The Bukele Method

For decades, El Salvador was the most dangerous country in the Western Hemisphere. A state hijacked by gangs, ruled by the corrupt, and abandoned by the very institutions sworn to protect its people.

Today, it is the safest country in Latin America.

How was it done? The world assumes it was an iron fist against the maras - Central America's notorious street gangs. They are wrong. The real method began by beheading the hydra of corruption that had been feeding them.

Andrés Guzmán Caballero lived it from the inside. As Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights under the Bukele administration, he walked the most feared prisons in the hemisphere, witnessed the downfall of corrupt judges and prosecutors, defended the model before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations, and stood beside a shoemaker named Juan on his road from the cell back to freedom.

This book is the definitive chronicle of a state remade from the inside out - a testimony that neither softens the brutality nor sidesteps the dilemmas. Because peace won through war is a fragile beast, and keeping it alive demands the same courage it took to bring it into the world.