El Salvador surrenders to Bukele on election day: “He has freed us from corrupt rulers and thieves”

Mario Miguel Córdoba, a 37-year-old courier, was walking down a street in San Salvador two days ago with a sack of corn on his shoulder when he realized that some soldiers were stationed a few meters away. He sensed that they were going to stop him, as had happened on five other occasions. The feeling of vertigo that came over him when he looked closely at the boots and rifles was not new. He could have turned around, but he would be suspicious; they would chase him, they would knock him down, he would fall to the ground and who knows what else could happen. He was terrified by the thought of having the barrel of a gun pointed at his forehead. So he gritted his teeth and continued on his way. Indeed, a few seconds later, a soldier grabbed his arm. They lifted his shirt in search of tattoos. They asked him if he belonged to any of the gangs. They forced him to sit on the sidewalk and wait there for an hour until they found out that it was true that a woman had ordered the corn from him. For a few moments he thought they were going to take him and put him in some of the prisons in which Nayib Bukele has locked up more than 70,000 people in recent years. Many find themselves in a judicial limbo that does not allow them to leave, as if the authorities had thrown the keys to their cells into the sea.

However, Córdoba believes that the president has done all this for the good of the Salvadorans. “Before you had to walk with one eye on your back and one on your forehead. The gangs hindered the communities. The emergency regime has been incredible. “Things have been resolved,” says the messenger, who this Sunday voted with his eyes closed for Bukele, who will surely be re-elected for another five years and his party, Nuevas Ideas, will have a comfortable majority in the Legislative Assembly, which which will give the president a lot of room for maneuver. Although it has been documented that there are many prisoners who have not been proven to have committed a crime, having resolved the problem of insecurity, which had been eroding the lives of its citizens for two decades, has made Bukele a politician. immensely popular. Nobody in the opposition gives him the slightest shadow.

Bukele's victory is going to be overwhelming. Even so, the ruling party has made a great display at the voting centers. Party tents have been erected in the surrounding area, volunteers distribute packets of potatoes to voters and officials with New Ideas vests regulate traffic. There is no doubt that the Cyan formation, the party that Bukele founded to run in the elections outside the two historical formations of the country, is gradually merging with the State. “I vote for him. He is a good president, we have never had one like him. I like everything he has done,” supports María Eva Portilla, an 81-year-old woman who went to vote arm in arm with her daughter-in-law.

A feeling of euphoria electrifies Bukele's followers. At a polling station, his supporters welcomed the president of the Assembly, Ernesto Castro, with large flags fluttering in the wind. Moisés Anaya has voted at the Viuda de Escalón school, in the neighborhood of the same name. “Now the country is calm. He has freed us from thieving and corrupt rulers who have stolen. He does not. And now you can go anywhere, at any time. Everything has changed,” says Anaya. Edgardo Palacios, 23 years old, came hand in hand with his son: “I vote for their future, for a country without violence, not like the one we live in.” Palacios' wife, Selina de los Ángeles, 24, feels supported by the Government for the first time in her life: “Support low-income people like us and distribute food packages.”

Bukele has not even campaigned. With his security plan, an exceptional regime with which he has dismantled the gangs, he has won over the vast majority of Salvadorans. The complaints from human rights organizations, the warning from the international community that El Salvador is heading towards autocracy and the poor economic figures will not have any impact on the results. The one known as the millennial president, for his use of social networks and his backwards cap, has only had to sit and wait this Sunday. The die is cast.

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