I t has been nearly five years since El Salvador’s authoritarian leader, Nayib Bukele, launched his controversial “war” on gangs – transforming his country’s fortunes and becoming a hard-right beacon for Latin America’s fight against violent crime.

Now the Salvadoran populist seems intent on exporting his hardline tactics to the region’s most violence-stricken nation, Haiti. He has sent more than 2,000 troops and special forces to the Caribbean country since four citizens of El Salvador were abducted there on 18 October.

“We will help you reclaim your country from the hands of the traitors who betrayed the legacy of Dessalines,” Bukele tweeted in Haitian Creole this week, in reference to one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

Bukele’s use of mass incarceration and secret negotiations to tame El Salvador’s gangs has made him a hero among rightwing politicians and violence-weary citizens across the Americas , including in Haiti, where heavily armed groups have commandeered…