele made sure everyone knew the risks that came if they broke social distancing measures: Salvadorans who were found out of their homes without a valid reason could be detained for up to 30 days.
In a televised address in May, he asked his fellow citizens to close their eyes and “think of your dearest person in the world choking outside a hospital, without care”, to paint a picture of the havoc the virus could wreak.
Plenty of tweets followed, praising how powerful the image was, which were duly retweeted by the presidential account.
President Nayib Bukele at a news conference during quarantine, May 2020
CREDIT: Jose Cabezas/Reuters
Bukele, whose New Ideas party was formed less than two years ago, now has his eyes firmly fixed on his next prize: the legislative elections to be held in February 2021. Despite his popularity, the president commands only a handful of seats in congress, which is still controlled by the traditional parties of the old guard.
Tiziano Breda, a political analyst based in Central America, has little doubt that things are going to change if the president wins a majority in the legislative. “Everything he’s done so far has been a constant election campaign,” he said. “What could happen next is really hard to predict.”