El Salvador, the Sugarcane Republic by Timothy Davies

Let’s get one thing straight before we dive into the Latin American fever dream that is Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador: this is no Silicon Valley miracle, no startup president surfing on Bitcoin waves into the future. This is good, old-fashioned authoritarianism with a slick haircut, an Instagram filter, and a Twitter tantrum.

Bukele, the self-styled millennial savior, has risen from the ashes of traditional Salvadoran politics like a phoenix armed with crypto and a very unhealthy obsession with surveillance. And as his bromance with Donald Trump blooms like a toxic algae over democratic waters, it’s becoming painfully clear that this isn’t just another strongman with a populist streak. No, this is the Latin American reboot of Caesarism, streamed in 4K, hashtags included.

It starts innocently enough. A young, media-savvy leader promising to sweep out corruption and bring order to a country battered by gang violence and political inertia. But what do you call a man who sends the military into the legislative assembly to force a vote? Who fires judges like they’re interns at a failing startup? Who rewrites the rules faster than you can say “checks and balances”?

You call him a threat. A menace. A telegenic tyrant who’s figured out how to make authoritarianism look cool to the TikTok crowd.

In the world of Bukele, opposition isn’t dissent, it’s betrayal. Critics aren’t fellow citizens, they’re enemies of the state. Journalists aren’t watchdogs—they’re vermin to be digitally discredited and, in some cases, physically surveilled. The man has practically turned El Salvador into a Black Mirror episode, and yet, somehow, people are cheering.

And that’s the tragedy. The charisma works. The optics are slick. The stadiums are full. Never mind the crushed courts, the manipulated laws, or the press gags. As long as the trains run on time and the gangs are caged, who cares what’s left of the constitution?

Enter Donald J. Trump, Bukele’s new political spirit animal. Two men, both allergic to criticism. Both addicted to Twitter (or Truth Social, depending on your flavor of delusion). Both in love with the sound of their own voices and the idea of eternal power. It’s like watching two mirrors reflect each other into an abyss of egotism.

Bukele’s admiration for Trump isn’t just cosplay, it’s a blueprint. Use media to control the narrative. Label opponents as enemies. Dismantle institutions while smiling for selfies. It’s a masterclass in twenty-first-century demagoguery. And just like Trump, Bukele cloaks it all in the illusion of the people’s will. “The people want it,” they both say, as they bulldoze what little remains of democratic order.

In this bromance, El Salvador is the guinea pig, the test lab, the cautionary tale. And for those who think this is a Latin-only issue, think again. Authoritarianism is a contagion with no borders. Bukele’s experiment is being watched and admired by populists across the globe.

The price? Real Salvadorans, the ones who don’t tweet in English, are paying it in silence. Civil society is shrinking. Activists are disappearing, figuratively, and sometimes literally. The judiciary, once a slow but necessary check on executive power, now resembles a rubber stamp factory. And the much-vaunted Bitcoin fantasy? A distraction. A shiny toy thrown into the arena to keep the masses hypnotized while the soul of the nation is quietly auctioned off.

You want to call this reform? Call it what it really is: performative authoritarianism. A Netflix-ready autocracy. It’s governance by vibes, repression with a playlist, dictatorship dressed as disruption.

Make no mistake Nayib Bukele is not a flawed reformer. He’s not a misunderstood modernizer. He is the embodiment of the strongman myth rebranded for the streaming age. And while he plays messiah on social media, democracy withers behind the curtain.

If there’s one lesson history keeps trying to teach us, sometimes in blood it’s this: when power stops being accountable, people stop being free. And in El Salvador, that moment has arrived, TikTok-filtered and selfie-approved.

So, what now? Hope that the Salvadoran people will one day wake up from this well-lit nightmare? That the institutions Bukele has gutted will somehow regenerate like political phoenixes? Or will we watch, once again, as the world applauds a slick-talking despot until it’s too late?

The truth is, El Salvador’s democracy isn’t dying. It’s being killed with likes, with retweets, and with every cheer for a man who mistakes power for purpose.

Nayib Bukele isn’t the future of Latin America. He’s a ghost from its authoritarian past, dressed up in tech-bro drag.

And if we’re not careful, the virus might spread.