The Bukele Model and the difficulties of its implementation

By: Beatrice E. Rangel - 12/08/2026

Latin Americans have a long tradition of copying models. We copy fashions, trends, and, of course, models of public policy, business, work, and education. The logic seems simple: if a particular model produced positive results elsewhere—Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, or even the Himalayas—why wouldn't it produce them here as well?

The problem is that this line of reasoning often ignores the essential point: no model works in a vacuum. Geography, culture, institutions, and the availability of natural resources profoundly influence its outcomes. What works in one country can fail spectacularly in another.

Latin America is well aware of the consequences of this fascination with imported recipes.

The first major wave of institutional copying occurred after the independence movements from Spain, when it was assumed that the federal democratic model adopted by the United States could work equally well south of the Rio Grande. This led to a flood of constitutions enshrining federalism in the new nations that emerged from the Spanish Empire.

But constitutions alone did not create democracies. Nor did they prevent the civil wars that marked much of the post-independence period.

Today we may be facing a new version of the same phenomenon.

In the 21st century, the United States has decided to dust off the Monroe Doctrine, incorporating the so-called Trump Corollary. From a geopolitical perspective, Washington has chosen the Western Hemisphere as its strategic sphere of influence and has placed organized crime at the center of its regional agenda. The premise seems to be that those countries that disrupt political peace or economic progress may become the target of more direct US action.

This new direction took many Latin American leaders by surprise. Until now, U.S. foreign policy toward the region had largely focused on supporting Latin American countries in addressing educational, infrastructure, and health problems.

The new governments that came to power as an expression of rejection of leftist policies thus found themselves facing a new priority: combating organized crime. And, in searching for a model that showed results, they found one that seemed difficult to ignore: that of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.

From Colombia to Chile, passing through Peru, the idea began to spread that the Salvadoran model could be the Latin American response to the advance of organized crime.

But this is where it's worth pausing.

The race to import the Bukele model could end up creating even bigger problems than those it intends to solve. Because the model isn't simply about implementing more effective anti-crime policies. Its success depends on specific political and institutional conditions.

Among them, three stand out: an Executive branch much stronger than the other branches of government; the weakening or silencing of the media and the bodies responsible for monitoring human rights; and agreements with the leadership of organized crime.

The problem is that each of these conditions gradually erodes the democratic fabric and, with it, the freedoms that democracy seeks to protect.

In a region historically characterized by weak institutions, the prolonged adoption of a model of this nature could end up producing a paradoxical result: using the fight against crime to weaken precisely the institutions that should guarantee freedom and the rule of law.

And in a region that, after five hundred years, has still not managed to consolidate firm democratic institutions, that outcome would be particularly sad.

History also offers us a disturbingly similar precedent.

In the mid-20th century, Latin America once again embraced a recipe that seemed to offer a fast track to development: import substitution industrialization. This thesis, associated with the work of Raúl Prebisch, then director of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), was based on a comprehensible premise: protecting domestic production from foreign competition would allow for the creation of local industries and accelerate development.

The recipe consisted of erecting a veritable tariff barrier to restrict imports and stimulate domestic production.

It worked, to some extent, in large economies like Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Brazil. But in many of the region's smaller economies, it had a perverse effect: it created business sectors dependent on tariff protection, unable to compete internationally, and with strong incentives to preserve the system that protected them.

The model also increased the budgets of the middle class, reduced its capacity for growth, and contributed to the formation of interest groups powerful enough to capture state apparatuses in defense of their own interests.

The result was a familiar combination: greater marginalization, inability to conquer external markets, and scarce endogenous innovation and technological development.

The lesson should be obvious.

Latin America does not need to import complete models. It needs to learn to distinguish between what can be adapted and what, by mechanically transferring it from one country to another, can end up destroying the very conditions it seeks to improve.

The challenge posed by organized crime is real and urgent. The response, however, cannot be a choice between security and democracy. The true challenge lies in building institutions capable of guaranteeing both.

Because if to save democracy we end up sacrificing freedom, we will have won a battle against crime only to lose the war for democracy.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».