The Myth of Nayib Bukele

Bukele Is a Fraud Who Cut Deals With Violent Gangs

Much has been made about El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele. The “coolest dictator in the world,” as he calls himself, has become something of a folk hero among MAGA hardliners and national conservatives. He’s the latest authoritarian figure to gain traction on the American right, largely because he’s projected strength, aligned himself with Trump, and made headlines for jailing more than 200 Venezuelans alleged to be part of the violent gang Tren de Aragua. These men are now locked up in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), Bukele’s brutal mega-prison in Tecoluca.

That prison has become the face of his anti-gang crusade. The American media occasionally touches on it, usually with reference to human rights violations, arbitrary detentions, and extreme conditions. But what often goes unexamined is how Bukele got here—and what he gave up along the way.

Gang violence in El Salvador wasn’t a small problem. MS-13 and Barrio 18 once turned the country into one of the most violent places on Earth. That violence was a significant factor driving migration from the Northern Triangle into the U.S. Something had to be done. But Bukele’s approach hasn’t just been aggressive—it’s been authoritarian.

Since declaring a “state of exception” in 2022, Bukele’s government has conducted mass arrests, denied suspects legal counsel, and detained tens of thousands without due process. As of March 2025, more than 110,000 people have been swept up in the crackdown—an enormous number for a country of just 6.3 million.

Still, the tactics used by Bukele’s government include arbitrary arrest, warrantless searches, and torture. Individuals held in CECOT have also been denied legal counsel and basic due process rights. As of March, more than 110,000 people have been imprisoned under Bukele’s now three-year crackdown on gangs that has undermined what we would consider critical due process protections in the United States.

While American politicians like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) have praised Bukele for restoring “law and order,” there’s a darker story behind the stats. As early as 2020, independent outlet El Faro began reporting that Bukele’s government was negotiating secret deals with MS-13 and Barrio 18—offering leniency and prison privileges in exchange for political support and a lull in killings. The reporting was met with denials and attacks from Bukele’s administration. But the evidence has only mounted.

I don’t usually read Common Dreams (which is to say I don’t know that I’ve ever read anything there), but a tweet with a link to a story about Bukele caught my attention. The story alleges that Bukele was or is planning to arrest journalists at El Faro for revealing the ties the Central American dictator has to the two gangs. That piqued my interest, considering all the attention Bukele has gotten in the United States recently.

Come to find out, this isn’t new information. For whatever reason, the information isn’t getting much attention in the United States.

El Faro reported in September 2020 that officials in Bukele’s government had negotiated with MS-13 since 2019. In December 2021, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) noted, “In 2020, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s (Bukele) administration provided financial incentives to Salvadoran gangs MS-13 and 18th Street Gang (Barrio 18) to ensure that incidents of gang violence and the number of confirmed homicides remained low. Over the course of these negotiations with [Osiris] Luna and [Carlos Amilcar] Marroquin, gang leadership also agreed to provide political support to the Nuevas Ideas political party in upcoming elections. Nuevas Ideas is the President’s political party and won a two-thirds super majority in legislative elections in 2021. The Bukele administration was represented in such transactions by Luna, the Chief of the Salvadoran Penal System and Vice Minister of Justice and Public Security, and Marroquin, Chairman of the Social Fabric Reconstruction Unit. In addition to Salvadoran government financial allocations in 2020, the gangs also received privileges for gang leadership incarcerated in Salvadoran prisons, such as the provision of mobile phones and prostitutes.”

Because MS-13 was designated as a transnational criminal organization by President Obama in October 2012 and because Trump signed an executive order blocking the property of persons involved in corruption, Luna and Marroquin had aided MS-13, OFAC announced sanctions on the two individuals.

Bukele’s ties to MS-13 and Barrio 18 have come up in criminal proceedings in federal criminal cases against MS-13 leaders. As El Faro reported in March, “[T]he U.S. Department of Justice considers it proven that the Bukele government has been negotiating in secret since 2019 with the Mara Salvatrucha-13, and that it offered the main gang leaders financial benefits and facilitated communication so that they would maintain territorial control of their structures for the duration of that agreement. The pact included less restrictive prison conditions and even sentence reductions. In exchange, according to federal prosecutors, MS-13 supported the Nuevas Ideas party in the 2021 municipal and legislative elections and kept homicide levels low at least until March 2022, when the pact broke down, according to audio published by El Faro of Carlos Marroquín, one of the negotiators on behalf of President Bukele.”

Bukele released an MS-13 leader from prison and assisted him in fleeing El Salvador to evade prosecution in the United States. That leader, Elmer Canales Rivera, was captured by Mexican authorities and extradited to the United States in November 2023 to face charges for terrorism. Remember, folks, Bukele said that he wouldn’t release Kilmar Abrego Garcia, calling him a “terrorist” without any evidence to back up the claim. Rivera was facing a terrorism indictment in the United States, and he helped him get out of El Salvador. Another MS-13 leader, César Humberto López Larios, was aware of the deal that Bukele struck with gangs, but he was recently returned to El Salvador as part of the deportations that Trump orchestrated with Bukele.

Barrio 18 leaders have also spoken publicly about Bukele's deal with gangs. The Barrio 18 leaders indicated that the contacts between Bukele and gangs go as far back as 2014 during Bukele’s successful run for mayor of San Salvador. Gang leaders would hide the bodies of victims–“no bodies, no crime”–and the murders wouldn’t be counted in official homicide statistics. So, even as the homicide rate declined, the number of missing persons increased. Bukele’s government no longer releases data on missing persons.

So, why doesn’t this make bigger headlines in the United States? The story’s been out there. OFAC spelled it out. El Faro has been documenting it for years, at great personal risk. National Review has mentioned in the past. The Wall Street Journal just published an opinion piece on it. But as Bukele basks in global attention, especially from segments of the American right, much of the coverage stays fixated on the spectacle: the drone footage of prisoners in rows, the tattoos, the iron discipline. It plays well on social media. It flatters the fantasy that authoritarianism works.

But the real story is this: Bukele’s war on gangs was built, in part, on a deal with the devil. Murders may be down, but justice, transparency, and the rule of law went with them.