Giving up democracy for the promise of security
By Ernesto Castañeda
September 1, 2025
Last year, my wife and I traveled to Santiago de Chile. On our last day in town, we went to a museum dedicated to maintaining the historical memory of the human rights violations and violence against citizens perpetrated by the Dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and his government (1973-1990). This is an important museum to visit, but one that is difficult to digest, as it clearly illustrates the extent to which state violence can go in targeting political enemies. The materials, stories, and evidence showcased — just a fraction of the many cases and events — were clear and abundant; the listing and witnessing of documented abuses were nauseating. One can spend a whole day learning about how the regime came to power, what it did to dissidents, why many had to go into exile, and how the regime came to an end. We were able to take only a few hours at a time because we had to head to the airport a bit later. After gathering our luggage, we got into a taxi and asked the taxi driver to avoid the highway and instead use local routes. We got into talking a bit.
After driving through downtown, we passed a few large tower buildings in the corner of a large roundabout. The driver, a man a few decades older than us, pointed to them and said that the area was dangerous because many immigrants lived there. He was referring to immigrants from other South American countries. To me, the neighborhood did not look any different from the ones next to it. But he used a derogatory name to refer to the immigrants and wished they would leave because they were “criminals.” When I prompted him for data on this, he said he had never been a victim of crime at the hands of an immigrant, nor knew anyone personally who had, but referred to the news stating so.
He then moved to blame the so-called leftist government of President Gabriel Boric. And without any prompt, he started to reminisce about the times of Pinochet. He said that in those years he was able to buy a car and a house. He said things were better back then.
We briefly mentioned that we had just come from the historical memory museum, but he dismissed it, saying that rabble-rousers were dealt with, crime was low during the dictatorship, and there was almost no immigration. My wife and I looked at each other, but as professionals, we were in listening- and not in debate- mode.
Only a few minutes later, without any sense of contradiction, he said how much he liked Chile and how he would not live anywhere else. He then stated that due to the challenging economic conditions during some years of the Pinochet dictatorship, he had to migrate to Argentina to find work. He went without a work permit and worked in painting and construction, saving money for years and eventually returning to Chile. The car he bought and the initial capital to get a house came from the work he did as a clandestine, low-skilled immigrant in the neighboring country. Yet, he showed no empathy for contemporary immigrants from Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and credited his ability to buy a taxi and work it now not to his years working abroad but to the Dictator Pinochet.
We arrived at the airport, paid, thanked him, and went inside. He was very nice and not xenophobic with us. My wife and I discussed his level of mental gymnastics needed to avoid cognitive dissonance.
Just a few days after Chile, I traveled to El Salvador for work. It was much safer to walk in the streets and go out at night than just a year prior when I visited. People walked with a sense of relief and talked about it. Parks and areas that were once quiet because they were under the control of gangs are now places where families can spend their evenings and engage in leisure activities. President Nayib Bukele was proactive during the pandemic, providing healthcare, vaccines, and financial subsidies to help people navigate the pandemic as well as possible.
People locally known to be part of gangs, as well as people suspected of being part of gangs, because of where they were, with whom, or how they looked, had been getting locked up in large numbers without any due process or access to lawyers or even family members. I asked many taxi drivers and people I talked to about this. The great majority were supportive of the aggressive crackdown on gangs, felt the difference, and celebrated. When pushed further, most accepted knowing of people, sometimes even close family members, who were not gang members or criminals but were incarcerated because they were “in the wrong place, at the wrong time.” Sometimes, non-gang members would just be talking socially to gang members who were neighbors, or who were interrogating or extorting them, but if they were physically next to them when the Salvadoran army arrived, they would be taken along as potential gang members: guilty by association.
Few felt a sense of urgency or ability to do something about it. Cousins, close friends, even young fathers were afraid to go to the authorities and advocate for the innocent individuals imprisoned because they were afraid, they told me they could also be associated with the gangs just for advocating and asking questions, and could also be locked in. Early on during the “State of Exception” declared in March 2022, with zero-tolerance policies towards organized crime and the suspension of certain constitutional rights, many people were supportive of the measures. People were afraid of publicly opposing them. People pointed fingers at those gang members who created fear and extorted them for years, and asked for no mercy, and were supportive of those detained not coming back. There was shame and stigma cast on families who had family members arrested, as those taken away were immediately assumed guilty, and the government, and many in civil society, saw friends and family of those detained as having “harbored terrorists for years.” Thus, the pressure and strategic need to stay silent even if they had taken an innocent person. The detention center they were taken to, the CECOT, was a large, impressive building with the words terrorism and confinement in its name.
Some said that if the government took people who were not guilty, it was because they were keeping ‘bad company.’ Many others justified the situation by resorting to religious sayings, such as “God knows why things happen,” “God will say,” and “The innocent will be set free, God willing.”
Some people started to comment on the growing inflation in El Salvador following the pandemic. This was a global phenomenon. But many taxi drivers saw inflation as the “price” to pay for increased security. They were willing to pay it in the short term, but noted that if inflation became too high and persisted for too long, the President’s popularity would decrease. As one person told me, people would forget about their previous insecurity, but would be very conscious of having a hard time buying groceries, and would go back to trying to migrate north.
Indeed, a few months prior, I had traveled to Cuba for academic reasons. The country was facing blackouts, hunger, and mass emigration. Besides attributing some blame to the U.S.-based embargo, few members of the public failed to attribute some portion of the blame to the government for the weak state of the Cuban economy.
Many in El Salvador saw the benefits of being able to walk the streets without fear of being targeted by the gangs as worth the few innocent people that were wrongly detained for life with no due process, even with the chance that the army could take other people like them in the future. In past years, when I asked about the threats to democracy that the president’s ambition revealed about staying in power, most people shrugged or showed resignation. Bukele’s local approval and among the diaspora have been large. Thus, consent was created for someone who made everything to be re-elected and who has now called for no limits on reelection, proudly calling himself the “coolest dictator” and now a “Philosopher King” on the bio of his X/Twitter account.
Given his actual success in reducing homicide rates, many spoke with envy about a “Bukele Model” in other parts of Latin America and even the United States. Indeed, Rubio, Vance, and Trump spoke publicly about imitating this approach. They did so in 2025 by naming gangs as terrorist groups, by skipping due process protections, and indefinitely detaining people. Their emphasis was always on immigrants, so they added a new dimension to this: deportations. To countries of origin, when possible, and when not to third countries, starting with El Salvador, and holding them in CECOT by force. A coming together of extreme-right authoritarian and securitarian fantasies, but this model could not be sustainable given the immigration laws and constitutional provisions still applicable in the United States. Thus, the men the U.S. sent to CECOT have been freed or sent to Venezuela (see story about Julio Zambrano Perez here). The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was born in El Salvador and had legal protection from deportation to El Salvador, attracted a lot of media and public attention to the terrible conditions in the CECOT and the fact that innocent people and those who were never declared guilty are held under inhumane conditions. Those guilty of homicide and other major crimes are held under the same conditions and serving the same de facto life sentences as people who never committed any violence. The support from El Salvador endeared MAGA to Bukele, but it also further diminished his credibility internationally and among some Salvadoran immigrants abroad.
Some still call for “the Bukele Model” in Mexico to get rid of the cartel violence. But the cartels are wealthier, and more organized and powerful than the Salvadoran gangs. Furthermore, using the army to confront them is what President Felipe Calderon did in 2006, ever since increasing the levels of violence and deaths.
Furthermore, it is not the case that there is no petty crime or drug trafficking in authoritarian regimes, just that the top authorities are more likely to be involved. Thus, the Faustian bargain of surrendering democracy in exchange for security is a false pretense and an excuse to gain and concentrate power.
On August 26, 2025, Trump said in his Oval Office chats, “So the line is that I’m a dictator, but I stop crime. So, a lot of people say, ‘If that’s the case, I’d rather have a dictator.’ Not clear who he is, hypothetically talking about beyond the MAGA base. Some citizens in many places prefer to ignore the abuses of totalitarian regimes rather than allow a democracy to prosper where politicians more to the left can be elected and actually try to help workers and the middle class. Others prefer to live in what Kant called intellectual immaturity and let a parental figure make all decisions about public affairs. Likewise, many MAGA believers put their faith in Trump and do not want to carry any mental load for politics or governing. Nevertheless, there may be a high cost in the long term for this complete delegation of decision-making and responsibility because, despite promises to help the nation or members of a particular race, ethnicity, religion, or class, authoritarians only care about themselves.
Many historians of the Weimar era in Germany disagree that economic crisis or crime led to the popularity of Hitler and the National Socialist Party. He made an emotional appeal to ethno-nationalism, even though Hitler, who was born in Austria, became a German citizen only in 1932, a year before being named Chancellor by President Hindenburg in 1933. According to the work of Frank McDonough and others, Hitler claimed he alone could Make Germany Great Again. He also framed women as important because they would be the mothers of “racially appropriate children” to grow the German population. Once in power, his violent persecution was not limited to Jewish people, despite early antisemitism and conspiracy theories using them as scapegoats. He started going after communists, who included his most active and organized political opponents, and then included any political opponents and members of groups seen as deviant or inferior.
Rural residents, small business owners, and middle-class members voted for the Nazi party, hoping their economic fortune might improve along the way as the international respect for Germany returned from the humiliations of losing World War I. Once in power, the industrialists supported the Hitler regime, but after a boost from the rearmament campaign, many people lost their shirts and their lives in the Nazi Imperial experiment. The rebuilding of postwar Germany was largely due to the Marshall Plan and subsequently the European Union.
Dictatorships, Empires, and totalitarian regimes overreach, crush opposition, and create political violence. They eventually fall from within or without. However, many lose their lives and liberties along the way if not stopped early on. A functioning social democracy is generally more peaceful and delivers most material goods to the majority of people most of the time.
Democracy is the best political system, not because it is perfect, but because it puts an expiration date on a specific regime. No government can stay popular, effective, or altruistic for long. It is healthy for a new administration to come in and so on.
It Cannot Be about Immigration
Despite the majority of U.S. public opinion being in favor of immigration for decades, we have been made to believe by extreme right-wing immigration restrictionist groups, and the media repeating their claims, taking them in good faith, and then sometimes believing them through repetition, that immigration is unpopular and dangerous. Some even believe, without any systematic evidence beyond that circular narrative, that immigration is a threat to democracy. To the contrary, immigrant scapegoating is most dangerous and a possible threat to democracy when accompanied by a state framing the issue as one of national security and survival, pairing it with aggressive policies targeting minorities and political opponents. Securitization against immigrants can be used to legitimize the adoption of “emergency” or exceptional measures that lead to increasing authoritarianism and concentration of power on the executive and military.
In other words, misinformation and securitization discourses from politicians and state actors, especially those with anti-democratic tendencies, construct immigration as a threat. Some parties and citizens may buy into this rhetoric for political, self-serving reasons, out of fear, or due to a lack of information. MAGA’s misleading statements distort immigration realities and result in increased immigrant precarity and heightened state violence. They create a circular logic based on lies and promises that are impossible to fulfill. So, the bubbles they create eventually burst for most followers, enablers, and observers.
Immigration, including undocumented immigration as well as receiving refugees and asylum seekers, is not incompatible with democracy. To the contrary, newcomers are one of the reasons why wealthy plural democracies can remain so. It takes a totalitarian regime to fully control borders, enforce population registries, and remove unwanted people from spaces such as street encampments and cities. While some may find it alluring initially, the offer is not worth a soul.
Ernesto Castañeda, PhD is the Director of the Immigration Lab, and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, and Professor at American University. Opinions his own.
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