The images spread the disturbing allure of authoritarian populism. The days after the broadcast of the video, “bukeles” sprouted throughout the region. Leaders who, in different countries, promised to be as implacable with their respective criminals as that Central American president who composed a totalitarian choreography and made thousands of prisoners dance.
Millions of people throughout Latin America applauded the scene that, with the aesthetics of a concentration camp, shows two thousand members of the Salvadoran gangs being transferred to a brand new gigantic prisonspecially built for those powerful and criminal gangs.
Naked, shaved and chained, the prisoners danced what seemed like the choreography of a opera about totalitarianism. Barefoot, they walked where they were required to walk, trotted where they were required to jog, and squatted when ordered to do so. Always looking at the ground. The hundreds of uniformed men who marked their every step had an air of tamers who, whip in hand, make wild beasts act.
While “bukeles” sprang up in the region promising to do the same with criminals from their respective countries, fingers also appeared pointing disapprovingly at the majority of Salvadorans for accepting the security provided by a leader who it subverts laws and crushes Human Rights.
There is also something hypocritical and absurd in that little accusing finger. Not putting yourself in the place of defenseless people in the face of criminal actions implies not understanding that authoritarian demagogy It is engendered by the absent State and the institutionality eaten away by managerial corruption.
In this weather, societies feel like victims of representative democracy, which they consider colonized by mediocre and debased leaders, who come to power only to do business. Those represented who live subjected to criminal violence feel that the representatives stole their power and that the presidents as Nayib Bukele they give it back.
It is wrong to suggest that Bukele is the cause of the collapse of representative democracy in countries with failed state. It is like affirming that fungi are the cause of the humidity in the earth, when it is obvious that the humidity left by the rain is what engenders them.
Faced with dissolving legal systems, understanding the order of factors is essential. Although, by the way, the video does not prove that Bukele is really beating the gangs. The independent press and also United States organizations denounced agreements with gang leaders Why lower the crime rate, in exchange for impunity and other perks. The video itself casts doubt on whether it is reducing crime to the levels it advertises. Although the fall is strong, the indices that Bukele publishes would speak for themselves and would not need a video to generate the sensation of victory over the gangs.
The video was demagoguery. What is revealing is that it has such a good result. You cannot question the towns that have been tormented by gang members for decades and applaud the heavy hand that devastates the legal system while attacking those mafias. But history is littered with leaders who complied with social demands after trampling on laws and crushing Human Rights. And they all end up being a lousy remedy.
In the Italy of the first half of the 20th century, no one had hit the Sicilian mafia as hard as Mussolini. Fascism cornered Cosa Nostra. That is why Lucky Luciano and the mafia collaborated with Washington and it was in Sicily that the landing ended with the corpse of the duce hanging in Milan. Between the height of fascism and its fall, the Italians lived through the criminal alliance with Hitler, lost family members in the Abyssinian war, had concentration camps where Jews and anti-fascists were exterminated, until they were left with the country devastated.
An example closer in space and time is in Peru, where Fujimori crushed Sendero Luminoso and also to the members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) who in 1997 occupied the residence of the Japanese ambassador during the gala dinner for the assumption of Akihito to the Chrysanthemum Throne.
The successful “Operation Chavín de Huantar” executed dozens of guerrillas who had already surrendered and Fujimori posed next to the corpse of Commander Cerpa Cartolini, as in the postcard of the hunter with his foot on his prey.
After closing the Congress, Fujimori bet on the dirty war, achieving impressive successes that the majority applauded. But the disastrous end of his government, in addition to the revelations of corruption and other crimes of the regime, showed the high cost that the effectiveness of authoritarianism can have.
The totalitarian aesthetic video released by the Salvadoran government exhibits the authoritarian nature that Bukele had already shown in 2020, when he entered Congress with armed soldiers and alsol Subdue the judiciary and other key springs of the judicial system. But large majorities feel that Bukele “gave them back the power” that representative democracy “had taken away from them.” Too many people were unprotected by the gangs, which is why it is applauding to see them reduced to a helpless herd.
The power of these mafias is so great and unpunished that their members wear a uniform that they cannot remove: the tattoos that cover their bodies. It is understood that unprotected peoples feel protected by governments that overwhelm human rights. but that does not imply that they are really safer. The protection that they are offered at one moment, becomes total defenselessness at another later.
Nayib Bukele He is neither of the left nor of the right, but an exponent of authoritarian culture. He was mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán and later of the capital, San Salvador, for the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a social-democratic political recycling of the former leftist guerrilla. And then he created his own party: New Ideas.
Liberal democracy is weakening in the world, attacked from left and right. It is a system in which the majority, overwhelmed by uncertainties and fears, stop believing because it does not give them answers. Authoritarian populism convinces the unguarded that the “elite”, “caste”, “bureaucracy” or the pseudonym they choose to refer to the leadership of the system, steals power and he returns it to them. Something as fictional as the feeling of security generated by totalitarian aesthetics
Image gallery
