San Salvador, El Salvador– In 2021, the Biden administration rejected a request for a meeting with the president of El Salvador. President Nayib Bukele on a trip to the American capital, snub the self-proclaimed “coolest dictator in the world” for fear that a photo shoot will embolden his attempts to expand his power base.
A little more than three years later, it is Washington who is courting Bukele. A high-level delegation led by The Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. and senior White House and State Department officials attended Bukele’s inauguration in San Salvador for a second term on Saturday.
The visit, unthinkable until recently, caps a quiet 180-degree shift in U.S. policy toward the small Central American nation of 6 million that reflects how the Biden administration’s criticism of Bukele’s style of government has been overtaken by broader concerns. urgent issues related to Immigration: a key issue in this year’s US presidential election.
“They have realized that what he has been doing works,” Damián Merlo, a U.S. adviser to Bukele who is registered to lobby on behalf of the Salvadoran government, said in an interview from El Salvador. “If the United States really wants to address the root causes of migration, then Bukele is someone who has actually done it.”
Bukele, 42, who was re-elected with 85% of the vote, has been tremendously popular in his country for his frontal attack on powerful gangs, which has turned what was once the world’s murder capital into one of the safest cities in Latin America. countries. Improved public security is blamed for a more than 60% drop in migration from the Central American country to the United States since Bukele took office in 2019, a stark contrast to a growing exodus of migrants from other parts of Latin America. .
“We conquered fear and today we are truly a free nation,” Bukele said in a speech Saturday to hundreds of supporters from the balcony of the National Palace after taking the oath of office for a second five-year term.
Cured of what he called the “cancer” of gang violence, he said his next term would be dedicated to strengthening El Salvador’s economy, promising to apply the same independent and unconventional approach that has characterized his government and won him admirers. of conservatives throughout Latin America. . “I’m not here to do what others think I should do. “I am here to do what is best for our country,” he said.
Until recently, Bukele’s crackdown on gangs, as well as his political opponents, had drawn criticism from Washington. TO state of emergency The measure, originally declared in 2022 and still in effect, has been used to arrest 78,175 suspected gang members in raids that human rights groups say are often arbitrary, based on a person’s appearance or where they live. The government has had to release about 7,000 people due to lack of evidence.
After Biden took office, the United States sanctioned several of Bukele’s top advisers over corruption allegations and diverted foreign aid from government agencies to civil society groups highly critical of Bukele. In 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris said the United States has “ deep concerns about El Salvador’s democracy ” after lawmakers loyal to Bukele removed several Supreme Court justices who were among the last checks on the president’s power. A few months later, the new justices lifted the constitutional ban on consecutive reelection, something the State Department denounced as the result of “a clear strategy to undermine judicial independence“.
The sea change, observers say, began just over a year ago when Biden sent William Duncan, a career diplomat, to San Salvador as US ambassador. Secretary of State Antony Blinken then met with El Salvador’s Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill in Washington. Bukele, a gifted communicator who in the past has praised former President Donald Trump and reached out to China, has also avoided direct confrontation, though he still managed to ruffle feathers when he said He attended a conservative political meeting. outside Washington earlier this year.
“Migration trumps everything else,” said Michael Shifter, former president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “The ideal Latin American partner would be effective in its security policy, while respecting human rights norms and practices and cooperating with the United States on migration. But rarely do all of these desirable things go together, which poses difficult decisions for American policymakers.”
Shifter said a delegation as high-level as El Salvador’s is rarely sent to presidential inaugurations, even of the United States’ closest allies in the region. In addition to Mayorkas, he includes Brian Nichols, undersecretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, and Daniel Erikson, Biden’s top national security adviser for Latin America. Six members of Congress will also attend, including three Democrats and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump loyalist.
Mayorkas met with Bukele on the eve of his inauguration to discuss migration, public security and ways to strengthen the fight against drug trafficking.
“I want to express the dedication of the United States to supporting the growth and prosperity of El Salvador through continued bilateral cooperation,” Mayorkas said in a message on social media.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But Ricardo Zúñiga, a retired U.S. diplomat who handled migration talks with Central America in the early days of the Biden administration, said the United States could come to regret its recent embrace of Bukele.
“Bukele will be in power for many years, so it is necessary to have a working relationship,” said Zúñiga, who was the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs until his retirement last fall. “But you also have to have a clear vision. “This is an authoritarian government ruled by a single party that is unsympathetic to the strategic interests of the United States.”
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Goodman reported from Miami.
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