Human rights and cybertechnology seem to have a lot to do with El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele. The president who sells himself as "the coolest dictator in the world" has surprised on this occasion with his decision to appoint last Wednesday the cyberspecialist lawyer Andrés Guzmán as the first commissioner of Human Rights and Freedom of Expression of his administration, pointed out for torture, arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances in a brutal war against gangs. But the appointee, from Colombia, has major limitations: he lacks knowledge of Salvadoran politics and has no more than seven months of experience in human rights issues. His long career has been dedicated to advising on cybercrime, including media cases linked to the Colombian right.
The new commissioner was for 16 years at the head of Adalid, a company he founded and from which he practiced consulting and investigating high-tech crimes. "There is no computer, hard drive, cell phone or SIM card that can resist the lawyer Andrés Guzmán Caballero who, in the best style of the famous hounds of the CSI series and through digital evidence, has clarified the darkest cases of justice in the country," reads the corporate profile of the now commissioner, who left the management of the company in September 2022. According to the Salvadoran government, the appointment shows "the commitment to the human rights of the population, which for decades was excluded by the political power, non-governmental organizations and representatives of the international community."
The cases in which Guzmán has been implicated have been many and very notorious. He was the lawyer who came to the defense of Óscar Iván Zuluaga —uribista candidate for the 2014 presidential elections—, when a video revealed by Semana showed the politician next to a hacker accused of spying on the peace process of the Government of Juan Manuel Santos with the FARC guerrillas in the middle of the presidential campaign. "We managed to determine that it was a spurious video," Guzmán said in statements that were amplified in several media. Some time later it was verified that the video was not adulterated.
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The cyberexpert is singled out for his ties to the ombudsman, conservative lawyer Carlos Camargo. Adalid created in 2022, together with another company and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Digital Evidence Forensic Laboratory, a digital platform of the Ombudsman's Office to support public defenders. The Union of Human Rights Defenders of the Ombudsman's Office (Sindhep) denounced a few weeks ago, in the magazine Cambio, that the laboratory has been used to allegedly spy on the communications of officials who question Camargo's management.
Guzmán denies during a video call with this newspaper that his work has been linked to the Colombian right and assures that he has also collaborated with leftist presidents in the region, although he explains that he cannot give their names for judicial reasons. "I've never had a political leader," he says, insisting that he defines himself as a "technician." He also refuses to respond to queries about Cambio's complaint: "The media in Colombia know me, they know that I am an honorable and decent man. It's an article that doesn't deserve any words."
Emel Rojas, Bogotá councillor for the Christian and right-wing Colombia Justa Libres party, has been one of those who has celebrated the appointment in El Salvador. "Aware of his high human and professional qualities, I am pleasantly pleased with the appointment of Dr. Andrés Guzmán Caballero," he said on Twitter. He also adds by phone that both are friends since they studied a postgraduate degree at the Sergio Arboleda University. It was there that they also met Camargo. "I say he's centrist. I'm the one who has right-wing positions, I don't know if he's taken a turn," he says.
"It's boring to do the same thing every day"
Guzmán's first approaches to El Salvador were a year ago, when he began traveling to provide advice on digital rights and conferences on artificial intelligence. That's when he met Bukele and the two had "very interesting conversations." At that time, the lawyer wanted to make a radical change in his life. "It's boring to do the same thing every day," he said after 16 years at the helm of Adalid. He says he sold the company, ceased to be the director and accepted an offer from Camargo to be a delegate advocate for Rights in Virtual Environments and Freedom of Expression, a new position. He didn't last long: he resigned in April 2023, shortly after Cambio's denunciation. He explains that he left because Bukele had already offered him the new position in El Salvador.
He has been a professor at several universities in Bogotá, such as Rosario, La Libre and La Sabana; He has also created and directed the master's degree in Data Protection and ICTs at the Sergio Arboleda University, a think tank founded by conservative politicians and known for its links to the right. He has also been a consulting lawyer, contractor and litigator. He was the representative of the National Registry a decade ago in a criminal complaint for the leak to the media of the lists of people who had signed to call for a recall against the then mayor of Bogotá, Gustavo Petro. Although the complaint was not against anyone in particular, he declared that the only one who had had access to that data was the current president.
The lawyer considers that his work with cybercrimes is especially relevant to the area of human rights in a country that wants to be "totally digital". He emphasizes that human rights include issues of digital identity, privacy and habeas data: "All my life I have worked on human rights issues." For him, his lack of knowledge in other sectors, such as the right to water, will be compensated with what his advisors contribute.
Being a foreigner has not been an inconvenience. "When I travel to other countries, I immediately take away the Colombian. I'm very technical everywhere. I've been a consultant in so many parts of the world," he says. However, Guzmán acknowledges that he is in his first days in office and that he has had to inform himself about the social and cultural context of the country. One of his supporters has been Bukele, with whom he has held long meetings: "He was kind enough to explain to me in general terms everything that happens." Among the priorities, apparently, are the human rights violations that occur in the recruitment of minors by the maras.
Guzman comes to office with great challenges. International organizations such as Amnesty International have accused the Bukele government of committing "massive violations" of human rights in its criminal policy. Images and videos show how prisons are filled with prisoners who live in crowds, in inhumane conditions and in fear of being violated. "[A colleague] was beaten to death in the cell and dragged out like an animal," a former inmate told EL PAÍS in March. Many prisoners, according to reports, are being held without hard evidence of gang membership and are awaiting trial. A tattoo may be enough to stop you.
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Bukele, however, has overwhelming popularity in the Central American country, with numbers above 90% approval. It is a symbol of change for a population fed up with gang violence and disenchanted by the lack of opportunities. Allegations of human rights violations and attacks on other state institutions do not erode its power: it has managed to capitalize on sharp reductions in crime rates. In Colombia, he has become a reference for the right and the favorite rival of the president, Gustavo Petro. "I think I'll go on vacation to Colombia," Bukele promised in March.
The new commissioner justifies the criminal policy of the Salvadoran government, although he promises that he will visit the prisons and that he will ask for a report. "There is a legal suspension of human rights due to a regime of emergency. You have to analyze the historical framework, of years in which people could not move from one neighborhood to another, in which there was a curfew decreed by the maras. There is an exceptional war that requires exceptional measures," he stresses. For Guzmán, the discussion of human rights should not be focused on prisoners, but on an entire population that has seen its rights transgressed by decades of violence: "People are afraid to speak. We have to find a solution."
"I'm a technician"; "I am an honorable man"; "I don't have political godfathers," the lawyer repeats several times. According to him, politics is not part of his job; last December he used his Twitter account to spread a phrase by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset against ideologies. "Being of the left is, like being of the right, one of the infinite ways that man can choose to be an imbecile: both, in effect, are forms of moral hemiplegia," he quoted. However, he rules out the possibility of joining the government of Gustavo Petro, Colombia's first leftist president in decades. If he were offered an equivalent position, he would turn it down. "I already have a serious contract with El Salvador," he emphasizes.
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