The Promise and Peril of Digital Security in the Age of Dictatorship

Rodríguez and its collective received training on AMATE digital security, another LGBTIQ + organization which recommends on a national scale. Since May, Amate has trained 60 people on issues such as digital rights, risk analysis, extortion, phishing, exit, surveillance and revenge porn. It also includes the implementation of tools such as the use of VPNs and encrypted messaging platforms, such as signal and proton.

“Something that activists told us [that] is very common, it is that people take their Facebook photos and usurpient for social networks, either to attack other collectives, or to undermine personal aspects. It is therefore a very interesting experience. People are not aware of the exhibition we have in the digital world, ”explains Fernando Paz, who is responsible for teaching these courses.

Natalia Alberto

For Rodríguez, these tools are a way to confront a country which, with the support of the government, becomes more and more violent towards those who represent diversity.

“At university, we had experiences of hate speech in the classes. The teachers said that they shared Bukele’s thought on gender ideology and that it had to disappear because he poisons young people, ”says Rodríguez.

One way in which the government has used to hide violence against the LGBTIQ + community is the lack of accounting of hatred crimes committed in Salvador. In recent years, the Office of the Attorney General of the country, also known as FGR, has used the categories “murder due to social intolerance” and the “murder because of family intolerance” to count homicides that he cannot attribute to what he calls “general crime” (mainly, according to the government’s account, perpetrated by gangs). There is no clarity on what belongs to these categories, which are not official, are not defined and are only used publicly – not in administrative reports. Between 2023 and 2024, the FGR counted 182 of these cases.

Natalia Alberto

Record

Faced with statistical darkness, the exercise of documentation and archiving of hate crimes was taken up by organizations. The passionist social service, an anti-violence group, noted that 154 LGBTIQ + people had been detained during the El Salvador emergency regime, which began in March 2022 and was extended to date. After that, Nicola Chávez and his team saw the need to record cases of violence against members of the LGBTIQ +population.

“We had always intended to create an observatory, but with the start of the exceptional regime, everyone knows that police violence and military harassment have a disproportionate impact on the LGBT community. Obviously, it hurts us, and I don’t know who they count on to be able to denounce, ”says Chávez.