Part I — From Revolution to Iron Grip: Bukele and Ortega’s Paths to Power
Strongmen in Central America: Power, Populism, and the Fragility of Democracy
Series Introduction
This two-part essay examines the rise and rule of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Both men emerged from revolutionary legacies, broke traditional party structures, and built personalist regimes by weakening institutions. Their trajectories reveal the paradox of Central America’s strongmen: popular results achieved at the expense of democracy, leaving fragile states trapped in cycles of domination and instability.
Intro to Part I:
Strong personalities rather than enduring institutions have long defined Central America’s politics. This essay explores how two leaders from different generations — Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador — rose to power, dismantled constraints, and reshaped democracy in their own image. Their stories begin in revolutionary movements but converge on a familiar pattern: the concentration of power and the erosion of limits.
Power in Central America has often been less about institutions than about personalities. In El Salvador and Nicaragua, Nayib Bukele and Daniel Ortega exemplify two generations of leaders who rose through different contexts yet employed similar methods once in command. Both men began their political journeys tied to Marxist-inspired movements — Ortega in Nicaragua’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), Bukele within El Salvador’s Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN). Each broke with their original revolutionary molds, yet both learned to use the tools of populism, institutional control, intimidation, and “reform” to consolidate power.
Both regimes are also the children of the murderous civil wars of the 1980s. Ortega returned to power decades after the Sandinista triumph in 1979, riding the legacy of a revolution that bled Nicaragua for years through a series of shrewd maneuvers. Bukele emerged from the post-war political order in El Salvador, where the FMLN — a former guerrilla front — transitioned into a legal party after the 1992 peace accords. The very names of their parties recall the blood-soaked 1930s in the region, when communist guerrilla figures Augusto César Sandino and Farabundo Martí, once allies, broke apart and set the stage for decades of violent ideological struggle. The shadow of those conflicts still lingers: Central American politics remain bound to the logic of war, where opponents are enemies, and victory means total domination.
Political Ascent
Ortega’s rise was forged in guerrilla struggle (He never held a job in his life). He and the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dynasty in 1979, presenting themselves as liberators. Yet almost immediately, their revolutionary rhetoric turned into a new monopoly of power, sidelining rivals and concentrating authority in the FSLN.
Bukele, by contrast, emerged decades later in a more democratic setting. He won local offices with the FMLN before being expelled for insubordination. In 2019, running under his new party Nuevas Ideas (New Ideas), he broke the 30-year duopoly of ARENA and the FMLN. Where Ortega once held banks at gunpoint and mounted barricades in the early days and then worked out corrupt deals with his opponents, Bukele mastered social media. But both framed themselves as outsiders liberating the people from a corrupt political class.
It is no coincidence that both leaders defined themselves against entrenched elites — Ortega against an oligarchy once allied with Somoza, Bukele against the stale political class of right and left who rotated power after the Salvadoran civil war. This anti-elite posture gave them popular legitimacy, but also reinforced the notion that institutions were tools of the “old order” and therefore disposable. In practice, both sought to replace institutions and elites with themselves, not to strengthen democracy but to embody it in their own figure.
Tactics and Control of Institutions
Once in office, both leaders prioritized dismantling institutional constraints. Ortega systematically stacked Nicaragua’s judiciary, electoral council, and security apparatus to guarantee FSLN dominance. Over the years, he eroded checks and balances that the Chamorro government put in place until the party became indistinguishable from the state.
Bukele compressed this process. With a legislative supermajority in 2021, his allies summarily removed Constitutional Court judges and the Attorney General, ensuring that no institutional veto would hinder his agenda. In Ortega’s Nicaragua, the erosion was more gradual, spanning a decade; in Bukele’s El Salvador, it was near-instantaneous. The methods differ in pace, but not in principle.
Here lies the central democratic principle: limiting power is the essence of republican order. Institutions exist not to frustrate leaders but to protect citizens from the excesses of power. By turning courts, legislatures, and security forces into lapdogs, both Ortega and Bukele hollowed out democracy. The paradox is that they did so in the name of “the people.” Ortega invokes the revolution of the poor, Bukele the liberation of ordinary citizens from corrupt parties. Yet in both cases, the principle of restrained power is abandoned.
Violence, Intimidation, and Populism
Ortega’s reliance on brutal force is notorious. From crushing protests in 2018 — killing hundreds — to imprisoning rivals, including former allies, and clergy, the Sandinista regime rules through fear. His apparatus relies on paramilitary groups, politicized police, and show trials to extinguish dissent.
Bukele has avoided mass killings, but not intimidation. His state of exception has suspended due process and led to tens of thousands of arbitrary arrests. In 2020, he marched soldiers into the legislature to pressure lawmakers. While not the same magnitude of bloodshed, the underlying principle — coercion to bend institutions and society — is parallel.
Both also deploy populist theatrics. Ortega cloaks repression in revolutionary slogans and organizes paramilitary forces that do his bidding; Bukele tweets memes while unveiling mega-prisons. Their populism is performative, cultivating legitimacy not by strengthening institutions but by embodying the “will of the people” in their own person.
Staying in Office: “Reforms” and Justifications
Ortega perfected the art of staying in power through constitutional manipulation, a great deal of which he learned directly from Hugo Chavez. Term limits were eliminated through corrupt courts, electoral rules bent, rivals barred, and at times assassinated. His “reforms” were couched as democratic adjustments but served only to perpetuate his rule.
Bukele, once also bound by El Salvador’s constitutional ban on consecutive reelection, followed suit. A loyal court declared him eligible for a second term. He then won with an overwhelming majority in 2024. Like Ortega, Bukele justified the change as reflecting the people’s will.
The comparison reveals a pattern: revolution or election, insurgency or ballot box, the trajectory bends toward personalist rule, institutional hollowing, and indefinite tenure. Both Ortega and Bukele show that power, once secured, seeks permanence. And in both cases, the democratic principle of limiting power is abandoned in favour of the strongman’s claim of being indispensable: that only he can defend the people.
Closing note:
The paths of Ortega and Bukele reveal how Central American leaders ascend by promising liberation but remain by dismantling limits. In Part II, we will turn from their rise to their records — achievements, corruption, and the paradox of power.