Nayib Bukele

Biography

Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez was born on July 24, 1981, in San Salvador, El Salvador, and studied at Central American University in San Salvador. He started his career in the private sector by setting up an advertising company in 1999 and worked for an advertising business owned by his father, Armando Bukele Kattán. Both companies focused on creating promotional campaigns for the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) political party, giving Bukele an early look into the political world.

Bukele entered politics in 2011, officially joining the FMLN in 2012 when he was elected mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán. His political career quickly gained momentum, and in 2015 he became the Mayor of San Salvador, the country's capital and largest city, serving until 2018. However, his relationship with the FMLN soured, and he was expelled from the party in 2017. Not discouraged by this, Bukele started his own political group, Nuevas Ideas, and began a presidential campaign for the 2019 election.

After the Supreme Electoral Court refused to register his new party, Bukele got the nomination of the Grand Alliance for National Unity (GANA) and won the presidency with 53 percent of the vote, becoming El Salvador's 81st president at age 37. His administration has focused on two main areas: a strong anti-gang campaign and the debated adoption of Bitcoin as legal currency. The Territorial Control Plan, launched in July 2019, aimed to tackle El Salvador's serious violence issue, which included a homicide rate of 38 per 100,000 people.

Bukele's anti-crime efforts became much more intense after a violent weekend in March 2022 when gangs killed 87 people. This led to a nationwide crackdown that resulted in over 85,000 arrests of suspected gang members by December 2024. The campaign was effective in reducing violence, with the homicide rate falling to 1.9 per 100,000 by 2024, one of the lowest in the Americas. At the same time, Bukele made El Salvador the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021, pushing for ambitious plans for a Bitcoin City. His presidency has also included major changes, like the legislative approval in June 2023 to reduce municipalities from 262 to 44 and legislative seats from 84 to 60. Despite constitutional rules against consecutive re-election, Bukele successfully ran again in 2024 after the Supreme Court reinterpreted the ban, winning with a strong 85 percent of the vote while staying very popular among Salvadorans.