
As the votes were counted on election day, Americans were not the only ones watching expectantly for the results. World leaders of different nations monitored the election closely, knowing the result could have dramatic consequences for the entire globe.
In Central America, El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, expressed optimism that Trump’s election victory would result in an “exponential revalorization” of bitcoin, which he plans to capitalize on.
To Jorge Mercado, a local Los Angeles activist and Teamsters trade unionist from El Salvador, it is not surprising to see Bukele “lauding Trump.” Bukele’s “bitcoin fever” is part of his drive to find any “way to make money quickly.”
In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to make bitcoin legal tender, and the government started to purchase the digital asset. Today, El Salvador’s bitcoin portfolio is worth $585 million.
The International Monetary Fund did not embrace Bukele’s rush to make El Salvador a crypto capital, and in December of 2024 Bukele agreed to slow down. Bitcoin will no longer be accepted for tax payments and businesses are no longer required to accept it as legal tender.
However, in preparation for the Trump presidency, Bukele successfully courted Tether, the world’s leading “stablecoin” firm, to set up shop in El Salvador. On Jan 13, 2025, Tether announced its first physical headquarters was going to be in El Salvador.
According to Coinbase, a crypto trading platform whose CEO invested millions of dollars into a pro-crypto super PAC called Fairshake, “Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to another asset, such as a fiat currency or gold, to maintain a stable price. They strive to provide an alternative to the high volatility of popular cryptocurrencies, making them potentially more suitable for common transactions.”
Bukele announced at a press conference that Trump would provide “a more friendly ecosystem for bitcoin.”
Trump plans to create a strategic bitcoin reserve (SBR) that would involve the U.S. buying up large amounts of the cryptocurrency over the coming years, like the country’s strategic petroleum reserve.
While many economists are skeptical Trump would even be able to truly follow through on this promise, already the idea is gaining momentum. At least 13 U.S. states are crafting legislation for bitcoin reserves. States like Ohio and Pennsylvania propose bitcoin-backed diversification to safeguard against U.S. dollar devaluation and other global economic shifts. Internationally, countries like Japan and Switzerland are also exploring bitcoin reserves.
Crypto-capitalism and authoritarianism
Bukele’s zeal for cryptocurrency under a Trump-led “American golden age” is no surprise. Both leaders are autocrats. In El Salvador, and across Latin America, Bukele’s rule has become synonymous with “Mano Dura” (“Iron Fist”) policies against organized crime, notoriously at the cost of civil liberties and basic human rights.
“Trump uses decrees to govern, El Salvador practices the same,” Mercado said. It is totally “anti-constitutional and dictatorial,” he affirmed.
Under the Bukele Mano Dura model, the executive branch can suspend civil liberties and carry out mass incarceration missions without due process. Authorities can arrest individuals based on vague grounds such as suspicious appearance or anonymous accusations, bypassing judicial oversight.
In February 2020, Bukele called for a special congressional session, stormed congress with heavily armed military personnel, and demanded funding for his Territorial Control Plan (PCT), implicitly threatening to dissolve the congress or even stage a coup.
The economic agenda of crypto-capitalism in El Salvador is “really absurd,” Mercado said, because of how extreme poverty makes it impossible for people to access. Not only that, it is part of Bukele’s efforts to centralize power and money into a few hands.
In building infrastructures to amass personal wealth such as heavily investing in bitcoin currency accessible to very few, Bukele’s government diverts resources away from vital social programs and reverses important gains in anti-corruption law.
According to Pilar Gálvez, one of fifteen FMLN delegates based abroad, “el bitcoin es para hacer lavado de dinero.”
The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) was a leftist guerrilla group founded in 1980, which ultimately transformed over time into a political party. It initially sought to protect Salvadorans and fight back against the brutal decades-long military dictatorship.
Cryptocurrency “lends itself not for the ordinary Salvadoran people, but so that there can be no follow-up on the bank accounts to track the corrupt robberies and embezzlements currently happening within the government in El Salvador,” she said.
Gálvez noted that El Salvador is undergoing a “radicalization of neoliberalism.” This is seen in the withering away of social programs established during the presidency of FMLN president Mauricio Funes.
Mercado explained that Bukele “began to put in place decrees… the law in favor of transparency and against corruption was eliminated… he eliminated social programs like Ciudad Mujer… he has closed schools, he has removed programs for young people… he has imposed taxes on workers and taken them away from the oligarchy.”
Ciudad Mujer, or Woman City, for example, was a government program that provided critical services to women who were victims of violence. The free services provided by the program focused on the areas of collective education, sexual and reproductive health, economic autonomy, violence prevention and care, and childcare services.
According to the Bukele, violence against women is no longer a priority now that the gang problem has been “eliminated,” so he slashed this highly praised and popular program.
Alongside this gutting of progressive social initiatives, Bukele’s government constructed the Terrorism Confinement Center, the world’s largest maximum-security prison.
Bukele credits the reduction in crime and homicide rates during his first years in office to his PCT. However, two key factors were likely more influential: the COVID-19 pandemic and gang negotiations.
Public health or power grab opportunity?
On March 21, 2020, just 10 days after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic and with only one confirmed COVID-19 case in the country, Bukele mandated a countrywide lockdown. While quarantines were common during this period, such strict measures in a small nation with only one confirmed case was cause for concern for many.
“When the pandemic came, that fit him like a glove,” Mercado said.
The Bukele government instituted the continent’s toughest measures: it closed borders, imposed a national quarantine and sent the police and army to arrest violators.
Certain lockdown measures continued throughout much of 2020. The government’s strict enforcement of quarantine rules, including the controversial detentions of those accused of violating the lockdown, lasted until around late August, even after the supreme court had ruled that further extensions of the lockdown without legislative approval were unconstitutional.
Mercado mentioned how the controversial “centros de contención” held thousands of Salvadorans who remained detained for months without any judicial process.
According to AP reports, “Among those who have been taken there are people who went out to the streets to buy food for their families. Others were unlucky enough to travel out of the country when Bukele imposed quarantine and were locked up upon their return.”
Bukele’s extreme response to the pandemic was driven not by public health concerns but by an effort to maximize his control over ordinary Salvadorans.
Other actions taken by Bukele indicate little regard for public health. For example, Bukele wants to bring back metallic mining to El Salvador, which has been heavily criticized and protested by religious leaders, environmental activists, and indigenous communities for its harmful impacts on people’s health and the local water supply.
In February 2021, Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas, secured a supermajority in congress, and Bukele used this power to attack the judiciary. He removed the attorney general and constitutional court judges who had previously ruled against some of his pandemic-related actions. Bukele replaced them with judges he expected would be loyal to him, further consolidating his control over the legal system. This allowed the government to continue implementing antidemocratic measures and violating human rights, all while justifying these actions under the guise of a popular mandate.
Gang negotiations instigating violence
In September 2020, investigative journalists found government records indicating that the Bukele administration had been negotiating with MS-13 to reduce homicide rates and gain electoral support.
MS-13 is a violent criminal organization that originated in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. During the Salvadoran civil war, the United States backed brutal right-wing forces that were responsible for tens of thousands of killings and countless atrocities. Many Salvadorans fled the country, with a substantial percentage settling in Los Angeles, where gangs formed as a means of self-defense for marginalized communities.
Thousands of MS-13 members were eventually imprisoned by U.S. police and deported to their home countries. Perhaps as many as 20,000 returned to El Salvador between 2000 and 2004, exporting criminal organization skills acquired in American cities and prisons.
Bukele continues to deny the allegations that he negotiated with any gangs and credit his administration and his PCT as the reasons for the decline in crime and violence.
The strategy that Bukele has used for his empowerment includes closed-door negotiations with the gangs, which he used to influence electoral participation in areas controlled by the gangs, helping him secure the majority in congress necessary to advance policies that, otherwise, would have faced legislative or judicial resistance.
In March 2022, after a breakdown of negotiations with gangs, El Salvador experienced an extremely violent weekend when over 92 people were killed. This sudden surge of violence gave way to the first declaration of a state of emergency, which has been extended monthly for more than two years.
Under this state of exception, constitutional rights, such as freedom of assembly and the right to a legal defense, have been suspended.
This has led to the incarceration of over 77,000 people, accounting for 1.22 percent of the country’s population of 6.3 million. Another aspect of this operation is the severe overcrowding of prison facilities, some of which now house three times more people than they were intended for.
Mercado noted how in El Salvador “The right-wing uses gangs to intimidate the people.” Even though Bukele promised “let’s fight the gangs” the right-wing takes advantage of gang-related crime to institute unconstitutional crackdowns on ordinary citizens and especially political opponents.
When Bukele won in 2019, “He released a list of FMLN leaders accusing them of theft,” Mercado stated.
In reality, “The Salvadoran left has already put two presidents—Francisco Flores and Antonio Saca—in jail for corruption,” Gálvez asserted.
Right-wing politicians “want to steal from the Salvadoran people, but they are protecting themselves…When they are in power, they manage to cover up the corruption. Cryptocurrency lends itself to being able to make economic transactions without there being any trace, regardless of the government that arrives.”
Bukele’s predilections for corruption, crypto-mania, and mass incarceration have earned him Donald Trump’s praise. Their mutual respect and shared priorities highlight that the struggle of working-class people across the Americas is interlocked and must be fought at a global scale.
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