In 2019, when Nayib Bukele became Latin America’s youngest president, he did more than just upend the traditional party politics of El Salvador. He became an unprecedented political phenomenon.
The smallest country in Central America, one of the world’s most violent, suddenly had a leader whose style captured observers worldwide. It wasn’t just how he governed. It was how he dressed and talked — and his willingness to break with the codes of a fragile electoral democracy.
Soon, the self-declared “coolest president in the world” had emerged as a perfect product of the times: a man obsessed with polls who cultivated an irreverent public persona while centralizing power and stamping out dissent; a critic of corruption who's shielded from independent oversight; an enemy of the gangs who at the same time negotiated with their leaders in secret; a crypto bro who made his country the first to accept Bitcoin as an official currency; a self-proclaimed man of the people who has overseen a vast expansion of police power.
Bukele is running for re-election in 2024, although the Constitution prohibits it. While world democracies are in crisis, he is an autocrat in the making, increasingly influential across Latin America.
A podcast series produced by Radio Ambulante Studios is the definitive audio story of the rise of Bukele, a phenomenon that sheds light on some of the most complex dilemmas facing societies today. This project serves to launch our new series channel, Central.
