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🇧🇷 Brazil /Elections & Politics

Brazilian Candidates’ Embrace of the Bukele Model Alarms Journalist Forced to Leave El Salvador

From Folha de S.Paulo · () Portuguese

Translated from Portuguese and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Interview Named sources Context piece
  • Brazilian presidential hopefuls have cited Nayib Bukele’s security policies as a model for combating organized crime.
  • El Faro co-founder Carlos Dada says the approach relies on mass and arbitrary detention, restrictions on legal access, and a concentration of power.
  • Dada warns that applying El Salvador’s imprisonment rate to Brazil would produce a prison population of about 4 million, compared with just under 1 million today.

Carlos Dada is worried that Brazilian presidential candidates are presenting Nayib Bukele’s security model as a solution to organized crime. “I was concerned that so many candidates in Brazil were offering the Bukele model as a solution,” the journalist told Folha de S.Paulo.

Dada, 55, co-founded El Faro and now follows events from exile after the newspaper documented an alleged government pact with local gangs and faced pressure and persecution. He says the public image of Cecot, El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, conceals a system built on mass detentions and restrictions on rights.

I was concerned that so many candidates in Brazil were offering the Bukele model as a solution.

· Carlos DadaHe reacts to Brazilian presidential hopefuls citing Bukele’s security policies.

In Dada’s description, Salvadoran security forces can make arbitrary and mass arrests without judicial warrants or formal accusations. Authorities only need to say that someone is suspected. In detention records reviewed by his newspaper, one stated reason for an arrest was that a person “became nervous.”

El Salvador’s state of exception has entered its fifth year, Dada says. After arrest, detainees can be taken to prisons where family members and lawyers cannot visit them, and relatives may not even be told where they are being held. Those who reach trial may face an anonymous judge alongside 100 or 200 other defendants, leaving little chance of release, he says.

He presented the fight against insecurity in almost biblical terms. He said he was fighting beings of darkness. That is pure demagoguery.

· Carlos DadaHe criticizes Gustavo Villatoro’s presentation of El Salvador’s security policy to Brazilian industrialists.

Dada is also concerned about Brazilian business leaders’ interest in the model. El Salvador’s public security chief, Gustavo Villatoro, presented it to industrialists in São Paulo using what Dada called almost biblical language. “He presented the fight against insecurity in almost biblical terms. He said he was fighting beings of darkness. That is pure demagoguery,” Dada said. “Especially considering that those beings of darkness were once allies of the Bukele government.”

He calculates that if Brazil copied El Salvador’s detention rate, one in every 50 citizens would be imprisoned, producing a prison population of 4 million. Brazil currently has just under 1 million prisoners, according to the article.

Especially considering that those beings of darkness were once allies of the Bukele government.

· Carlos DadaHe challenges the rhetoric used to describe El Salvador’s security crackdown.
About this summary

Originally published by Folha de S.Paulo in Portuguese. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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