The riddle Nayib Bukele: who is the 37-year-old man who will rule El Salvador

That day, Nayib Bukele I was nervous Cold hands, fast breathing and a pale face betrayed him. The voices of dozens of people who received it in October 2014 in the San Antonio Abad Township seem to have surpbaded him during one of the first events of his election campaign as a candidate for the Town Hall of San Salvador, the capital of the country.

This image, that of the first politician on the brink of a nervous breakdown, was light years away from that of the confident hipster that he exposed on the night of February 3, 2019, when it was confirmed that he had been elected. President of the Republic of El Salvador, at 37 years old.

At the pace ofLive life"From British band Coldplay, Bukele spoke with the peace of mind of those who know that he realized what he wanted and he did it in front of hundreds of his followers, who gathered to celebrate the triumph of historic center of San Salvador, whose revitalization has become one of his most publicized works.

With his victory, he relegated all relevance to the government party of the former guerrilla, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), the institution under whose banner he served as mayor before being forced out.

Bukele won with more than 53% of votes to your closest prosecutor, a coalition of right-wing parties represented by businessman Carlos Calleja, chosen by ARENA. The security of his speech the night of his triumph made him forget that he had started his political career seven years ago, while he had just moved on to the third decade of his life.

Bukele, the businessman who he did not finish his studies but he made political propaganda his livelihood Even before thinking of becoming a public servant, he had achieved a goal that, according to his relatives, who spoke under the guise of anonymity, was beginning to be seen as a very feasible possibility in 2015, when he was in the dark. he became mayor of the country's capital.

Fan of political series like "Room of cards"or"Billions", and also American comicsthe future president is seen as a knot of contradictions.

Bukele based his campaign on a platform anti Corruption, but several characters from his closest entourage (and even himself) were chosen for acts contrary to the law. He talked about the pride of his Palestinian originbut once elected, he did not hesitate to pay tribute to Donald Trump, one of the firmest allies of the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu. He also maintained throughout his campaign (and even before) a conflict with the country's two largest traditional newspapers, that he accused of inventing news to ruin his image, but their environment created a media network in which lies were published against their opponents.

Ha condemnedalso to the government of Nicolás Maduro and of Daniel Ortega, but he was not separated in the activities of Alba Petróleos of El Salvador, company with which the Petrocaribe Chavis Program landed in the country of Central America. So far, he has not mentioned a possible audit of Venezuelan cooperation funds, which amount to $ 1,100 million.

The hero who capitalizes the disenchantment

El Salvador is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. And over the last decade, the most serious point was reached in the middle of 2015: 6,670 homicides on a population of 6 million inhabitants: 103 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

This summit was the "boomerang" effect of a government-sponsored gang truce in 2012, during which a prison was given to imprisoned leaders of these structures in exchange for a reduction of the number of homicides. The truce had collateral effects, as the the gangs will consolidate their power in territories where they did not have it before, especially in rural areas. When the agreement was broken, the violence reached an unsuspected scale.

Although in 2018, the homicide rate has decreased by 50% compared to 2015, violence remains one of the most serious problems for the population and corresponds to one of the main reasons emigrate out of the country, especially in the United States.

Added to this is the widespread belief that ARENA and FMLN, the two parties that were part of central government over the last 30 years corrupt: three of the country's last presidents have had or have open archives in local courts. Antonio Saca, who led ARENA between 2004 and 2009, admitted that he had even looted the state coffers in exchange for a reduction in his sentence.

Bukele capitalized on the fatigue of the population against traditional parties to spend, in less than five years, the first politician who trembled in front of the crowd to the president of the country.

What based on some Well-known municipal works and to a discourse in which he was clearly distinguished from these political institutions. But especially to a well constructed image.

His critics accused him of blaming everything that had happened to the traditional party system and being a victim of it. But according to several experts in political communication, the story of Bukele was based on an archetype located on the opposite side: the hero, the elect who overcomes all the obstacles that his enemies put before him to achieve his goals.
And that had something rooted in reality.

The story of his candidacy was broken. His expulsion from the FMLN in 2017 led him to create his own party, New ideas. He has collected an unprecedented number of signatures (more than 200,000), but the feat was accomplished after the deadline for registering a political institution for the presidential election of 2019. Prior to that, he had decided to join Cambio Democrático (CD), with whom he had jointly participated in the mayoral elections of 2012 and 2015. But on July 26, 2018, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal decided to block him because the CD does not include had not reached the legal minimum in the municipal and legislative elections of March this year. . As a last resort, he therefore decided to run under the banner of the Great Alliance for National Unity (TO WIN) a good party Founded in 2009 by dissidents of ARENA under the patronage of Antonio Saca, the former president who confessed to looting the state coffers. GANA was the same political institution that Bukele described as corrupt and to which he had sworn never to join. "My heart is on the left", he badured in his public statements, during the campaign, his propaganda was separated from this party: he had eliminated the orange flag and implemented a cyan adorned with a swallow, its color and its symbol. "Vote for Nayib Bukele by marking the swallow flag," the ads said.

But the hero has won in all his battles. The image adopted gave good results. And he has not had many opportunities to criticize him: during the campaign, he did not attend any debate in front of his rivals and did not grant interviews. Most of his messages were distributed through him. Facebook Live and his Twitter In this social network has been a lot of activity, because so far, in 2019, there are more than 5,000 tweets.

Debt on the way to the presidency

Nayib Bukele will arrive at the presidential presidency of El Salvador endorsed by his work as mayor in two municipalities. The first was Nuevo Cuscatlán, who was in the lead between 2012 and 2015. Located a few kilometers from the capital, its population is just over 9,000. Most of its territory is made up of luxury residential properties, built almost entirely over the past decade and inhabited by high-income individuals.

Inés Carranza is a peasant leader of the community established in Florence, a former coffee plantation of which only the memory remains. Carranza reminds the young mayor of his water supply project, which served areas that were not previously served. Also for the remodeling of the main square. And for a little more.

For these and other projects, the administration of Bukele indebted to this small municipality with over 4 million USD in loans, according to information provided by the Salvadoran Institute for Municipal Development (ISDEM).

This way of governing, that of acquiring credit obligations in the short space of a municipal period (barely three years), also marked its pbadage through the office of the mayor of the capital. Of all these debts, one stands out. According to the Ministry of Finance of El Salvador, Bukele has committed up to $ 105 million of future securitization flows to get a little over $ 52 million. In addition to canceling two more securitisations of 31 million USD, the fate of these funds is not entirely clear.

In January, Bukele presented a government platform that Its main absence is a clear plan for funding its flagship projects.like a train running the country from end to end or a new airport to the east. This is one of his main unknowns.

Nayib Bukele based his campaign on slogans that he repeated ad nauseam. One of the noisiest had to do with "like always", these characters linked to the traditional political parties, to whom he blamed the origin of all the ills of the country, however, with the approach of his inauguration, it seems that it does not happen. not enough detached.

He kept by his side characters who were also close to Antonio Saca, the president who confessed to stealing $ 300 million from public funds, such as communications consultant Ernesto Sanabria or protocol expert Francisco Merino Jr.

But the most controversial relationship has to do with the FMLN, the party that in 2017 has expelled them from their ranks. Specifically with José Luis Merino, one of the most influential men of this political institution and its main link with Petrocaribe, the program through which the Venezuelan government has poured more than 28 billion USD in 14 years to several countries of the Caribbean and Central America, including El Salvador.

Monday, April 15, the digital newspaper The page He has published a note on his visit to the Dominican Republic as part of a tour in several countries in the region. But the most eloquent picture was the one that accompanied the article. On the far left of the photo appeared Erick Vega, who had accompanied Bukele as part of that delegation.

Vega is the most trusted man of José Luis Merino, who is currently under investigation in the United States by the FBI, DEA and the Treasury Department for leading, it seems, a structure of money laundering and property.

Vega has been the personal badistant of Merino for more than a decade and has held senior positions at Alba Petróleos of El Salvador, the mixed economy company that operated the program. Petrocaribe in the country, as well as in half a dozen related companies, including APES INC., its Panamanian subsidiary.

According to three former FMLN members who now support Nayib Bukele and speak under the protection of their identity, the now-elected president has never left Merino, even after his expulsion from the ruling party. They explain that under the leadership of this institution, there are two big blocks, inherited from the organizations that constituted the guerrillas who fought in the armed conflict from 1980 to 1992.

The first, that of the People's Liberation Forces (FPL), is composed of the president of the country, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, the general secretary Medardo González and popular deputies such as Norma Guevara or Lorena Peña. The second is that of the Communist Party, composed of merinos and characters such as Leonel Búcaro, former president of the Parliament of Central America.

"With whom did Nayib collide with Lorena (Peña), with Medardo (González), never with those of the Communist Party, I would not be surprised if some of the funding for his campaign came from there," he said. one of the three ex-militants. of the FMLN consulted for this work. This issue, the financing of his campaign, was precisely one of the most opaque around Bukele.

He never revealed the list of those companies or people who donated for a process in which he even surpbaded even ARENA, the party related to Salvadoran private enterprise, in his own field: attracting money for an election race. According to the non-governmental organization Acción Ciudadana, the party for which Bukele was headed, GANA, was the one that spent the most on propaganda during the campaign, with more than 11 million US dollars.

With all these questions behind him, who did not want to clarify anything, Bukele is still portrayed as a stranger. A question that will need to be resolved as of 1 June, when he will badume the role of President and confirm whether the hopes of 1.2 million Salvadorans are valid.