Nayib Bukele’s power grab in El Salvador

ON MARCH 13TH Carlos Henríquez Cortez returned to El Salvador from a two-day business trip in Guatemala. The 67-year-old engineer planned to quarantine at home. He knew that, to control the spread of covid-19, the government was holding returning travellers and visitors in “containment centres”. The elderly were exempt, or so Mr Henríquez thought. Airport guards detained him anyway. His containment centre had no toilet paper or space for social distancing, he told his wife. Mr Henríquez developed a fever. Authorities told him he could not have covid-19 because no cases had been reported in Guatemala. In hospital he tested positive for the disease. He died on April 22nd. 

Mr Henríquez was a casualty of El Salvador’s lockdown, which is among the strictest in the world. The 2,394 Salvadoreans detained since April 6th for violating quarantine have faced 30 days of confinement. Other countries, such as Peru, Panama and Russia, detain violators for up to 48 hours. The architect of El Salvador’s measures is Nayib Bukele, the country’s 38-year-old president. He claims that his draconian lockdown is the only way to protect Salvadoreans from the pandemic. His critics think he is using the crisis to destroy the institutions that upheld democracy since the end in 1992 of a ruinous civil war. 

Mr Bukele, a law-school...