El Salvador

Date range: 1984-2020
El Salvador suffered a Civil War from 1980 until 1992. During the first years, the conflict pitted the military-led Junta that governed the county against the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional or Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front). The FMLN was an umbrella organization that coordinated, at least, five left-wing guerrilla groups. El Salvador approved a new constitution in 1983, held its first democratic and direct elections in 1984, and reached a peace agreement with the FMLN in 1992. The Chapultepec Peace Accords included the demobilization of armed forces and the legalization of the FMLN as a political party. Since the 1994 presidential elections, the FMLN become the main left-wing party in the country. In 2019, for the first time in decades, a candidate not belonging to any party, Nayib Bukele, won the presidency.

Case notes

Nayib Bukele

Nayib Bukele became president of El Salvador in 2019. He is a former businessman of Palestinian origins who once belonged to the FMLN. With this party, he became the mayor of the capital, but he did not take part in the national government of the FMLN (INSIDER = 1). He created a new party in 2017 and was subsequently expelled from the FMLN. The new party, however, was forbidden by the courts to run in the 2019 elections because the inscription period had already pass. Bukele decided, then, to be the presidential candidate of GANA, a right-wing party. Bukele argued that he used that party only as a necessary means to an end (ABC, 2019).

Bukele is widely considered a populist in the literature (Díaz González, Ulloa, y Mora Solano 2022; Nilsson 2022; Roque 2021; Wolf 2021) and the main axis of his campaign consisted of presenting himself as an outsider who will fight the corruption of the two ruling parties (Gaviña 2018). “Bukele blamed both parties for the country’s precarious security situation, lack of economic opportunities, and depleted public finances. Under the campaign slogan”Return what you stole,” he promised transparency and an end to corruption” (Wolf 2021, 64). He defended that “this battle is for every person from El Salvador that has been ignored by their governments” (Bukele 2019a) and used short mottos such as “there is enough money when nobody steals it” to depict the previous governments as corrupt (OTH_POLCLASS = 3).

It is difficult to pin down Bukele’s ideology. Some argue that he is a “classic populist” for which the categories of left and right are not useful anymore (González Díaz 2019). He framed his policies as “‘pragmatic’ ideas, which sought to move away from the ideological debate of right and left” (Díaz González, Ulloa, y Mora Solano 2022, 40). He ran on a platform based on bashing traditional politicians and promising to solve El Salvador’s security issues (Nilsson 2022, 16). We have decided to code him as Centre in LRPOSITION as to show that he draws from a variety of ideological sources.

Being himself from a wealthy family and having worked as a businessman in the field of marketing, Bukele aimed at creating a productive economy for El Salvador that would improve the conditions of the country. He did not display animosity against the financial elite but defined the elite in primarily political terms (OTH_ECONOMIC = 1). Regarding foreign actors, Bukele repeated constantly his desire to “re-establish, improve and increase relations with the US” (Bukele 2019b). Bukele did not display any antagonism against any other country but harshly criticized Maduro’s (Venezuela) and Ortega’s (Nicaragua) governments for using force to remain in power (González Díaz 2019), which contrasts with the position taken by Sánchez Cerén (OTH_FOREIGN = 1). Being himself of migrant origins Bukele made no negative mention of incoming migrants or ethnic groups (OTH_ETHNIC and OTH_IMMIGRANTS = 1). The fact that Nayib Bukele presented himself as the candidate of a party with a different ideology, based the campaign solely on his figure and still won the election in the first round, shows the extreme importance of the personality of the presidential candidate (CHARISMA = 3).

Bukele’s actions in government have been widely described as authoritarian (Nilsson 2022; Wolf 2021). He has imprisoned tens of thousands of people as part of his anti-gang policies and “in a veiled threat to those who interfere with his political agenda, he frequently proclaims that”nobody will stand between God and the people” (Wolf 2021, 64). He “has also launched relentless attacks on press freedom” (Wolf 2021, 65). However, we found little indication of a significant violation of liberal democratic norms prior to holding office. He did throw an apple to a member of the Municipal body and there have been some reports of his team faking a newspaper website (Roque 2021, 242-43) but, in general, his election was seen as positive for democracy by commentators (Díaz González, Ulloa, y Mora Solano 2022, 40). We have therefore decided to code him as 1 in LIBDEMNORMS.

Not included:

While the FMLN emerged as a party from a far-left guerrilla group and thus displays an important criticism towards the political system, its inclusion as a populist party is not clear. At this stage, we have decided against including the party in the dataset.

Sprenkels (Sprenkels 2019) argues that the party went through an “ambivalent moderation” in which it was recurrently in internal conflict between the different factions within it. It should be noted that the FMLN was far from an ideologically unified party and that it had numerous internal struggles. (Allison y Martín Alvarez 2012) explain that the party was torn apart by two main tendencies: on the one side more ideologically radical “orthodox” or “revolutionary socialists”, which saw peace as the next step towards achieving the revolution and were more ideologically radical, and on the other side the “moderates” or “renovators” who argued that the peace was the revolution. In the internal clashes between these broad tendencies, the hard-liners managed to hold control of the organization most of the time and this led to up to three splits from the moderate faction and the creation of new parties.

Moreover, the FMLN accepted the democratic route to gain power (Zamora 1998, 227) and its first presidential candidate, Rubén Zamora, offered a discourse of “national reconciliation” (Martinez 1993) based on “small- and mid-sized business growth, modernization and decentralization of the state’s inefficient bureaucracy, environmental cleanup and water conservation. [and] a healthy boost in education and health-care budgets” (Martinez 1993). This was also expressed in the campaign ads that the FMLN run, which stressed positive messaging looking into the future instead of criticism of other political parties (FMLN 1992; Zamora 1994). While the “identities as Marxist revolutionary organizations and their intent on constructing socialism” (Allison y Martín Alvarez 2012, 99) was still present, that is not enough to qualify as populist in our dataset and given that we have found very little reference to their populism in the literature, we have decided not to include the party in the dataset. Moreover, we have found little reference in the literature that treat the party as populist (Acosta y Rogers 2020; Allison y Martín Alvarez 2012; Armando González 2011; Chinchilla 2009; Lazo M. 1995; Martinez 1993; Sprenkels 2019; Young 2020).

References

Acevedo Moreno, Héctor. 2006. «Un FMLN organizado bajo principios leninistas». Escuela de formación política e ideológica Feliciano Ama Sonsonate. https://docplayer.es/19159979-Escuela-de-formacion-politica-e-ideologica-feliciano-ama-sonsonate.html (2 de noviembre de 2023).

Acosta, Benjamin, y Melissa Ziegler Rogers. 2020. «When Militant Organizations Lose Militarily but Win Politically». Cooperation and Conflict 55(3): 365-87.

Allison, Michael E., y Alberto Martín Alvarez. 2012. «Unity and Disunity in the FMLN». Latin American Politics and Society 54(4): 89-118.

Armando González, Luis. 2011. «El fmln salvadoreno de la guerrilla al gobierno». Nueva Sociedad 234.

Bukele, Nayib. 2019a. «Speech». https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgExL0vFULI (20 de octubre de 2023).

———. 2019b. «Una de nuestras más recurrentes promesas de campaña (la dijimos claramente en cada oportunidad que tuvimos) fue que íbamos a restablecer, mejorar e incrementar nuestras relaciones con los Estados Unidos. En estos días, estamos haciendo eso. Primera promesa cumplida.» Twitter. https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1106314873347166208 (2 de noviembre de 2023).

Chinchilla, Fernando A. 2009. «Extremism, Moderation y Gobernanza democrática en el posconflicto: Las FARC-EP y el FMLN desde una perspectiva comparada». ^5 09?A SA.94A W3)q 53: 129-56.

Díaz González, José Andrés, César Ulloa, y Sindy Mora Solano. 2022. «Aproximaciones al populismo en Daniel Ortega, Rafael Correa y Nayib Bukele». Revista Rupturas: 49-52.

FMLN. 1992. «Primer spot del FMLN (1992) - YouTube». YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_AmNQiKaiM (11 de octubre de 2023).

Gaviña, Susana. 2018. «Nayib Bukele: “Yo no negocio con las maras, lidio con las comunidades donde viven sus familias”». Diario ABC. https://www.abc.es/internacional/abci-niyab-bukele-no-negocio-maras-lidio-comunidades-donde-viven-familias-201811080221_noticia.html (2 de noviembre de 2023).

González Díaz, Marcos. 2019. «Quién es Nayib Bukele, el joven empresario millennial que asume como presidente de El Salvador». BBC News Mundo. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-47112057 (2 de noviembre de 2023).

Lazo M., José Francisco. 1995. «Elecciones y lecciones... ¿Qué paso en marzo de 1994?» Realidad: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (43): 109-90.

Martinez, Ruben. 1993. «El Salvador’s New Left: A Model for Latin America : Elections: Ruben Zamora, Facing Increased Death-Squad Activities, Delivers an Unexpected Message Aimed at National Reconciliation.» Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-10-31-op-51576-story.html (11 de octubre de 2023).

Nilsson, Martin. 2022. «Nayib Bukele: Populism and Autocratization, or a Very Popular Democratically Elected President?» Journal of Geography, Politics and Society 12(2): 16-26.

Réserve, Roody. 2016. «El Salvador: Un año político y social convulso». Revista de ciencia política (Santiago) 36(1): 177-94.

Roque, Ricardo. 2021. «Nayib Bukele: populismo e implosión democrática». Andamios, Revista de Investigación Social 18(46): 233-55.

Sprenkels, Ralph. 2019. «Ambivalent Moderation: The FMLN’s Ideological Accommodation to Post-War Politics in El Salvador». Government and Opposition 54(3): 536-58.

Wolf, Sonja. 2021. «A Populist President Tests El Salvador’s Democracy». Current History 120(823): 64-70.

Young, Kevin A. 2020. «El FMLN de El Salvador y las restricciones sobre el gobierno de izquierda». Cuadernos Inter.c.a.mbio sobre Centroamérica y el Caribe 17(1): e40496-e40496.

Zamora, Rubén. 1994. «Ruben Zamora FMLN 1994 propaganda - YouTube». YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRvQOW4jumk (11 de octubre de 2023).

———. 1998. El Salvador, heridas que no cierran : los partidos políticos en la post-guerra. San Salvador: FLACSO El Salvador.

———. 2017. «Rubén Zamora habla sobre los Acuerdos de Paz». https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYx__C09dkc (2 de noviembre de 2023).