There are two ways to obtain and exercise authority: de facto, in fact; and de jure, by right. In El Salvador, ruling-party legislators and representatives of the Executive Branch billow at every chance they get that their authority emanates from the people, who are sovereign. With this phrase, they seek to legitimize corruption, criminal pacts, and systematic torture, and to rationalize that those who commit these acts do so in the exercise of their rightful authority, because it was Salvadoran citizens who elected them.
Under the state of exception, each testimony of each survivor of Bukele’s prisons denounces the torture they suffered upon detention. The same goes for the death certificates of the more than 435 people detained during this same period: almost all list “pulmonary edema” as the cause of death.
Bukele and Allies Have Blood on Their Hands
This leads us to conclude that several groups of guards in Salvadoran prisons systematically engage in torture. The main suspect is “Montaña”, a guard identified by El Faro as William Ernesto Magaña Rodríguez, who personally carries out beatings, and orders his subordinates to do the same. He is not alone; other torturers’ names have emerged from Salvadoran prisons: Sagitario, Jefe Shangai, or Sirena, each with their own reputation preceding them.
None of these torturers can claim to be acting as a legitimate authority; our laws and the international treaties and conventions signed by El Salvador explicitly prohibit torture. These guards are therefore acting against the law. They exercise de facto authority, not de jure. Legally, their superiors are also responsible if, knowing what they are doing, they do not take measures to punish them and prevent this from continuing. Their superiors are well aware.
This is not a group of guards who have decided to take authority into their own hands. They are not, therefore, “bad apples,” but rather a fundamental cog in the repressive system of the dictatorship in El Salvador.
Testimonies of torture began to emerge shortly after the installation of the state of exception. Little by little, the accounts became more and more terrible: the cries of pain from some, coupled with the insults and beatings dealt by others. The identification of “Montaña” is public and conclusive, and therefore known to his superiors and to all Salvadoran state officials. If he still has the authority to continue torturing, it is because that authority comes precisely from those who allow him to continue doing so (we do not know if they have ordered him to do so).
The evidence of torture, beatings, starvation, and even the death of babies in prisons is abundant, undeniable, and has been reported by the press, which has detailed cases one by one, and by several reports from national and international human rights organizations. On these grounds, some Salvadorans have been granted asylum abroad. This record has even been mentioned in U.S. courtrooms as a reason not to return some gang members to the country.
Who is responsible for this? Namely:
1. The Director of Prisons and Vice Minister of Security of Justice, Osiris Luna Meza, is legally responsible for the guards at the Bureau of Prisons. It is therefore his primary obligation to suspend Montaña and the other guards identified as torturers and human rights violators. He has not done so. Luna also acts outside the law given that these systematic acts of torture take place precisely in facilities under his responsibility. He is the administrator of the macabre system of torture and forced disappearances that Salvadoran prisons have become today. Luna, like Montaña, acts outside the law, but not outside the system.
2. The ruling-party deputies diligently, month after month, approve the extension of the state of exception without investigating or even demanding an explanation from the security forces and the Executive Branch for the abuses, torture, and human rights violations that have been reported and made public. It is precisely the state of exception that has turned Bukele’s prisons into black holes, places where prisoners cannot even see their families or lawyers. They are the authors of the reforms that allow for the suspension of guarantees and arbitrary detentions.
We Can't Change the News
3. The National Civil Police (PNC) has detained tens of thousands of innocent people without warrants, simply to fill arrest quotas demanded by their superiors. They are the first link in the chain of beatings and abuse suffered by detainees under the exception regime. They act with impunity, protected by the fact that they are the authority. But they are not so by right; in the past three years they have violated with impunity the laws prohibiting them from torturing or trampling on the rights of citizens.
4. Judges and prosecutors who have lent themselves to the annulment of justice and human rights are the executors of what Amnesty International describes as the consolidation of a model “that gives the appearance of legality to mass detention without evidence, the suspension of judicial guarantees, and the imposition of disproportionate periods of administrative detention. At the same time, legal reforms in criminal law and criminal procedure have introduced measures such as the concealment of the identity of judges, the automatic application of preventive detention, and harsher punishments for children and adolescents. Regional and universal human rights monitors have concluded that these reforms contravene international standards.” These judges and prosecutors, knowing full well, legitimize the death of our rights.
5. Minister of Security and Justice Gustavo Villatoro boasts that his security apparatus has captured thousands of criminals, but refuses to admit that tens of thousands of innocent people are also in prison. It was his arrival at the Ministry that unleashed the repression we continue to experience. He has also been the de facto director of the PNC since the death last year of Commissioner Mauricio Arriaza Chicas. Villatoro is jointly responsible for torture and abuse in prisons given that the Bureau of Prisons is under his authority. Villatoro endorses these abuses, but his authority can only come from one person.
6. Nayib Bukele. Only he has accumulated enough violations of the law and the Constitution to be an illegitimate president. His continued stay in the presidency after the first and only term authorized by the Constitution is illegal, illegitimate, and unconstitutional. Any authority delegated by him therefore lacks legitimacy. His absolute control of state institutions allows him, however, to exercise de facto power, and therefore makes him responsible for the abuses committed under his authority. Bukele is the first man responsible for the more than 435 deaths due to torture or negligence in Salvadoran prisons; he is responsible for denying detainees —as well as their families— the most basic of rights, such as to know where a person is being held. He is directly responsible for the systematic practice of torture in Salvadoran prisons and is primarily responsible for the extension of the state of exception and the detention of his critics. Bukele long ago ceased to exercise authority by right. He is a de facto president.