And then there’s Bukele of El Salvador
Until now, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador hasn’t appeared on my radar screen. Seeing that photo at the link, my first thought was how very young he looks.
It sounds as though, on the whole, his presidency has been good for El Salvador; at least, the Salvadorans appear to think so because he’s wildly popular and will probably be re-elected. The Biden administration doesn’t like him:
In his four years in office, President Nayib Bukele has turned El Salvador from a dangerous place filled with corruption, crime, and MS-13 gang members to a tropical paradise. Now, with his signing up for a historic re-election bid, he’s transforming El Salvador’s election system so he can do more.
This last week, Bukele officially registered to run for a second term, which hasn’t happened in El Salvador’s history due to a law that prevented any president who served from applying for office again. El Salvador’s Supreme Court changed the law in 2021, ruling that Bukele would be eligible to run for re-election. With almost every other democratic nation allowing for a president to serve a second term, the law seemed absurd, and with Bukele posting a 90% approval rating among Salvadorans, he faced little opposition to the constitutional change. However, it hasn’t stopped the foreign media, particularly in the United States, from criticizing Bukele and comparing him to authoritarian dictators in Central America’s past.
In addition to his youth (he’s 42), another thing that caught my eye is his name. It’s not Hispanic. I wondered whether he was an Arab, or even Palestinian, and although that seemed unlikely it turns out to be true:
Bukele’s paternal grandparents were Palestinian Christians from Jerusalem and Bethlehem while his maternal grandmother was Catholic and his maternal grandfather was Greek Orthodox. …
Bukele studied law at the Central American University, but later ended his studies and founded his first company at age 18.
… Bukele was born [in El Salvador] into a Christian household, although his father converted to Islam later in life. As the son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother, Bukele’s religious beliefs were a controversial subject in the 2019 election, with an image surfacing showing Bukele praying at the mosque in Mexico City. In February 2018, The Times of Israel published an image of Bukele “in deep reflection at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City.” …
Bukele has publicly stated he considers himself a believer in God first rather than religion. In a 2015 interview he said that “I am not a person who believes much in the liturgy of religions. However, I believe in God, in Jesus Christ. I believe in his word, I believe in his word revealed in the Holy Bible. And I know that God does not reject anyone because of their origins.”
His wife is apparently part Sephardic-Jewish.
Interesting guy. In that Wiki link, you can read of the many differing opinions and controversies his tenure has raised. He even sounds in some ways like a Trumpish figure.
Of course the Biden administration doesn’t like him. He’s all in for law and order, and for making his country far more stable and safe. Just the opposite of the Biden administration’s goals.
This was on Fox News in 2022. A fascinating person he is.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/el-salvador-president-us-feels-less-safe-third-world-country-unthinkable
Yeah, he is not popular with the left. Imprisoning murderers and thieves is just so fascist!
I’m pretty ready to like anyone the current administration doesn’t.
Our government stands for everything evil.
He’s got the right enemies, that’s for sure. His background is fascinating. I had heard of him before but it is particularly ironic that he is gaining attention at this time, a Palestinian with Jewish connections. Visiting the Western Wall with reverence? That’s not something your average Palestinian “militant” does.
“However, I believe in God, in Jesus Christ. I believe in his word, I believe in his word revealed in the Holy Bible.”
That. Right. There. This is what makes his anathema to the left.
Metaphysics always comes first & always tells you almost all you need to know.
Just to make it clear: he’s ethnically Palestinian on his father’s side; not sure about his mother’s side. But he was born and raised in El Salvador.
Yes of course neo he is ethnically Palestinian, not a “refugee”. But he is young enough that his father, or grandparents, may have emigrated after the creation of Israel. That is not clear from what I have read.
FOAF:
I don’t know either, but it may even have been his grandparents who were the emigres, perhaps around 1948.
And now that I look it up further, I discover that yes, it was his grandparents. They came as children but it doesn’t say what year.
Whatever happened to judging a person by his or her actions rather than what is said? Talk is cheap. Look at the current Biden cabal and its apologists. To them, merely saying “The border is closed” is all that is necessary, while the border is ractically non-existent and precludes nobody from entering. Or, “This is the best economy of all time,” with double digit inflation and such a staggering amount of debt that it beggars the imagination. I am a Christian without qualification, but I admire President Bukele because of what he has done to clean up his previously tragically corrupt and dangerous country. Jailing evildoers comes under the heading of “a good thing” in my opinion, regardless of whether it is done in the name of Christ, Allah or just plain common sense. Kind of reminds me of a guy named Trump here in the good, ole USA.
He made a public statement decrying the slaughter in Israel on 10/7:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/el-salvador-president-who-has-palestinian-ancestry-calls-hamas-criminals/
Bukele Prison Tour: https://youtu.be/PLWQO-RpHxw?si=pOP0QQahjrMS_8Tj
The left didn’t like Pinochet either. Chileans I know thought he saved their country though.
And let’s not forget that it was that dumbass Jimmy Carter that made such a mess of things in Central America. He pulled the rug out from under Somoza in Nicaragua, all because he thought Somoza was “immoral.” Well, when you’re fighting a communist insurgency bankrolled by the USSR, morality is something of a secondary priority. The Sandinistas began to export their insurgency to El Salvador and Guatemala, which caused TPTB in the USA to tolerate a certain amount of illegal immigration as a “safety valve” to prevent communism from sweeping that part of the world and possibly creating a Soviet client state on our southern border.
FDR supposedly once said about the elder Somoza “he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” Every administration prior to Carter stuck with the Somoza dictatorship because they understood the alternative to be worse. Soft men bring hard times indeed.
Bukele, Trumpian figure?, pace Millei of Argentina?
On the BAexpat we side, a week or so before the last Presidential election in October, there was a weekend posted story that Millei faced a prosecutors new arrest subpoena.
But since I did not see the story repeated anywhere, I began to doubt its veracity.
Instead, a few days later the story that one of his advisors at the last campaign rally in Buenos Aires called for removing the Argentine ambassador’s office from the Vatican because the Pope is a communist! (And thus an anti-capitalist against the market system.) And this unannounced news offended the current BA Archbishop.
The run-off election is scheduled for November 19, because in the October election saw a three-way split with no one gaining a majority of the vote.
“Trumpian figures” are going to start appearing everywhere as people reject their corrupt ruling class.
The current Pope makes that “rhetorical” question, “Is the Pope Catholic?” mean something else entirely these days. ‘Cause he sure doesn’t seem to be.
The current Pope makes that “rhetorical” question, “Is the Pope Catholic?” mean something else entirely these days.
–Someone Else
I figured after John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI the Catholic Church wasn’t likely to make a big swing to the left.
It seems I was mistaken.
I don’t know Vatican politics. “A riddle wrapped in an enigma inside a truck stop sushi roll.” (I just made that up.)
Has the Liberation Theology cohort taken over the shop?
I admit I am divided on Bukele and especially his posturing as a self-claimed Dictator, but I have to admit he is PROBABLY not going to be worse than what was before. We Americans and those on the right are well equipped to understand the horrors of state control and abuse of its monopoly on violence, but we’re not so prepared when we deal with the opposite evil: the collapse of that monopoly on organized violence and the rise of petty tyrannies like we see in Lebanon, Somalia, and this. When you’re already living under a ruthless totalitarian dictatorship that you have to pay tribute to and will likely murder you and your family in horrible fashion, but also have to deal with it fighting with other pretty totalitarian dictatorships in miniature without the capacity to actually provide anything of value (say what you will about the Soviet Union under Stalin, but it didn’t lack the ability to build things. Ditto Hitler and the Italian Moose. They often didn’t build things WELL but they could do so and pay out entitlements to the average worker), suddenly having a single strongman who will claim to provide law and order and a degree of ethical guidance is the lesser evil.
Bukele has pleasantly surprised me in many ways, especially his lack of Jew hatred, but I am still leery about him.
@huxley
Pretty much, yes.
@Sgt. Joe Friday
I’m more jaundiced. I think Pinochet tends to get a much better rep than he deserves in large part because we tend to know that Allende was a bad bastard but underestimate not just how his regime was crumbling under Congressional scrutiny and the economic problems, but also how close he was to Pinochet. People forget that Allende appointed Pinochet to be his trusted hatchet man while consolidating the regime, only to underestimate how different his old friend’s politics were and how loyal he was.
I also think his brutality (while admittedly tame – if still horrifying – by the standard of his era and region; compare to Videla and Stroessner) was largely counter-productive and helped make martyrs of lots of bad people while discrediting himself. Couple that with economic underwhelming performance (he was not nearly as close to the Chicago Boys as either Right or Left in the US like claiming) and his desperate last attempt to cling to power only to be overruled by his own subordinates, and I find him lukewarm.
But he was certainly no noble Cinncinnatus like figure as many of the original supporters hoped.
Absolutely true, though with a caveat. The Somozoas were not just anti-communist but also old school oligarchs who didn’t just fight the Communists and Sandinistaists in both old fashion (kind of an odd racialist socialism) and new but also our ally Pepe Figueres, who took power in probably the most beneficial coup and civil war Central America ever faced and quickly turned Costa Rica into a relatively model democratic free market country at peace.
So Carter etc. al. probably had some reason to believe that there was a better alternative to the Somozoas (and the Somozoas had reason to think so too, hence their attempts to overthrow him).
But I do find it telling how much Sandinista apologism -which used to be absolutely Dominant – has died down since Ortega retook power and was revealed to be the monster he was, including violations of his daughter. Score one for the old Cold Warriors who were pooh poohed for saying he had turned Nicaragua into a dystopian nightmare state and would do so again.
I usually see people argue the old “But it was US isolation of him that made him like that!”
Uhuh, sure. Riiiight.
The story Telemachus linked to above is amazing (https://www.foxnews.com/media/el-salvador-president-us-feels-less-safe-third-world-country-unthinkable), like a breath of fresh air!
Strange that a fairly serious news junkie like me never heard of Bukele before I read the PJ Media article.
I’m guessing that El Salvador doesn’t have an Open Borders policy.
From the Fox News link – no surprise that the MSM et al have not run any stories that might reach news junkies on the right – they might give us Bad Ideas.
I am a bit surprised that Mr. Bukele has popped up on Neo’s radar this relatively late, but then she’s been very busy. Haven’t been following his career all that closely myself, but he’s had my moderate admiration for some time. Anyone who can score some wins against MS-13 must have something going for him. I had no idea of his Orthodox Christian family background until the above, though – very intriguing.
carter lead latin american official, robert pastor, read horowitz’s tract he wrote when he was with sds, and derived policy implication, at the time they concluded’we were suffering from an inordinate fear of communism’ much like ‘islamophobia’ today,
much the same way the vaccuum left with the fall of mubarak and Kadaffi empowered islamists, because the small liberal intelligentsia is outnumbered,
Yep, Bukele seems to be doing good for the citizens of El Salvador.
As to be expected, the usual crowd in the “world community” is bitching about the many thousands of gang members that have been jailed.
Those that haven’t been jailed are probably here in the USA thanks to Mayorkas’ open border policy.
True, Mayorkas is just following the orders (wasn’t this the defense of the top Nazis at Nuremberg ?) of Joke Bidet’s puppet masters.
Of course, if Bukele was a hard core leftist, and had all of these gang members arrested and then immediately shot (or more likely, skip the arrest and just have them shot on sight) , the world community would remain silent and members of the Congressional Black Caucus (and probably “The Squad”) , Hollywood elites , etc. , would traipse on over to El Salvador and have selfies taken with their new best pal.
A lefty Bukele would be even a bigger hit with the world’s lefties if he sang the praises of Hamas. In this event, ALL the demonkrats in the US Congress would make that trek to El Salvador and Bukele would be invited to address the UN .
they had a hard core former guerilla ceran as the president, not that many years ago, he and his fmln peeps, brokered deals with MS-13
“Strange that a fairly serious news junkie like me never heard of Bukele before I read the PJ Media article.”—
Most likely because “Biden” doesn’t want you to hear about him all that much…
…unless and until they can control the narrative and classify him as Racist Dictator.
Would seem that they haven’t yet figured how to do that, though.
Probably just a matter of time.