Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori will travel to El Salvador from October 28 to 31, according to BioBioChile. She will meet with President Nayib Bukele and visit the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center), the maximum-security prison that became the symbol of his anti-gang policy.
The trip follows a path Chile has already taken. In January 2026, President José Antonio Kast met with Bukele and praised his government. "You are a beacon of hope in restoring security", he told him.
In August, the Chilean government carried out the Plan Cancerbero, which moved dangerous inmates to a maximum-security prison. Media coverage of the operation drew criticism. Socialist deputy Raúl Leiva, a member of the Security Committee, objected that a live broadcast by the Presidency took on "connotations typical of El Salvador and Bukele". Senator Iván Flores called it a "Bukele-style performance".
Fujimori has been more explicit. She mentioned Bukele during the campaign and after winning the election. In July, in an interview with the Colombian magazine Semana, she announced she would build four large prisons for the most dangerous criminals. She noted that Bukele built prisons in eight months and said she aimed to do it "a little bit faster".
Peru's Senate approved the trip with 37 votes in favor, 11 against and one abstention. Senator Ruth Luque, of the left-wing Ahora Nación caucus, rejected the idea of looking for solutions abroad. "Security is not imported, it is built, and that is the Executive's responsibility", she said.
Criticism also came from the right. Jorge del Castillo, a leader of the Partido Aprista and a former partner of Fujimorism, told RPP Noticias that the trip serves no purpose. He compared El Salvador to Ica, a region on the Peruvian coast, in terms of size. Rosa Bartra, a former congresswoman from Fujimori's party, told the same outlet that seeing "the walls of CECOT" brings no benefit and that there are enormous constitutional differences between the two countries.
Within the ruling party, Senator Alejandro Aguinaga, of Fuerza Popular, defended the visit. According to the Andina news agency, he said El Salvador is showing results against organized crime. "What better time to gather those positive experiences", he said.
José Luis Pérez Guadalupe, a former Interior Minister and researcher at the Universidad del Pacífico, told BioBioChile that the trip reveals a lack of technical backing. "There is no team, there is no plan, and what she has gone to El Salvador for is to look for a plan", he said. He also argued that Bukele "read the manual" of Alberto Fujimori, the president's father and a convicted former head of state, given his control of Congress and the Judiciary and the constitutional changes.
For Pérez Guadalupe, no one has fully copied the Salvadoran model. El Salvador's core problem was the maras, the Central American gangs, and Peru does not have them. Not even other Central American countries, he added, have managed to replicate it.
Ricardo Valdés, a former Deputy Minister of Public Security, agreed that the government is trying to resemble El Salvador's, at least in image. "There is a Bukele-ized stagecraft", he said, referring to the communications strategy. However, he argued that Peru could indeed benefit from the less publicized part of Bukele's plan: crime prevention.
The Peruvian delegation will depart on October 28. Details of the agreements it could sign with El Salvador have not been disclosed.
