Human Rights have always been hard fought for in whichever countries which have won them, if a government can rely on Populism as their excuse then those rights are easily lost. Any group which cause a problem, maybe one that needs the rights won to hold protests, political voting matters, then lies can much more easily tell the public that taking those rights away again has been supported by the larger percentage of the population. I don't think it's my imagination, my dark dreams or nightmares because we've seen it in Europe several times, we last saw it in Britain used very successfully by Margaret Thatcher's overwhelmingly popular govt. to kill off the car industry, the coal, to privatise citizens assets, to tell the newly redundant and jobless communities up and down the country that they needed to get on their bikes, leave their families on their own or uproot them maybe - you see it was popular and the protections in place for workers were taken away.
Once you set a precedent your authoritarian govt starts using populism as excuses to maybe put more people in mega prisons, as in this case without trials, without recourse to defence or justice. Sure populism got a lot of drugs and guns off the streets but you also delayed justice which as they say in the phrase is justice denied. In Britain the current govt. is using the removal of the country from the EU as an excuse to leave the ECHR - the courts which protect Human Rights. Sure, not everyone deserves to keep their Human Rights. It took Britain to create and for parties to sign up to the first document entitling the wider population to initial Human Rights over and above what a King and Parliament deemed his divine right, until 1215 AD. Another 600 years or so to begin enacting those rights, since then 300 years to develop equal rights until what we have, or had today or soon. Us Westerners sure shouldn't be treating themselves as people who know what living in other countries is like. Our ancestors fought for our protections, it's so easy to give them away, we know nothing but our forefathers suffered through our own medieval era. Makes me wonder what else is going on in El Salvador to be honest.