Right-wing turns crisis of violence into power agenda in Latin America

In a region marked by inequality, institutional crises and the rise of drug trafficking, public security has consolidated itself as the main electoral discourse of the right in Latin America.

This is what the election, this Sunday (1), of Laura Fernández in Costa Rica points out, whose campaign was centered on proposals to combat drug trafficking and tougher penalties in the face of the increase in homicides in the country.

“My desire is to have a large majority in the Legislative Assembly so that we can put these bastards in jail,” said the then conservative and liberal candidate from Costa Rica, Laura Fernández.
The movement has been accompanied, in countries such as El Salvador and Ecuador, by the concentration of power and expansion of the Executive’s prerogatives.

In Costa Rica, the centrality of the security issue was reflected at the polls. Laura Fernández won the election in the first round, this Sunday (1st), obtaining 48.3% of the votes, surpassing the National Liberation Party (PLN) candidate, Álvaro Ramos, who received around 34%.

In the Legislature, the Pueblo Soberano Party (PPSO), of the president-elect, jumped from eight to 31 of the 57 seats in the Legislative Assembly, forming the largest group since 1982. The unqualified absolute majority allows the government to approve ordinary laws and define the rhythm of the parliamentary agenda.

During the campaign, Fernández expressed admiration for the security model implemented by Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and defended institutional changes to “unlock” the justice system, an argument that also recurs in the speech of the current president, Rodrigo Chaves.

Fernández states that the objective is “to remove criminals from circulation who are identified, in which neighborhood they live and how they move”.

The advancement of this agenda occurs amid the deterioration of violence indicators. In recent years, Costa Rica has recorded records of homicides linked to drug trafficking, driven by the country’s consolidation as a strategic route between South America, the United States and Europe.

The expansion of criminal groups with transnational operations has changed the security scenario of a country historically seen as a peaceful exception in Central America.

The resurgence of violence became the structuring axis of the political dispute and opened space for proposals that go beyond the criminal field. By defending the lifting of guarantees and changes to institutional rules, Fernández inserts the Costa Rican debate into an agenda that associates the fight against crime with the expansion of Executive powers and the review of control mechanisms over the State.

This displacement does not occur in a vacuum. The combination of a “tough-handed” discourse, legislative majority and the promise of profound reforms brings the Costa Rican experience closer to a model already consolidated in the region, in which legal exceptionalism ceases to be a transitory measure and becomes part of the regular functioning of the government.

It is at this point that the mirror stops being just rhetorical. The explicit reference is that of El Salvador under the leadership of Nayib Bukele, where the fight against gangs was accompanied by the prolonged suspension of constitutional guarantees, reconfiguration of the Judiciary and concentration of power in the Executive.

In El Salvador, a mirror

In El Salvador, the so-called “Bukele model” was structured based on the decree of an exception regime in 2022, renewed successively and transformed into a permanent instrument of security policy.

The measure suspended constitutional guarantees, extended the period of detention without a court order and allowed mass arrests under the justification of combating gangs.

Since then, more than 70,000 people have been detained, according to official data, in an offensive that drastically reduced homicides, but significantly altered the balance between powers.
National and international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have documented reports of arbitrary detention, lack of access to defense, deaths in custody and ill-treatment in overcrowded prisons.

The Salvadoran government rejects the accusations and maintains that the measures were necessary to regain territorial control and guarantee the safety of the population.

At the same time, the Executive consolidated influence over other institutions. The replacement of Supreme Court magistrates, the dismissal of the attorney general and the constitutional reinterpretation that allowed Bukele’s immediate re-election were pointed out by critics as part of a process of concentration of power.

It is this arrangement — a combination of a drop in violence, prolonged legal exceptionalism and strengthening of the Executive — that has come to serve as a reference for sectors of the right in other countries in the region.

In Ecuador, security as an axis for reorganizing power

The case of Ecuador presents a similar dynamic. The escalation of violence in recent years — with an explosion in homicide rates and successive crises in the penitentiary system — has transformed the country into one of the regional epicenters of drug trafficking.

The deterioration of the security scenario opened space for an agenda centered on militarization and the discourse of “internal war”.

Under the government of Daniel Noboa, an “internal armed conflict” was declared, classifying criminal organizations as terrorist groups and authorizing the use of the Armed Forces in public security operations.

The measure expanded the military role in traditionally civilian functions and reinforced the emergency powers of the Executive before Congress.

Although the Ecuadorian context is marked by an acute crisis and political fragmentation, analysts point out that the incorporation of exceptional instruments into institutional daily life alters the balance between powers.

The justification for fighting crime now supports structural changes in the State’s architecture, bringing the country closer to a regional trend in which public security stops being just a sectoral policy and becomes an organizing axis of power.

Honduras and the centrality of security discourse

In Honduras, under the presidency of Nasry Asfura, from the conservative right, the toughening rhetoric also gained centrality in the political scene.

Faced with the persistence of organized crime and drug trafficking networks, recent governments have resorted to the militarization of internal security and the expansion of localized states of exception.

Although the Honduran institutional arrangement has not reached the degree of reorganization observed in El Salvador, the incorporation of extraordinary instruments into everyday politics reinforces the regional tendency to associate stability with the expansion of executive authority.