Nayib Bukele may want to become Latin America’s first millennial dictator

WHEN HE BECAME president of El Salvador last year, Nayib Bukele promised change. A millennial who knows that a selfie is worth 1,000 words, he broke the grip of the two parties that had governed since the end of a civil war in 1992. On their watch El Salvador’s murder rate became the world’s highest and Salvadoreans left the country in droves. Three of the past four presidents have been charged with corruption. “You bastards, return what’s been stolen!” Mr Bukele demanded before the election. He gave his victory speech in jeans and a leather jacket.

But in his 11 months as president he has done more to wreck El Salvador’s democracy than to reform it. In February he entered the Legislative Assembly with soldiers to bully it into financing his crime-fighting programme. With the outbreak of covid-19 his contempt for democratic norms has only grown. Mr Bukele may be on course to become Latin America’s first millennial dictator.

He exemplifies a worrying trend. Until recently democracy seemed established in most of Latin America. The main exceptions were three countries ruled by leftist despots: Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Now some democracies are wobbling. Honduras’s president, Juan Orlando Hernández, engineered the abolition of a presidential term limit and in 2017 was re-elected in a flawed vote. Protesters in Bolivia...