El Salvador’s New President Is Sitting on a Pot of Gold

Of the many outsiders who have emerged in Latin American politics of late, young Nayib Bukele stands out. El Salvador’s president-elect is 37 years old, favors jeans and leather jackets, and Facebook Live to press conferences. Having trounced contenders from the party duopoly that has controlled national politics for 30 years, he cast his victory as “the destruction of bipartisanship” and a national tipping point. “Salvadorans were angry at their politicians,” Giancarlo Morelli, an analyst with the Economist Intelligence Unit, explained. “And here’s this guy who seems like a leader of the 21st century, talking about the 4th industrial revolution.”

Encouraging as that may be, El Salvador will have to get to the 21st century as well. While the end of the civil war in 1992 cleared the way for national reconciliation, economic opening and robust growth, familiar miseries remain that neither social media nor sound bites can fix.