dictator or not, he has been immensely successful in bringing down murder/crime rates. It is one the fastest plunges in homicide rates the world has ever seen.
He is using the power of the state to go after criminals and gangsters. He isn't using the power of the state to go after marginalized or vulnerable minority groups.
Gangsters and anyone who vaguely seems like a gangster, of course. And journalists.
A problem is that a lot of his critics focus on the treatment of prisioners when that's one of the most popular Bukele policies with lay people. The lack of a due process and the limitations of freedom of press are overlooked.
Bukele has a big popularity right now on the region. He is more praised by the right, but I'm pretty sure the average working class left leaning latino has a good image of him too. I'm pretty sure the average Castillo voter wpuld like Bukele style prisons in Peru.