Who Is Nayib Bukele? El Salvador’s ‘coolest dictator’

On Friday, March 25, 2022, hundreds of cellphones in the small, Central American nation of El Salvador glowed with the same text message: “Adelante” (“go ahead”).The heavily tattooed gangsters of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) had their order. They went on a rampage, gunning down 62 people across the nation on Saturday, the bloodiest day in El Salvador since the 1980s civil war. By Sunday, 87 lay dead.The killing spree was calculated. One victim was deliberately dumped on the road leading to Surf City, a tourist development part of President Nayib Bukele’s efforts to position El Salvador as a tropical paradise for holidaymakers and tech entrepreneurs. The gangsters wanted to send Bukele a message: this is what happens if you push us.Bukele’s response was swift. As parliament granted his request for a state of emergency to rein in gang violence, all constitutional rights were suspended. Suspected gang members, including children, were detained in prison indefinitely. Soldiers and law enforcement manned checkpoints, stopping buses and demanding male passengers get out and lift their shirts to check for gang tattoos.More than 10,000 alleged gang affiliates were rounded up in just over two weeks. By 2026, some 1.9 percent of the population, or one in