Brazilian right courts crime-weary voters with 'Bukele model' crackdown

SAO PAULO/BRASILIA, June 25 - Right-wing candidates in Brazil have vowed to import El Salvador's "Bukele model," building prisons and cracking down on crime like that country's iron-fisted president, as they push to make public safety central to October's general election.

Their pitch extends the influence of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has curtailed civil rights while slashing crime rates and inspired imitators across Latin America. Right-wing candidates in Colombia and Peru triumphed in presidential elections in recent weeks by campaigning heavily on crime.

In Brazil, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, Congressman Nikolas Ferreira and former Governor Romeu Zema have all traveled to El Salvador, with some touring its 40,000-capacity "mega prison" CECOT, to build voter support for tougher anti-crime measures.

Bolsonaro, who is polling strongest among conservative hopefuls in Brazil's presidential race, unveiled a public safety plan last week including "five new maximum-security prisons along the lines of El Salvador's model."

"More prisons, fewer criminals on the loose," the senator vowed at a public event, echoing his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who also campaigned on a tough-on-crime message.

With his brother Eduardo, a former congressman, he also met with Bukele's security minister in El Salvador last year, as did Ferreira, Brazil's top-voted lower house lawmaker in 2022.

Admiration for Bukele's approach to public safety is becoming a consensus among Brazil's conservative leadership.

Presidential hopeful Romeu Zema lauded El Salvador's "pragmatic" approach in a Reuters interview on March 31.

"In El Salvador ... criminals stay locked up. Here in Brazil, criminals walk free," he said.

São Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas has also suggested El Salvador offers lessons for Brazil.

"Not to draw too close a comparison, but look at what Bukele did in El Salvador, what it was and what it is now," he said at a public event late last year, defending stricter measures to contain crime.

"We need to start truly confronting crime with the harshness it deserves."

BUKELE APPEAL

Bukele's approach to fighting crime has combined a years-long state of emergency, mass arrests, military-backed policing and the vast CECOT prison. His government says the strategy has driven a historic collapse in homicides and broken the grip of gangs that once terrorized El Salvador.

The crackdown has also curtailed constitutional rights, press freedom and judicial independence. Human rights groups have accused Salvadoran authorities of widespread arbitrary arrests and torture. Bukele's government denies abuses and says extraordinary measures were needed to dismantle gangs.

Across Latin America, the political appeal has been clear.

Costa Rica hosted Bukele in January to inaugurate its own CECOT-style prison, built with Salvadoran support. President Laura Fernandez took office last month pledging a "heavy-handed war against organized crime."

In Colombia, President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella campaigned on a plan for 10 new mega-prisons, drawing media comparisons to the Salvadoran leader, which he rejected.

In Peru, where security concerns dominated this year's presidential contest, the presumptive President-elect Keiko Fujimori campaigned on a "frontal war" against crime, tough anti-terrorism laws and a larger role for the military.

"Throughout the region, voters facing chronic insecurity and rising mistrust are rewarding leaders who promise decisive control," Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarape Institute, a Brazilian public policy think tank, wrote in a leading defense policy journal this month.

He warned that "heavy-handed strategies carry well-known risks when they are poorly designed and politically rewarded."

Those risks may be especially acute in Brazil, where mass incarceration has failed to contain organized crime. Brazil's two largest criminal groups, the First Capital Command and Red Command, grew from prison gangs into national and transnational drug-trafficking organizations.

Brazil has one of the world's largest prison populations, which nearly quadrupled between 2000 and 2024 to about 909,000 inmates, operating well beyond its capacity, according to the University of London's World Prison Brief.

"Brazil is far more complex than El Salvador, and it would be very difficult to implement something like that here," said Rafael Alcadipani, a public security expert and professor at Brazil's Getulio Vargas Foundation. REUTERS