How Bukele Crafted a Best-Selling Political Brand

<p id="docs-internal-guid-3169db7c-7fff-897c-ae7d-ba66be92e4e6" dir="ltr">Reaching the summit of Salvadoran politics took him ten years. Once a publicist for El Salvador’s flagship left-wing political party, Nayib Bukele became mayor of the capital city and from then on broke the rules of political correctness. Perhaps no one would have imagined that the selfie-prone bilingual boy who took the reins of the country at age 38, who promised modernity, would just two years later draw comparisons to Hugo Chávez or Daniel Ortega. In his quest for sovereignty, Bukele is about to shatter a democracy.</p> <p><em>(This profile was <a href="/es/202109/el_salvador/25753/Bukele-el-autoritario-cool.htm">originally published in Spanish</a> thanks to an alliance between El Faro and the Colombian magazine Gatopardo.)</em></p>

Gabriel Labrador