President Bukele addresses The Heritage Foundation in 2019, speech titled, A New Era in El Salvadore, presented byYoutube.
Click video to watch speech delivered by President Bukele of El Salvador in February, 2019. His electoral victory represented a historical moment for the people and country of El Salvador. After 40 years of corruption from top levels of government to violent gangs in the street and a civil war that lasted 12 years, "El Salvador has turned a page," is how President Bukele described El Salvadore in his speech to the Heritage Foundation in 2019. In his speech he explained that during his candidacy he offered the people a message of hope and realistic solutions to corruption, ineffective government, corrupt law enforcement and violence in the streets.
I don't remember hearing much about El Salvador's elections in 2019, or for that matter the candidates names. Americans, including myself were rightly concerned about the fate of our own country and had our eyes and ears tuned to the daily coverage of America's 2020 Presidential Election. Our election had a very different result. Ours was a moment in American history we never thought would occur in our country. As time has revealed, through the investigative process, our worst suspicions of voter fraud and tampering were proven true. In my lifetime, there has never been such deliberate actions taken to undermine the results of a presidential election. Its ironic that El Salvador, a country unable until now to achieve positive change due to a corrupt electoral system, is able to overcome that challenge while America, the greatest republic and freest country in the world, one year later found itself in legal battles to expose voter fraud and manipulation to ultimately preserve American freedom and the integrity of our free and open election process.
The first time I heard anything about the new president of El Salvador was when President Trump spoke highly of the new President, explaining that he was impressed that President Bukele encouraged his people to remain in El Salvador and strongly opposed illegal immigration into the U. S. I was impressed, making a mental note of his presidency and keeping an eye on his term in office.
Well President Bukele has been in office 4 years now. There is still very little coverage about his presidency or the state of El Salvador's government in 2023. I believe this is intentional for numerous reasons I will discuss later. I recently had the pleasure of meeting a successful businessman/philanthropist on a return flight from Miami to NY. The gentleman and his wife were flying home to Minnesota although, they would be making a connecting flight in NY to their home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our conversation began as a polite exchange when he thanked me for getting up to allow his wife to exit the row. I replied, no problem and a most interesting conversation ensued. We shared where we were going and where we were from. He told me he lived in Minnesota for the last 40 years, but that he immigrated to the U.S. from his home country of El Salvador in his twenties to attend college. While in college he met his wife who was from Minnesota, they married and raised their family there. That satisfied my curiosity, why a young man from El Salvador would go to live in one of the most rural parts of the U.S.
He shared that he is very grateful to have lived in the U.S. for most of his life and even though he has fond and special memories of his country of birth, he is well aware that his lifestyle and the success he enjoys are the fruits of the "American Dream". He calls himself an American and proudly participates every year in the very patriotic celebration of the 4th of July! After he retired as a Chief Information Officer and his wife retired for health reasons, their focus turned to helping the poor and less fortunate. Their professional and financial success prompted them to establish funds and an educational initiative for the poor and underprivileged children in his native country of El Salvador. He has been providing funds and directing the completion of education from elementary school through college for underprivileged students in El Salvadore for about 10-12 years.
The flight he was connecting with at JFK was the last leg of a trip from El Salvador, where he had just been two days before attending the graduation of one of his beneficiaries after completing his first two years of college. He was going on to two more years thanks to the generosity, the vision and the efforts of this couple who realized the difference they could make in a child's life. It was a heart warming and impressive story about regular people doing extraordinary things especially at a time when the world, our country and communities are experiencing such human pain and suffering. I think I was supposed to meet this gentleman, whose name is Robert, to reassure me about something I already knew to be true, that there are good, caring people all around us trying to make a difference in the world. But we never hear about them, we only here sensationalized news about all the worst criminals, self-centered, ego-driven celebrities, power driven heads of state, politicians, professors, academic elitists, and corporate and tech. moguls who want to rule the world.
I enjoyed learning about the amazing work Robert and his wife are doing to improve the lives and futures of El Salvador's youth, but I also enjoyed hearing Robert's assessment on the state of El Salvador today. I started the conversation by saying how is the president doing? I was impressed with him when I saw him on TV but nothing is ever reported about his administration. Robert spoke about the major changes implemented by President Bukele and said that the country is experiencing a kind of renaissance. I thought that an interesting choice of words but after hearing Robert speak so confidently about President Bukele and the improvement he's made in people's lives it made perfect sense. I was listening to a first person account, a man of El Salvadoran heritage, well aware of the poverty and hardship El Salvadoran people have suffered over the decades. This reformation of governing practices and policies can very well be described as a renaissance!
Today I am picking up where I left off a year ago, June 20, 2022. Over the past two years I have had the privilege of developing a friendship with a couple who are from El Salvador. They are a young couple recently married. The young man was an employee of my husband. They have been back and forth to El Salvador over the last two years and they have personally observed the positive changes taking place in that country. They see how the quality of life has improved, the people feel safe because of law enforcement and a functioning judicial system, jobs are more plentiful, they have a stable economy and a government that respects the people, their safety and their livelihoods. Their president is forward thinking in his country's role as a player in the global economy as well as making strides in digital currency. His approval rating reached 90% in February, 2023. (The Economist, El Salvador's authoritarian president is becoming a regional role model, March, 2023)
I mentioned earlier that in 2022 there was little or no coverage of Bukele's presidency except for President Trump's remarks praising Bukele for his unique position on immigration. Bukele, unlike other Central and South American leaders discouraged his people from leaving El Salvador. Of course this should have been a major news story, recognizing his effective leadership and turn from the corrupt governments of the past. But to have given Bukele credit for discouraging illegal immigration and returning law and order to his country would have signaled approval of common sense policies being advanced during Trump's presidency. And mainstream media would not allow that! Anything that would cast President Trump in a good light was rejected and censored by a media that controls the flow of information and the mind's of its viewers.
There is hope for El Salvador to maintain a stable and legitimate government. The people have been blessed to have the leadership of a young, well educated president who understands the benefits of law and order and the free enterprise system. My conversation with Robert, Bukele's Heritage speech and my impression of Bukele in an interview give me reason to believe that he is grounded in principles of sound governance and liberty. I pray President Bukele will preserve freedom, live up to his promises and abide by the limitations set by El Salvador's constitution.
