page_title: Nayib Bukele
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Nayib Bukele / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: Alcalde de San Salvador , Nayib Bukele y su esposa acompañados por la Primera Dama , Margarita Villalta de Sánchez.
context_page_description: Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez is a Salvadoran politician and businessman who is the 46th and current President of El Salvador since 1 June 2019 after winning the 2019 election. Nayib Bukele ran as the candidate of the centre-right GANA party and became the first president since José Napoleón Duarte not to have been elected as the candidate of one of the country's two major political parties, the FMLN and ARENA. He is also the founder of the political party Nuevas Ideas.
  He was previously elected mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán on 11 March 2012. He was also elected mayor of San Salvador on 1 March 2015, and took office on 1 May 2015. He contested and won the elections to both public offices under the banner of the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front party.
  During his presidency he has been criticized by the opposition of governing in an authoritarian manner, especially after sending soldiers into the Legislative Assembly to encourage the passage of a bill. This action, his handling of endemic violence in El Salvador, and his strict response to the COVID-19 pandemic has lead some academics to describe him as an autocrat.
context_section_description: Although Nayib was born into a Christian household, his father converted to Islam later in life. As the son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother, Bukele's religious beliefs were a controversial subject in the 2019 election, with an image surfacing showing Bukele praying at the mosque in Mexico City. The Times of Israel published an image dated February 2018 of Bukele "in deep reflection at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City."
  Bukele has publicly stated that his family is Roman Catholic and that while his father and several other family members have converted to Islam, he considers himself a believer in God first rather than religion.
  In a 2015 interview he said that "I am not a person who believes much in the liturgy of religions. However, I believe in God, in Jesus Christ. I believe in his word, I believe in his word revealed in the Holy Bible. And I know that God does not reject anyone because of their origins.” In a 2019 Facebook post Bukele stated that he's “not religious".
  He married Gabriela Rodríguez, "a psychologist and educator", in December 2014. In 2018, Bukele told the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, that Rodríguez has "Jewish-Sephardic blood".
caption: Bukele with wife Gabriela Rodríguez at a government event. (2014)