Candidates to be Guatemala's next president are taking a cue from the leader of neighboring El Salvador and promising their voters they will build mega-prisons and hammer criminal gangs into submission. "He has practically all of the police, the army in the streets," said 21-year-old Marlon Estuardo, a young man afraid of going out at night in his hometown of Chimaltenango, northwest of the capital. "He is not afraid of the gangs and is not afraid of anything." The Bukele formula has become well-known to citizens across Latin America, and the tough-talking, Bitcoin-loving leader enjoys approval ratings the envy of any world leader, even a year after suspending fundamental rights to wage war against his country's gangs. Following an outburst of gang violence in El Salvador in March 2022, Bukele has pursued a strategy of locking up anyone with gang affiliation, now totaling more than 68,000 people.