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nayib bukele
Apologist for Pinochet Dictatorship Will Be Next President of Chile
José Antonio Kast has described the dictator who ended democracy for nearly two decades and presided over the persecution of tens of thousands of dissidents as someone who brought "order" to Chile.
Dec 15, 2025
José Antonio Kast, a far-right former lawmaker, won over 58% of the vote in Chile's runoff elections on Sunday over Jeannette Jara, the labor minister under outgoing left-wing President Gabriel Boric, to become the nation's next president.
The win came despite Kast's open admiration for General Augusto Pinochet, who ended civilian rule in Chile after taking power through a coup d'etat in 1973, overthrowing its democratically elected socialist leader in a US Central Intelligence Agency-backed plot and implementing a radical program of economic austerity.
Until he was ousted by a democratic referendum in 1990, Pinochet governed Chile as a military dictatorship rife with human rights abuses, resulting in his indictment by a Spanish court in 1996 for crimes against humanity. His regime assassinated or "disappeared" nearly 3,200 people, while tens of thousands were tortured and more forced into exile.
Human rights groups have accused Kast and his family—the patriarch of which was a member of the Nazi Party who fled to Chile in 1950—of collaboration with the Pinochet regime's detention of opponents. The president-elect's brother was a minister for Pinochet during the dictatorship.
Kast will be the first president of Chile since its return to democracy to have campaigned for and voted “Yes” in the 1988 plebiscite for the dictator to stay in power for another eight years despite his reign of terror.
But rather than distance himself from Pinochet's legacy, Kast has described himself as his spiritual successor.
In 2017, during his first of three presidential campaigns, Kast told a local newspaper that “if he were alive,” Pinochet “would vote for me.” Kast later described Pinochet as someone who brought “order” to Chile, comments that the Buenos Aires Times wrote in 2021, “railed many who are still scarred by this dark period in the country’s history.”
But Kast's nostalgia for that period of repression was not enough to hobble him this time around. At a time when the right is making gains across Latin America, Kast's policy agenda sits at the nexus point between the free market fundamentalism of Argentina's Javier Milei and the police state ambitions of El Salvador's Nayib Bukele.
He has pledged an economic program in the same vein as Pinochet's and, later, Milei's "shock therapy," proposing an unprecedented cut of $21 billion in public spending over his term, paired with a reduction in taxes on the wealthy.
Kast has pledged that these cuts would only affect "waste" and "political" spending, but not impact social programs that benefit Chileans. But economic analysts, including Javiera Toro, Chile's social development minister, have argued that a cut of that size would inevitably cut into the social safety net, including its popular state pension program and others related to health, housing, and education.
Kast successfully martialed fear of high crime (even though it actually fell under Boric's tenure) into outrage toward the nation's undocumented migrants—mainly from Venezuela—whom he has pledged to deport en masse. As in the US, where President Donald Trump is also spearheading a mass deportation operation, immigrants in Chile commit crimes at lower rates than those born in the country.
Last year, Kast visited the sprawling prison complex where Bukele has used emergency powers to detain tens of thousands of people as part of his sweeping war on gangs, often in punishing conditions where they've faced torture. Amnesty International described it as a "state policy of massive and arbitrary deprivation of liberty." Kast said he'd like to implement a similar policy in Chile.
Kast immediately raised fears for the future of Chile's democracy in his victory speech, vowing to form an "emergency government" when he takes power in 2026. However, he will not command a majority in Chile's legislature, which may make the delivery of his agenda more challenging.
Jenny Pribble, professor of political science and global studies at the University of Richmond, told Al Jazeera: “It remains to be seen if Kast could or would pursue such an approach, but if Chile follows the Salvadoran model, it would constitute significant democratic backsliding.”
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Over 150 Religious Orgs Endorse Salvadoran Mining Ban Reversed by Bukele
A joint letter expresses "steadfast support for the people of El Salvador and their religious institutions and leaders who are struggling to maintain their country’s historic ban on metal mining... so all Salvadorans can enjoy their God-given right to clean water."
Dec 01, 2025
More than 150 faith-based organizations from 25 countries launched an open letter on Monday supporting an El Salvadoran ban on metals mining that was overturned by right-wing President Nayib Bukele in 2024.
The original ban was passed by the country’s legislature in 2017 following years of study and the advocacy of El Salvador’s religious communities. The letter signatories, which include 153 global and regional groups from a wide range of traditions, stood with faith groups in El Salvador in calling both for no new mining and for an end to the political persecution of land and water defenders.
"We, the undersigned, from a diversity of church structures (representing local, regional, and national expressions of churches and related agencies), express our steadfast support for the people of El Salvador and their religious institutions and leaders who are struggling to maintain their country’s historic ban on metal mining—in place from 2017 to 2024—so all Salvadorans can enjoy their God-given right to clean water," the letter begins. "We stand in solidarity with civic and religious leaders who are being persecuted and imprisoned for working against injustices, including the devastation that metals mining would cause their communities."
The faith leaders also released a video reading sections of the letter aloud.
“This letter is a hope-filled expression of solidarity and humanism."
“Through this declaration, faith communities from around the world have affirmed their solidarity with faith leaders in El Salvador as they carry out their duty to protect water as a sacred inherited trust, a human right meant to be shared by all,” Rev. Dr. Japhet Ndhlovu, executive minister for the Church in the Mission Unit of The United Church of Canada, said in a statement.
El Salvadorans already struggle to gain access to clean and plentiful water. The water of 90% of Salvadorans is contaminated, half of all Salvadorans have "intermittent access to water,” and one-half of those with water access report it is poor quality, said Gordon Whitman, managing director for international organizing at letter-signatory Faith in Action, at a Monday press briefing anouncing the letter.
"Restarting mining would be catastrophic," Whitman said.
The mining ban was already hard won.
A 2012 study commissioned by the government affirmed that mining would endanger the nation’s rivers and watersheds with cyanide, arsenic, and other toxins and found widespread public opposition to mining. Before the ban was passed in March of 2017, the archbishop of San Salvador mobilized support for it by leading a march to deliver a draft of the ban to the National Assembly. After it passed unanimously, he called it a "miracle," according to John Cavanagh, a senior adviser at the Institute for Policy Studies.
The law made El Salvador "the first nation on Earth to ban mining to save its rivers," Cavanagh said at the press briefing.
“The Salvadoran precautionary approach banning metal mining is essential to protect drinking water and aquatic ecosystems, given the irreparable damage that has been done by irresponsible mining around the world,” Willamette University professor emeritus Susan Lea Smith of the Ecumenical Water Network of the World Council of Churches said in a statement. “El Salvador had made a difficult but wise choice in banning metal mining. Clean water is a gift from God, and so, for the sake of clean water and the rest of Creation, we work together for the common good."
"It is a sin to render water undrinkable.”
However, in December 2024, Bukele's government passed a new law that allows mining once again without environmental oversight or community consultation.
“It’s a law that has become one of the main threats for the Salvadorans' right to clean water," Pedro Cabezas of International Allies Against Mining in El Salvador said in the press conference.
Cabezas also said the new law was a "symptom of what El Salvador has been going through over the last five years” as Bukele concentrates all power within the executive and his own party.
While the Salvadoran public and civil society groups remain opposed to mining—a December 2024 poll found that 3 in 5 are against the practice in the country—the Bukele government has ramped up its criminalization of dissent.
In this context, the Catholic, protestant, and evangelical churches in El Salvador are among the remaining institutions "with space to speak out" against mining, Christie Neufeldt of the United Church of Canada explained at the briefing.
For example, in March, Mons. José Luis Escobar Alas, the archbishop of San Salvador, presented an anti-mining petition signed by 150,000 people.
International faith groups wanted to stand in solidarity with their Salvadoran counterparts.
“This letter is a hope-filled expression of solidarity and humanism in the face of forces that would degrade” the Earth, human rights, and democracy, Neufeldt said.
Salvadoran faith groups "remind us that access to water is a fundamental human right and that clean water is not a commodity, but a shared inheritance entrusted to all people by God. And they remind us that ending the mining ban is fueling egregious rights violations against those organizing to protect their water and land from destruction," the letter says.
Whitman spoke about the importance of water to several religious traditions.
“All of our faith traditions teach that water is a sacred gift of God,” Whitman said, adding, "It is a sin to render water undrinkable.”
In the press briefing, speakers acknowledged the link between rising authoritarianism and environmental deregulation, in El Salvador and beyond.
Cavanagh noted that, as the energy transition increases demand for rare earth minerals and global instability makes gold more attractive, "oligarchs linked to extractivism" have begun "pumping money into elections” to boost candidates who will allow them to exploit resources.
“It’s not at all surprising that the opposition to mining comes from the people, and so it’s absolutely natural that the oligarchs, that the transnational corporations are going to want to crack down on public dissent," Smith said, adding there was an "intimate connection between authoritarianism and any extractive industry, including mining."
In the end, however, the letter signatories expressed faith for a greener, freer future.
"We pray for the Salvadoran people and their government, that they protect the sacred gift of creation, uphold human rights, and ensure every family clean water—now and for generations to come," they concluded.
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Beware Men Like Bukele and Trump Trying to Bury Our Democracies
Democratic collapse rarely arrives suddenly; it typically emerges from internal decay. Political leaders learn that the most effective path to concentrated power runs through existing institutions rather than around them.
Aug 17, 2025
Democracy in El Salvador crossed a critical threshold at the end of July. The country’s Legislative Assembly, dominated by President Nayib Bukele’s party, passed sweeping constitutional changes that day: presidential term limits were abolished, presidential terms extended from five to six years, and runoff elections were eliminated.
This represented the final phase of power consolidation spanning years. Bukele’s Assembly majority had dismissed all five Constitutional Chamber Supreme Court judges and the attorney general on May 1, 2021, replacing them with loyalists. The restructured court then authorized his bid for a second consecutive term that September, a move the constitution had previously prohibited.
Bukele frames these changes as efforts to “modernize” governance. Critics describe it as autocratic legalism: exploiting legal processes to dismantle democratic safeguards.
What makes this transformation particularly remarkable is Bukele’s sustained popularity. His approval rating reached approximately 85 percent in a June 2025 CID-Gallup poll, driven largely by steep reductions in gang violence. Against this backdrop, constitutional amendments that centralize authority are presented not as power grabs, but as fulfilling “what the people want.”
Bukele’s transformation offers a real-time example of how democratic institutions can be dismantled from within, swiftly, through legal channels, and with broad popular backing. The lesson for Americans is stark: undermining checks and balances requires neither coups nor violent uprisings. What it demands is a leader with sufficient popularity, control over key institutions, and the determination to reshape governing rules.
The process unfolds gradually, making it harder for citizens to recognize the danger until significant damage is done. Each individual step can appear reasonable or even necessary when viewed in isolation. But collectively, these incremental changes can fundamentally alter the balance of power in ways that prove difficult to reverse. Traditional democratic safeguards, such as elections, courts, and legislatures, become tools of consolidation when captured by determined leaders. The very institutions designed to prevent authoritarian takeover can be turned against democracy itself. Unlike external threats or obvious coups that trigger immediate resistance, this internal erosion often proceeds with public approval until the transformation reaches a point of no return.
The international precedent is troubling: once these changes take hold, reversing them requires far more political will and civic mobilization than preventing them in the first place. Most concerning is how this approach exploits democracy’s greatest strength, its responsiveness to popular will, and transforms it into a vulnerability that can be systematically exploited. The result is a system that maintains democratic vocabulary while operating under increasingly authoritarian principles.
El Salvador’s developments represent more than an isolated case; they reflect a worldwide trend. Leaders across various nations have learned to erode democratic systems without staging outright overthrows. Their approach remains consistent: gradually altering governing rules, weakening autonomous institutions, and skewing the political landscape in their direction, while preserving electoral processes to maintain democratic appearances.
Such gradual deterioration poses greater risks than military coups. No armed forces occupy city centers, no dramatic moment marks democracy’s end. The process instead unfolds through calculated, lawful steps, often maintaining sufficient public support to avoid meaningful opposition.
Turkey, Hungary, and India
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pursued a comparable trajectory. Following his tenure as prime minister, he assumed the presidency in 2014. He successfully secured passage of a constitutional referendum in April 2017, winning 51.4 percent of the votes, which transformed Turkey’s parliamentary system into a hyper-presidential framework.
In the aftermath of an unsuccessful coup attempt in July 2016, Erdoğan proclaimed a state of emergency, leading to the arrest of tens of thousands of people while dismissing or suspending over 100,000 civil servants, academics, and judges. Previously independent institutions—the judiciary, media, and military—fell under direct presidential authority.
Electoral processes continue, yet with press freedoms constrained and the political arena systematically disadvantaged against opposition forces, genuine competitive democracy has been gutted.
From 2010 onward, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has restructured the constitution, appointed supporters to the courts, and brought media outlets under government-friendly ownership. Orbán characterizes his approach as an “illiberal democracy.” Political scientists label it a competitive autocracy: voting processes persist, but democratic protections have been eliminated. His strategy, leveraging election wins to establish permanent control, has inspired leaders from Ankara to San Salvador.
Although India remains the world’s largest democracy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership has raised concerns among numerous watchdogs. Media freedoms have been eroded, law enforcement bodies have targeted opposition figures, and legislation limiting dissent has been enacted. Although India hasn’t yet entered full authoritarianism, the growing concentration of authority and shrinking space for civil society demonstrate how even robust democracies can drift toward institutional weakening.
The Democratic Mandate Deception
This manipulation of democratic language makes institutional destruction particularly difficult to resist. Electoral victory becomes a blank check for systemic transformation. Leaders argue that because voters chose them, they have permission to remake the entire governmental structure according to their vision. Opposition to their changes isn’t portrayed as defending democracy, but as thwarting popular will.
This rhetoric serves a crucial psychological function: it allows supporters to view obvious power grabs as legitimate democratic evolution rather than authoritarian capture. Citizens who might resist a military coup can be convinced that eliminating institutional safeguards represents voter-mandated reform. When authoritarianism wraps itself in the language of popular sovereignty, distinguishing between legitimate change and democratic destruction becomes nearly impossible for ordinary citizens, until the damage is already complete.
The common thread linking Bukele, Erdoğan, Orbán, and, to a lesser extent, Modi, lies in their approach. Each gained office through democratic elections, then systematically undermined institutional constraints and altered governing structures to prolong their tenure while diminishing oversight.
Certain observers identify similar patterns emerging in the United States. Project 2025, an approximately 920-page blueprint developed by conservative policy organizations, proposed restructuring the executive branch, eliminating civil service safeguards, and expanding political influence over agencies intended to operate independently. Advocates claim this approach would “make government work again.” Bukele offered comparable rhetoric. Erdoğan and Orbán did as well.
The Lesson
Democratic collapse rarely arrives suddenly; it typically emerges from internal decay. Political leaders learn that the most effective path to concentrated power runs through existing institutions rather than around them.
The critical question facing Americans is whether they will identify these warning signs in time, or whether they will follow the path of citizens in El Salvador, Turkey, Hungary, and India, convincing themselves that their situation is uniquely different.
Protecting democratic institutions requires active vigilance, engaged civic participation, and holding all leaders accountable, regardless of their political affiliation. This means prioritizing the country’s institutional health over partisan interests, rejecting empty promises, and opting for substantive transparency over charismatic leadership.
Ultimately, democracy’s survival depends entirely on the decisions its citizens make. If those decisions prioritize institutional integrity, balanced power structures, and democratic principles, democracy will persist. If not, the gradual weakening will persist until the moment arrives when democratic governance ceases to function altogether.
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