The Appeal of the Bukele Regime in Latin America: The Scope and Limits of Citizen Support

ABSTRACT

President Nayib Bukele has garnered domestic and international acclaim for his extreme mano dura policies to combat gangs, crime, and violence in El Salvador. While these measures have reduced homicide rates and extortion in El Salvador, they come at the cost of violating human rights and eroding democracy. Still, some politicians around the region have applauded Bukele's model and advocated implementing it in their own countries. To understand Bukele's appeal, we examine public perceptions of insecurity and mano dura in countries that have not historically employed these policies—Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile, and Uruguay. With data collected in 32 focus groups across these countries, we examine how citizens perceive the problem of insecurity and how they evaluate the efficacy of different methods to fight crime, relying upon thematic analyses using MAXQDA. We find that while there is substantial support for Bukele and his security model, public willingness to absorb its costs varies across these four cases. In Ecuador, citizens were more willing to replicate the Bukele model despite its toll on human rights and democracy. In Uruguay, support for the Bukele model was tempered by distrust of authoritarianism, leading most participants to reject mano dura. Chile and Costa Rica lie on the middle of this spectrum as people were supportive of implementing some parts of Bukele's model (such as harsher prison sentences) but reluctant to embrace the full extent of his authoritarian measures. This article provides insight into the ways in which crime and insecurity can contribute to democratic backsliding in the region.