മരിച്ച നായകന്റെ ഭസ്മത്തിലൂടെ അധികാരം ഉറപ്പിക്കാൻ എൽ സാൽവഡോർ പ്രസിഡന്റ് നയിബ് ബുക്കെലെ: പുതിയ തന്ത്രം ഇങ്ങനെ

The sun was just about to set in El Salvador one September day when President Nayib Bukele debuted his new passion project. Even by the exacting standards of Latin American political showmanship, it was jaw-dropping.

Clad like a Napoleonic general in a uniform adorned with gold trim, Mr. Bukele strode past bayonet-wielding soldiers, unsheathed a sword and laid it atop newly disinterred human remains.

In state-produced videos, Mr. Bukele told millions of social media followers that an urn with what is left of Francisco Morazán, a 19th-century Central American ruler, had just been placed into a crypt where it would be safeguarded "forever."

"Francisco Morazán was born Honduran," said Mr. Bukele. "But he lived, fought, and died as a Central American."

The spectacle trained a new spotlight on Mr. Bukele, who has gutted democratic guardrails, made mass arrests and slashed crime rates, all while enjoying towering popular support. The Bukele-dominated Congress scrapped term limits, enabling him to remain in power indefinitely.

While doing so, Mr. Bukele has emerged as a top ally of President Trump in Latin America, transforming the small country into a hub for imprisoning deportees from the United States while trolling elected Democrats opposing the Trump administration.

Mr. Bukele has amassed so much power that the display of pomp created a stir across Central America: Why was he digging up a long-dead figure who was already resting in El Salvador's most distinguished cemetery?

Manuel Zometa, an El Salvador-based constitutional law specialist and a rare vocal critic in a system hostile to dissent, called Mr. Bukele's new mausoleum a bid to assert greater dominance over the country's political landscape.

"His popularity is starting to soften," Mr. Zometa said, citing polls showing Mr. Bukele's sky-high approval ratings falling slightly as economic concerns over rising inflation and unemployment intensify. "Facing the diminishing returns of his war on crime, he reverted to the playbook tactic of exhuming a national hero."

Latin America boasts a rich tradition of political exhumations, with leaders using such rituals to advance their own ambitions regardless of how they might disturb the long-entombed's search for tranquillity in the hereafter.

While Mr. Bukele rules from the right, he is following examples set this century prominently on the left. (Representatives for Mr. Bukele did not respond to a request for comment.)

Hugo Chávez, the late ruler of Venezuela, disinterred the liberation hero Simón Bolívar, then deposited the remains in a colossal new mausoleum. Similarly, Rafael Correa, a former president of Ecuador, transferred the ashes of Eloy Alfaro, a leader beheaded by a mob, to a new mausoleum.

Mr. Bukele's latest twist on this custom already seems to be paying political dividends. Guides say thousands of visitors a day are streaming into the new mausoleum, located in a once rundown hotel in the historic core of San Salvador, the capital.

Throngs of street vendors have been removed from the high-security enclave. Surrounding streets have the look of being scrubbed clean. A futuristic new $54 million national library given as a gift by China stands directly across from the mausoleum.

Once inside the new climate-controlled crypt, guides expound on Morazán's historical importance. Soldiers in vintage dress uniforms try to remain motionless as they stand guard before the remains.

Grecia Montserrat, 22, came with her mother to see what the hubbub was about. She had only a vague idea of who Morazán was, she said, because, in her view, leftist authorities had previously "only taught us to admire guerrillas."

Ms. Montserrat, an undergraduate studying graphic design, said she was impressed by the mausoleum's freshly painted facade and the fact that the building is open most days, admission free, until midnight.

"The whole thing makes me proud to be Salvadoran," she said.

Still, some historians have found Mr. Bukele's decision to exalt the Honduran-born Morazán perplexing since El Salvador has traditionally venerated another 19th-century ruler, the Salvadoran-born Gerardo Barrios, as a founding father.

Morazán was seen more as a regional leader because of his role as the force behind the Federal Republic of Central America, an attempt in the 1820s to merge former provinces of the Spanish Empire into a single, sovereign state.

That project fell apart, and a firing squad of insurgent forces executed Morazán in 1842 in Costa Rica. He stipulated in his will that he wanted to be buried in El Salvador.

But Morazán is also considered the founding father of neighboring Honduras, where that country's top military academy, major plazas, boulevards, public schools and a weeklong commemoration bear his name.

Chafing at the new crypt, Honduran commentators called for Morazán's remains to be repatriated and argued that Mr. Bukele was theatrically trying to lift his regional profile in a ploy to emerge as Central America's unrivaled leader.

"He's styling himself as a modern-day Morazán," the Honduran historian Jorge Amaya said in televised comments, contending that Mr. Bukele had even begun dressing in a style channeling Morazán's martial flair, a departure from the backward baseball cap and rolled-up sleeves of his earlier look.

Other doubts about the mausoleum have emerged. After Morazán's execution, he was cremated and his ashes spent years shuffling between different churches in El Salvador before they were finally interred in 1858.

But during a siege of San Salvador in 1863, forces loyal to an invading Guatemalan strongman were said to have desecrated, and possibly destroyed, the monument holding the ashes.

"It's very difficult to determine at this point, some 180 years after the fact, whether these remains are truly his," said Alfredo Ramírez, a historian at the University of El Salvador.

For those streaming into the mausoleum, such details seemed like background noise.

Omar Sosa, 57, who said he fled El Salvador for the United States decades ago and now returns occasionally to visit, said he was overcome with emotion when he approached the crypt.

The solemn tribute to Morazán showed that the strife-torn nation he knew as a youth had been transformed, said Mr. Sosa, who owns two convenience stores in Austin, Texas.

"We were always the bad apple," he said. "But now this country is an example for the world."