Bukele's rise Strongman who became the darling of the right

Five hours after being shot in the belly, a Haitian accountant sat in a Port-au-Prince emergency room pondering how his homeland might be saved.

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"I follow the news," said the 60-year-old, who had been hit by a stray bullet early that morning, the latest victim of seemingly interminable gang conflict that has claimed thousands of lives in the last year alone. "And I watch the young president of El Salvador who has the same problem as us," the man said of the Central American country's 43-year-old leader, Nayib Bukele.

"He made efforts and built special prisons for them. There were people who supported gang members there - he arrested them too. There is no favouritism. That's why the people gave him a second term."

All across the Americas, similar sentiments can be heard as Bukele's authoritarian clampdown wins admirers. Last week, the Trump administration gave Bukele's crackdown its blessing, with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, showering El Salvador's president with praise during a five-country tour of Latin America.

Bukele, in turn, offered to accept deportees from the US - including US citizens and legal residents, a move that would be illegal under US law.

Human rights activists have voiced horror as tens of thousands of people -including thousands of children have been jailed