El Salvador President’s Controversial Crime Strategy Has Made Him More Popular Than the Pope in Latin America

The 41-year-old president of El Salvador is more popular in Latin America than Argentina's own Pope Francis, according to data published in an Economist profile on the autocratic leader, who has been following through on his campaign promises to clamp down on crime and gang violence.

Self-proclaimed as "the World's Coolest Dictator," Nayib Bukele has human rights organizations up in arms over his tactics, which started in zest back March 2022 with a wave of gang-related arrests and would run afoul of many Western nations' due process laws.

According to a recent survey from Latinobarómetro only 2% of Salvadoreans think crime is now the country's biggest problem. Bukele has an approval rating above 80% that some put closer to 90%.

Throughout Latin America and South America, Bukele is now more popular than the pope, except in Brazil.

It was in 2022 that Bukele declared a "state of exception" — or emergency — concerning El Salvador's gangs, giving police the authority to arrest people merely off of anonymous tips or for having gang-affiliated tattoos. The emergency has since been extended 15 times.

The Economist reports that more than 71,000 men — or close to 7% of the country's male population between the ages 14 and 29 — have since been arrested and jailed.

About 6,000 of those men have since been released. The others languish, waiting for trials the government claims they will get. The majority of the arrestees have only had preliminary hearings in their cases, according to the outlet.

Despite the controversial tactics, Bukele's crackdown is having a significant impact on violent crime. In 2015, El Salvador had a homicide rate of 106 per 100,000 people -- about a killing every hour -- making it the murder capital of the world.

Three years later, the rate was 18 per 100,000 people. Bukele was elected in 2019, and by 2022, El Salvador had only eight murders per 100,000 people in 2022, about the same as the U.S.

Miguel, a shop owner in the town of Sonsonate whose sister was killed by three gang members, summed up Bukele's popularity to The Economist in simple terms.

"Before, this neighborhood was ruled by a gang — and you couldn't leave it," he said. Now, his murdered sister's daughter can walk around without worrying.