In Latin America, 'iron fist' security promises are winning voter support

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When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva carried out a historic – and non-violent – money laundering raid last year, his country seemed to shrug its shoulders.

But not long after, when the deadliest police raid known in Brazil was carried out in a poor neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, many Brazilians expressed their approval, even though the raid had failed to capture its target.

Across Latin America, concern about violence is growing, even in places where homicide rates have fallen. These security concerns are leading many in the region to support heavy-handed security policies, such as militarization or mass arrests.

Why do we write this?

Security and violence are the main concerns of Latin Americans, many of whom will vote for new presidents this year. Flashy policies like putting the military on the streets are popular, but can they create lasting change?

Last fall, in Rio de Janeiro, this single police operation left more than 120 people dead, many of whom showed evidence of having been executed. The United Nations condemned the attack on the Red Command drug gang, which controls many of Rio de Janeiro’s poor neighborhoods known as favelas, and called on Brazil to reform its security policies.

But according to a poll taken shortly after the Oct. 28 operation, 55% of Rio de Janeiro residents said they approved. That figure rose to 81% among favela residents.

As voters in Peru, Colombia and Brazil go to the polls to elect their next presidents this year, security is expected to dominate at the polls. Many look to President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and his firm hand –or iron fist–, as an aspirational model to control anarchy. Ecuador and Chile already elected tough-on-crime conservatives last year, and Costa Rica did the same this month.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brasilia, February 2, 2026.

Concern about crime is nothing new in Latin America, where drug trafficking drives the region’s criminal economy. But the situation has taken on a new dimension as crime expands and evolves, and social media amplifies both fear and calls for repressive measures like Bukele’s.

“firm hand “It can offer immediate insight, sometimes short-term reductions in visible violence,” says Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank focused on security issues, but, he says, it often fails to address the root causes of organized crime.

Like Canada

After winning elections for the first time in 2019, Bukele implemented a security offensive with mass incarcerations, symbolized by the 40,000-person capacity prison he built, known as the Terrorism Confinement Center or CECOT. El Salvador’s homicide rate fell from 51 murders per 100,000 people in 2018 to 1.9 per 100,000 in 2024, the same as Canada’s.

But the cost in terms of human rights has been high. With arbitrary arrests and a lack of due process, an estimated 2% of El Salvador’s population is behind bars, while Bukele has tightened his control. El Salvador has been under a state of emergency since 2022, which suspends judicial guarantees such as the presumption of innocence. The country’s Congress also took steps to allow indefinite presidential re-election last August. And yet, Bukele has approval ratings consistently above 80% and is widely admired in the rest of Latin America.

“You hear people in a remote area of Ecuador or Colombia say that maybe a Bukele model will work for them,” says Angélica Durán-Martínez, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who studies violence and criminal dynamics in Latin America.

Salvador Meléndez/AP/File

Armored vehicles patrol a street in San Salvador, El Salvador, June 1, 2025. Other Latin American governments look to El Salvador and President Nayib Bukele’s heavy-handed approach as a model for getting tough on crime.

Right-wing politicians across Latin America talk about repeating Bukele’s approach at home. Ecuador and Costa Rica are developing new high-security prisons inspired by CECOT. Chile’s far-right president-elect, José Antonio Kast, recently met with Bukele in El Salvador “to learn” about that country’s penal system. And 14 Brazilian politicians have visited CECOT since 2023.

But Bukele’s model is difficult to replicate. El Salvador is a small country of about 6 million inhabitants with no checks on the president’s power, allowing him to trample human rights. Its results are also limited.

The cost of crackdowns

In the Penha favela complex in Rio de Janeiro, traffickers returned to their usual activities within days of the deadly operation last October. It was the deadliest police raid ever carried out in Brazil, but it failed to capture the leader of the targeted gang and paralyzed not only Penha but the entire city for a day.

A view of the Penha favela, days after a police raid targeting a drug gang, in Rio de Janeiro, on October 30, 2025.

“Nothing gets better, things just get worse,” says Penha resident Elisabete Sulino, two days after the community project she works for had to cancel its activities due to another armed police operation, the second in January, that kept residents sheltered inside. He later found a stray bullet in his daughter’s bedroom.

“I am neither for nor against” police operations, says Sulino. “But (the police) enter the favela as if there were no families here, as if there were no children. They come to kill.”

Experts such as Will Freeman, a Latin American studies fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, believe it is necessary to use reasonable state force to dismantle gangs’ territorial control, but security policies must also take into account the growth and complexity of organized crime.

A relatively new fact, he says, is that criminal gangs make “much more sophisticated use of commercial facades not only to launder money, but also to grow it in the legal economy.”

These gangs have also diversified. “Drugs are still important, but growth is seen in extortion, migrant smuggling, cyber scams and environmental crimes such as illegal mining,” says Dr. Muggah of the Igarapé Institute.

Addressing all of this requires governments to follow the money, he says, just as Lula, as Brazil’s president is known, did in August when his government dismantled a nearly $10 billion money laundering scheme. It also means rebuilding the rule of law’s ability to protect citizens and focusing law enforcement efforts on the places where gangs make money, such as ports, borders and prisons.

The problem is that these types of long-term policies are too often overlooked. Governments use large-scale arrests and ostentatious policing to stay in power and “show that crime is not tolerated,” says Dr. Durán-Martínez.