SAO PAULO/BRASILIA — Conservative candidates in Brazil are pledging to bring El Salvador’s aggressive crime-fighting playbook to South America’s largest nation, making public safety a defining issue in the country’s upcoming October general election.
The push reflects the growing regional influence of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, whose administration has suspended civil liberties while dramatically reducing crime rates, inspiring a wave of imitators across Latin America. In recent weeks, right-wing candidates in Colombia and Peru both won presidential contests by running heavily on anti-crime platforms.
In Brazil, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, Congressman Nikolas Ferreira, and former Governor Romeu Zema have each made trips to El Salvador — with some touring its 40,000-capacity “mega prison” known as CECOT — in an effort to build voter enthusiasm for stricter crime measures.
Bolsonaro, who leads among conservative candidates in Brazil’s presidential polling, rolled out a public safety proposal last week that includes “five new maximum-security prisons along the lines of El Salvador’s model.”
At a public event, the senator declared, “More prisons, fewer criminals on the loose,” echoing the tough rhetoric of his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro. Along with his brother Eduardo, a former congressman, he met with Bukele’s security minister during a visit to El Salvador last year. Ferreira, who received the most votes of any lower house lawmaker in Brazil’s 2022 elections, made a similar visit.
Support for Bukele’s methods is quickly becoming a shared position among Brazil’s conservative leaders. Presidential contender Romeu Zema praised El Salvador’s “pragmatic” approach during a March 31 interview with Reuters.
“In El Salvador … criminals stay locked up. Here in Brazil, criminals walk free,” Zema said.
São Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas has also pointed to El Salvador as a model worth studying. Speaking at a public event late last year, he said: “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 added, “We need to start truly confronting crime with the harshness it deserves.”
Bukele’s strategy has combined a prolonged state of emergency, sweeping mass arrests, military-assisted policing, and the construction of the massive CECOT facility. His government credits the approach with a historic drop in homicides and the dismantling of gangs that had long terrorized the country.
However, the crackdown has come at a cost to constitutional rights, press freedom, and judicial independence. Human rights organizations have accused Salvadoran authorities of carrying out widespread arbitrary arrests and torture. Bukele’s government has denied those allegations, arguing that extreme measures were necessary to break the gangs’ hold on the country.
The model is spreading across the region. Costa Rica welcomed Bukele in January for the opening of its own CECOT-style prison, built with Salvadoran assistance. Costa Rica’s President Laura Fernandez took office last month vowing a “heavy-handed war against organized crime.”
In Colombia, President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella ran on a platform calling for 10 new mega-prisons, drawing comparisons to the Salvadoran leader — comparisons he rejected. In Peru, where security dominated this year’s presidential race, presumptive President-elect Keiko Fujimori campaigned on a “frontal war” against crime, stricter anti-terrorism laws, and an expanded military role in public safety.
Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarape Institute, a Brazilian public policy think tank, wrote in a leading defense policy journal this month that “throughout the region, voters facing chronic insecurity and rising mistrust are rewarding leaders who promise decisive control.” He cautioned, however, that “heavy-handed strategies carry well-known risks when they are poorly designed and politically rewarded.”
Those risks may be particularly serious in Brazil, where decades of mass incarceration have failed to rein in organized crime. The country’s two largest criminal organizations — the First Capital Command and Red Command — both originated as prison gangs before expanding into national and international drug-trafficking networks.
Brazil already has one of the world’s largest prison populations, which nearly quadrupled between 2000 and 2024 to roughly 909,000 inmates, according to the University of London’s World Prison Brief — a system already operating far beyond its intended capacity.
“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.
