- Marvin Romero
- El Salvador, special for BBC News Mundo
image source, Getty Images
After months in which homicides were contained and almost disappeared from official statistics in El Salvador, murders skyrocketed again and the government reacted with a heavy hand.
The Central American country, one of the most violent in the world, returns to the spotlight due to the conflict between gangs, the so-called maras, and the government of controversial President Nayib Bukele.
The government denied that behind the almost disappearance of homicides there was a truce with the gangs and now it is determined to be strong with a state of emergency that has led to the imprisonment of thousands of young people and reforms of the penal code.
The Salvadorian Juan Carlos Torresdirector of the Master’s Program in Policies for the Prevention of Youth Violence and Culture of Peace at Don Bosco University in San Salvador, speaks with BBC Mundo and analyzes the evolution of gangs in the country from the perspective of the conflict between these groups and the Salvadoran government.
He says that the pacts, like the one in 2012, which strengthened the main gangs, have been the key to understanding the influence they now have.
Experts and press publications agree on the hypothesis that the Bukele government was negotiating or at least maintaining a dialogue with the gangs and that the breakdown of that channel of communication, as on previous occasions, led to a brutal increase in murders: only 62 on Saturday March 26, the bloodiest day of the last 20 years.
The year 2018, prior to Bukele’s arrival to the presidency, closed with an average of nine deaths per day, according to figures from the Attorney General’s Office and the National Civil Police. In 2021, the average was three times lower: three violent deaths a day.
But now that scourge returns.
Torres explains in this interview that no one from the government is thinking about the repercussions that these policies, to combat gangs, will have in the future.
image source, Getty Images
What happened on March 26 in El Salvador, when 62 homicides were reached in a single day?
Somehow, communication was broken: the dialogue between the structure of the State and the gang. But also the dialogue in the internal structure of the gang has broken down. So, that was the chaos that ensued that weekend. Everything was out of control there. .
I hope that the conflict has already reached its maximum and that the president seeks international cooperation: reinsertion programs.
I remember his first speech about the gangs, he told them: “Guys, stop killing, go back to your houses.” But sending them home without a law, without a reintegration program, doesn’t make sense.
Why are we now seeing this uptick in homicides?
Historically, rising homicides have been an indicator of violence. The gangs use it to draw the attention of the political class, of the government in power.
The message was clear: the homicides were increased to show the gang’s discontent about any relationship with the government and also to exert pressure. It is a pressure method.
So, does it coincide with the theory defended by researchers and journalists specialized in gangs that the Bukele government was negotiating or at least maintaining a dialogue with these groups? What support does that hypothesis have?
I’m leaving to maintain a dialogue, a tense calm, let’s call it a negative peace. In other words, the government was not going against the gangs and the gangs also regulated the level of crime.
Something happened. It’s clear.
It may be due to the continuous drug seizures, operations that took away a lot of economic capacity from the gangs, plus the capture of some important leaders for the structure.
But what influence do the MS13 – the largest – really have? Barrio 18 and Barrio 18 Sureños, the main ones, in El Salvador?
Gangs are a structure of violence and criminal actions. Their influence lies in the level of lethality of the violence they can exert, as was demonstrated: they carried out 62 homicides in a single day.
They have the capacity to raise the indicators of violence related to homicides. An influence to be able to confront another power structure such as the State.
How did we get to this point?
I have been able to see the evolution. People spoke of the gangs as derailed youth, youth without identity. And they saw the gang as a kind of tribe, where the young people came and found their identification.
That’s what the theoreticians said about these small groups that were in the street and whom the system had not absorbed.
There was a mixture of violence and it was consolidated in the current gangs. In the early days of the Francisco Flores government (1999-2004), large raids were carried out.
They took pictures of them, face and tattoo, to keep a record. That happened during the mano dura policy. With the super mano dura, the restriction was greater and they began to respond: violence generates more violence.
Before they were derailed youth and now they are called the crime economy. The truce (of 2012) marked the before and after.
Before, these groups had power and influence to generate criminal activities. What led to the truce? The interest of politicians. So, the interest of politicians gave them a value they didn’t have: the influence they have now.
They broke the entire social fabric. Community leaders were reducing, also the use of public spaces or social equipment, such as communal houses, courts, parks.
But what is the basis of this influence of the gangs you speak of? Where does he come from? And how do they exercise it?
The origin is in the mismanagement that has been given to public security and the management of reinsertion programs.
And the first factor is political: politicians’ anxiety about power, not limiting who they do business with and not mediating the consequences in order to win a political election, whether in the territories or at the presidential level.
That was what began to consolidate these groups. That is, the political recognition that was given to the gangs.
And, apart from that, it is because of the abandonment that the State made in the communities. The State withdrew, centralized and left a vacuum.
image source, Getty Images
The Salvadoran government once again applies strong-arm measures against the gangs.
And responsibility Have the different governments had in this?
All governments want to say that they are in control of security. And they take out the soldiers and everything. A patrolling soldier or policeman is going to grab those in front of him.
But gang violence is intermingled with social violence, which is much more complex.
Seeing it from conflict theory, conflict is the confrontation between two power structures. And this power structure, call it the State, call it the gang, they are confronted.
The gang eliminates their problems by murdering and the State locks them up, but that does not mean that the conflict is managed.
So with mass arrests, bringing homicides to zero isn’t it means security?
No. Here comes an error: we have been counting deaths and thus determine the perception of whether we are safe or not.
Violence is the use or abuse of force, with the intention of causing psychological, physical or other damage. So, that violence has always existed, in the territories it did not go down. The country is still violent. But homicide statistics do fluctuate, we learned to see it that way.
But under that violence, there is a structural violence of exclusion, lack of access to education, health and cultural violence that is transferred from generation to generation.
So, like it or not, we learned to see violence as a synonym for homicide and nothing more. It is still valid because homicide rates are measured like this at the regional level, even in Latin America.
image source, Getty Images
¿Lthe measures current that the government has taken can be classified as security?
When there is a conflict and there are no mediators or de-escalators of that conflict, that can go up. So when force is used, there is a risk that the threat will also become more complex.
Having a weapon as a deterrent is not the same as using it.
The president had all the powers: the army, the police, the courts, the prosecutor’s office, the entire apparatus. And when he gets his hands on that, he goes hitting and running over any kind of right.
When you are in the presence of that violence, what you want is peace, that people learn to live without violence. But we’ve left the government and the gangs to fight it out, with no one to buffer.
Later will come resentment, frustration. Violence breeds more violence. These young people who have been beaten and who are being beaten by the army or the police are creating resentment.
What is your opinion of the reform of the Penal Code approved by the Assembly and what is the penalty of up to 15 years in prison for the mere fact of talking about the gangs or with their members? Is it as if you want to hide the problem?
When the 2012 truce took place, some leaders began to be identified, those who had the word in the gang and, by doing so, some of those positive or negative messages began to be transmitted, with good intention or without intention, in some way. way to spread the news.
So, there should be a meeting with the president or the security minister, reaching agreements and asking for the law to be more specific, because the temptation of anyone who holds power is going to be to silence criticism.
You worked on security issues with other governments. Why is there no way to end this problem?
All the prevention programs, the security programs that have been working with the gangs, have not served to reintegrate.
It is important to clarify that the raids and putting many gang members in jail does not solve the problem, because many are left outside, people who sympathize and collaborate with the gangs and who assume the same activities that the gang member who is in jail did.
And that has been one of my remarks from citizen security. If they are only going to carry out raids and put gang members in jail, without installing prevention programs, they are not going to have control of the territory.
image source, Getty Images
And what is the best strategy, according to you, to end this violence? Are there examples that have worked?
Crime is not prevented. No work has been done on the issues of education for peace, conflict management and educating citizens about their rights.
Neither the government, nor the municipalities, nor organized society have done it because, although it hurts to say it, there are many people who also live and get resources from violence. There are no comprehensive development programs.
As a society, we need to have a violence prevention policy that includes the components of education for peace or a culture of peace.
¿What scenario do you foresee? now: a return to zero homicides or the continuation of these high figures?
The response will come from the criminal groups that have been resented and that they will not all be taken to prison. It may be that there is a retaliation and, then, what the municipalities should do is reinforce security in the corridors of violence.
That is why mediation has to be an institutionalized mediation. Honest organisms, institutions that have that nature: intervention and mediation. Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman, Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, International Committee of the Red Cross. I believe that these international organizations, even taking into account the United Nations, could request a meeting with the president and assess alternatives to mediate.
But if there is no government guarantee, if there is no institutionalized intermediation, any other civil organization that intervenes could be affected.
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