This week, a film bearing the same name as the country premiered in El Salvador's cinemas. El Salvador: When Fear Changed Sides is the full title of the documentary that portrays President Nayib Bukele as a hero thanks to his security strategy, which became a beacon for the region's right, though also a target of international questioning. Just as the film hits the big screen, the president is carrying out his own campaign to amplify his image as a savior, now in another country: Haiti. Since October 21, the social media accounts of this former publicist who has ruled El Salvador with an iron fist since 2019, with a marked attention to digital communication, changed focus, geography, and even language. "To the gang leaders and members who are holding our four compatriots hostage in Haiti," read a message posted that day in Haitian Creole, addressed to the criminal groups holding the poorest country in the Americas under siege. Three days earlier, four Salvadorans taking part in an international mission had been kidnapped in an ambush on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. "We have a single objective: to bring our four compatriots back home, alive and unharmed," the president stated. But he immediately raised the stakes: "We have already finished off the gangs in El Salvador, and we can finish you off too." Since then, Bukele has gone from announcing an operation to find the four kidnapped compatriots to deploying more than 2,000 soldiers in Haiti, under a bilateral agreement about which little is known. The mission was presented with regional epic flair and the same combative rhetoric with which he champions his "war against the gangs." On X, the president dismissed the notion that the deployment was an "invasion," promised to "fight against the evil ones," and reposted a video of Donald Trump in which the US president told him to do "whatever it takes" to free the small Caribbean country from violence. The campaign took on cinematic overtones this week: it released images of a bombing of what it identified as the headquarters of a major gang leader and of an operation to retake control of Port-au-Prince's soccer stadium. The videos, with aerial shots and sequences that seem to include special effects, even showed a robot armed with a rifle. What is Bukele seeking with this extraordinary intervention in the region? Will he be able to improve security in a country mired in a level of violence that the international community has failed to reverse, or, on the contrary, will he increase the chaos and deaths? Experts — and even some allied countries — are watching this high-stakes gamble with doubts and concern. "We are at a moment of enormous escalation. There is, without a doubt, a Salvadoran effect. There may be short-term security results. But the risk is repeating what we experienced with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti: real territorial victories and a crisis that comes back stronger, because the networks that sustain these gangs remain intact," Romain Le Cour, director of the Haiti Observatory at Global Initiative, told LA NACION. "Clearing territories without justice does not last. Haiti needs a public and clear strategy that articulates security, justice, disarmament, and civilian protection. Today that does not exist," the expert noted, in an argument that also applies to Bukele's strategy in El Salvador. Deployment and doubts The violence crisis in Haiti has only deepened in recent years, in a spiral that worsened since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. According to the latest report from the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, released this week, at least 1,167 people were killed between July and September. So far this year there have already been 4,217 victims of violence, and 11,000 in the last two years. In September 2025, the UN Security Council authorized the creation of the Gang Suppression Force (GSF), successor to a multinational mission led by Kenya that yielded no results. The new force began deploying in April, with a mandate to fight criminal organizations and support the Haitian police. Although it was supposed to have 5,500 personnel from various countries, including El Salvador, by late October it had barely 2,000. That is the same number of soldiers that Bukele sent following the kidnapping of the four Salvadoran aviation technicians — whom a gang leader claims are dead, something the Central American leader has denied. Salvadoran soldiers patrol the surroundings of the Sylvio Cator national stadium, in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Patrice Noel - AP On October 28, El Salvador announced a bilateral agreement on the deployment, but did not detail its conditions, the chain of command, or the duration of the troops' stay. The Haitian government limited itself to stating that the cooperation takes place "within the framework of the GSF," something Bukele did not confirm and the UN denied. Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé is scheduled to travel to El Salvador next week to address the issue. LA NACION contacted the Presidency of El Salvador for more information about the deployment but received no response. The Salvadoran reinforcement raised expectations of change in Haiti, but also doubts among experts and organizations — such as Amnesty International — about Bukele's intentions, and fears of human rights violations and an increase in civilian and military casualties due to the lack of coordination on the ground. A woman walks past Salvadoran armored vehicles near the Sylvio Cator national stadium, in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Patrice Noel - AP "The agreement remains very murky. But from the Haitian perspective it seems clear that [the Salvadoran forces] are welcome, because both the government and the population are dissatisfied with the GSF. Today, in Haiti, Bukele is extremely popular. Haitians don't much care who operates what, as long as there are results," Robert Fatton Jr., a political scientist born in Haiti and professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, told LA NACION. One of the main concerns is the lack of coordination among the five forces now coexisting on the ground: the Haitian police and army, the GSF, and a drone operations group backed by Vectus Global, the private security company founded by Erik Prince, a former SEAL and close to Trump and Bukele. This issue affects even the allies. The president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, one of the main parties interested in resolving the Haitian crisis to stem the flow of migrants from its neighboring country, called on the GSF this week to "come to an agreement, coordinate, and decisively support the Salvadoran Army and President Bukele's stance." A man kisses a Salvadoran flag placed on an armored vehicle patrolling a street in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Patrice Noel - AP There are doubts in Washington as well. While Trump endorsed the operation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio distanced himself from the Salvadoran mission and warned about the risks of failures in the chain of command. "You can't have the GSF running into Salvadoran soldiers and shooting at each other because they think the other side are gang members," he said last weekend. According to the website Axios, there are complaints within the State Department about the operation, which angered Bukele's government and exposed differences within the Trump administration. The US president had already sought to intervene in the Haitian crisis to prevent a new focal point of regional instability and greater migratory flows toward his country. In February, he allocated $5 million to support the Haitian Armed Forces and was also one of the main driving forces behind the GSF. Hence a question: is the White House behind this operation, or did Bukele offer Trump an unexpected solution? A Salvadoran armored vehicle patrols the surroundings of the Sylvio Cator national stadium, in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Patrice Noel - AP "The United States has been one of the main driving forces of the international response in Haiti. But there are many contradictions: it must also take responsibility for the illicit arms trafficking that fuels the violence. It is very complex to understand what lies behind all this. With the Democratic victory in Congress, there will now be many avenues to oversee this type of operation, especially to understand what role the United States did or did not play in this deployment," said Ana María Méndez Dardón, director for Central America at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). The lack of coordination between the GSF and the Salvadorans not only generates fears of possible crossfire. It also jeopardizes the continuity of the UN-backed multinational force, which must renew its mandate in March amid growing skepticism about its effectiveness in Haiti, in comparison with Bukele's deployment. "The GSF's delays are partly normal: it is building an institution, with rules and safeguards, and that takes time. But the comparison is cruel. The GSF has a Security Council mandate, explicit human rights obligations, and an oversight mechanism. The Salvadoran contingent, for the most part, does not. They are two different accountability regimes," Le Cour analyzed. A difficult model to export Another of the doubts surrounding the mission is the effectiveness the Salvadoran strategy can achieve in Haiti, given the differences between Haitian gangs and Mara Salvatrucha or Barrio 18, as well as structural, geographic, and power issues. "The maras were hierarchical structures, whose members could be identified, arrested, and isolated in prison. Haiti's most powerful criminal groups, some twenty of them, are more like militias. They control immense territories, roads, and ports, collect taxes, and have semiautomatic weapons trafficked mainly from the United States. They went from being service providers to political and economic actors, to being intermediaries and bosses in their own right. That is why eliminating a leader changes little. Another then takes his place," Le Cour explained. Members of the Armed Forces of El Salvador march during celebrations for the country's 205th anniversary of independence, in San Salvador. MARVIN RECINOS - AFP Jake Johnston, an associate researcher at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), recalled that the iron fist in El Salvador relied on secret negotiations with gang leaders — as investigative journalism and US courts revealed — and on the imprisonment of more than 1% of the population. Bukele, however, does not control the Haitian state, which also lacks sufficient prisons and a functioning judiciary. "There is simply no possibility of replicating that model in Haiti," he said. Méndez Dardón expressed the same view. "It is a mistake to think that a model that was effective in reducing homicidal violence in a small country can be replicated in other countries. These are very different contexts. Moreover, it is being done through authoritarian means. Haiti needs security, but not a military solution at any cost. The iron fist can produce tangible results, but also abuses. The question is not only how to defeat the gangs but how to guarantee the population's security in a sustained manner," she said. Why he is doing it Since Bukele took office in 2019, the homicide rate in El Salvador has dropped drastically: it went from 35 per 100,000 inhabitants to 1.3 last year, according to official figures. His strategy has been based, since March 2022, on a state of exception that has led to more than 90,000 arrests and has been denounced for human rights violations, with arbitrary detentions, mass trials, and reports of torture and deaths in police custody. That "war against the gangs" transformed the lives of Salvadorans and led him to reach approval ratings close to 90%, a level of popularity he accompanied with an advance over the various levels of the state and a constitutional reform that will allow him next year to seek a third term and indefinite reelection. That popularity crossed borders and positioned Bukele as a regional reference for the iron fist. Bukele speaks to the media alongside the president of Peru, Keiko Fujimori, during an official reception at the Presidential House, in San Salvador, El Salvador. MARVIN RECINOS - AFP With the deployment in Haiti, "Bukele wants to demonstrate that his model is exportable and present himself as Trump's indispensable security partner in the region," analyzed Orlando J. Pérez, professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas in Dallas, though he warned about the dangerous precedent this deployment may set. "Latin American troops abroad have almost always gone under the UN flag. Now a Central American country is sending 2,500 soldiers on its own, with Trump's personal blessing and logistical support from the Dominican Republic and Colombia. If it works, other governments will have a model: bilateral, militarized interventions outside the multilateral framework, with Washington behind them but without putting in troops," he noted. Bukele's decision also responds to a domestic strategy. His popularity levels remain the envy of many presidents, but the deployment allows him to reclaim the narrative as testimonies from the disappeared and victims of his state of exception increase. "The kidnapping of the four technicians struck at the image of total control that underpins his popularity, and the deployment allows him to turn that embarrassment into a show of force just months before the 2027 elections. It also reinforces the narrative that his security model works anywhere," Pérez argued, though he added that "there are risks" in this strategy, such as "dead soldiers, a failed rescue, or a mission that drags on and costs more than the country can afford." Bukele gestures as he delivers a speech during the inauguration of the new headquarters of the Attorney General's Office (FGR), in Antiguo Cuscatlán, El Salvador. MARVIN RECINOS - AFP Alex Papadovassilakis, a researcher for Central America at Insight Crime, questioned the sustainability of the "Bukele model," which he defined as a "highly repressive" policy without a long-term plan to attack the structural causes of crime — the same challenge he will face in Haiti. "The model keeps working because the state is not guaranteeing the fundamental rights of its population in terms of justice and due process," he noted. With his gamble in Haiti, Bukele seeks to project his security strategy beyond Salvadoran borders, but he also exposes the limits of that strategy and of his epic image as a savior.